Quotes & Sayings About Things Not Being The Same

For of what use is existence to the creature if it cannot know its Maker? How could men be reasonable beings if they had no knowledge of the Word and Reason of the Father, through Whom they had received their being? They would be no better than the beasts, had they no knowledge save of earthly things; and why should God have made them at all, if He had not intended them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given them a share in His own Image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same Image and Likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of Godlikeness in themselves they may be able to perceive the Image Absolute, that is the Word Himself, and through Him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy and blessed life. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

God is utterly simple; for every composite being necessarily has a cause of its own composition, and so, since God is the first principle of all things, there can be no real composition whatever in God. Now, in an utterly simple being there can be nothing that is not that simple being itself. In God, therefore, whatever really is, is the same as God, is the same as that which is, is the same as that which subsists, and hence necessarily subsists. — Bernard Lonergan

One of the most dangerous is the implication that civilization, being artificial, is unnatural: that it is the opposite of primitiveness ... Of course there is no veneer, the process is one of growth, and primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both. — Ursula K. Le Guin

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life ... Maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, "twixt two extremes of passion
joy and grief," as Shakespeare put it. However much I've lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love. And I can look for safety in giving myself away to the world's least losable things. — Barbara Kingsolver

I think that many people do not know what empathy is. They think empathy is understanding their own selves and then connecting with like-minded individuals, who of course will understand them since they all share the same ideas. Empathy has nothing to do with likemindedness; it has to do with being able to feel the things that others feel, even when you do not share the same ideas, life story, or absolutely nothing at all! When I hear someone say, "I don't understand you", that makes me feel sorry for them. I can even understand a rock, and they can't understand me? My pet rocks have more empathy than they do. — C. JoyBell C.

Seeing his grief over Eamon makes mine pathetic. No one will feel the loss of his brother more than him. Not his parents, not his brother's friends. Not me. Me being here will probably just make things worse, not better. Or maybe that's my arrogance in thinking I might still have the same kind of effect on him that he has on me. — Jolene Perry

The sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source ... Here is the fountain of action and of thought ... We lie in the lap of immense intelligence. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nearly twenty years before, Hudson Taylor had written in an editorial: "All God's giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them." As he looked at himself, Hudson Taylor saw nothing but weakness; but as generations of Christians have studied Taylor's life, they have become acquainted with a man who dared to believe the Word of God and, by faith, carried the gospel to inland China - and saw God work wonders! "Want of trust is at the root of almost all our sins and all our weaknesses," he wrote in that same editorial, "and how shall we escape it but by looking to Him and observing His faithfulness. The man who holds God's faithfulness will not be foolhardy or reckless, but he will be ready for every emergency. — Warren W. Wiersbe

I think people expect too much from marriage today,' he said. 'They expect perfection. Every moment should be bliss. That's TV or movies. But that is not the human experience.
... twenty good minutes here, forty good minutes there, it adds up to something beautiful. The trick is when things aren't so great, you don't junk the whole thing. It's okay to have an argument. It's okay that the other one nudges you a little, bothers you a little. It's part of being close to someone.
But the joy you get from that same closeness
when you watch your children, when you wake up and smile at each other
that ... is a blessing. People forget that. — Mitch Albom

It was not said amiss by Antisthenes, when people told him that one Ismenias was an excellent piper, "It may be so," said he, "but he is but a wretched human being, otherwise he would not have been an excellent piper." And king Philip, to the same purpose, told his son Alexander, who once at a merry-meeting played a piece of music charmingly and skilfully, "Are you not ashamed, son, to play so well?" For it is enough for a king or prince to find leisure sometimes to hear others sing, and he does the muses quite honor enough when he pleases to be but present, while others engage in such exercises and trials of skill. He who busies himself in mean occupations produces, in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good. — Plutarch

I'm not trying to win an award for being the best vegetarian, just want to be healthy. Take a salt bath. Do things that my parents were never able to do. I'm blessed to do anything I want, so I decide to take the best care of my body and my family in the same way. Holistically. Vitally. — Erykah Badu

The knowledge of Natural-History, being Observation of Matters of Fact, is more certain than most others, and in my slender Opinion, less subject to Mistakes than Reasonings, Hypotheses, and Deductions are; ... These are things we are sure of, so far as our Senses are not fallible; and which, in probability, have been ever since the Creation, and will remain to the End of the World, in the same Condition we now find them. — Hans Sloane

I'm not a great deductive thinker, but I will admit to having competence in a very wide range of things - not being afraid to try to write about baseball, choral music and dinosaurs in the same week and see connections among them. — Stephen Jay Gould

And while you were paying attention to these things, you were momentarily delivered from daydreams, from memories, from anticiaptions, from silly notions - from all the symptoms of you."
"Isn't tasting me?"
...
"I'd say it was halfway between me and not-me. Tasting is not-me doing something for the whole organism. And at the same time tasting is me being conscious of what's happening. And that's the point of our chewing-grace - to make the me more conscious of what the not-me is up to. — Aldous Huxley

That was the trouble of being old. Your body no longer obeyed you. It did unruly and unreasonable things. An eye suddenly might not see for a moment. Your knees gave out at the wrong time, so that when you thought you were walking north, you might find yourself going a little northwest. Your brain, too, had that same flighty trick. You might be speaking of something and forget it temporarily, - your mind going off at a little to the northwest, too, so to speak. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Even if they all have the same desire to succeed, create beautiful marketing materials and do similar things, it's the ones with the proper mindsets who will succeed. The ones who kick ass are the ones who can see themselves kicking ass, who truly believe in themselves and what they're selling, who remind themselves how much they want to better people's lives with their coaching, who are excited to get compensated for selling it and have no limiting, subconscious beliefs holding them back. The ones who feel weird or who worry that they're being pushy and annoying or who subconsciously believe that they don't deserve to or can't succeed - they're not gonna do so good. — Jen Sincero

As the time of their probation was closing, the antediluvians gave themselves up to exciting amusements and festivities. Those who possessed influence and power were bent on keeping the minds of the people engrossed with mirth and pleasure, lest any should be impressed by the last solemn warning. Do we not see the same repeated in our day? While God's servants are giving the message that the end of all things is at hand, the world is absorbed in amusements and pleasure seeking. There is a constant round of excitement that causes indifference to God and prevents the people from being impressed by the truths which alone can save them from the coming destruction. — Ellen G. White

Think not so much of what thou hast not as of what thou hast: but of the things which thou hast, select the best, and then reflect how eagerly they would have been sought, if thou hadst them not. At the same time, however, take care that thou dost not, through being so pleased with them, accustom thyself to overvalue them, so as to be disturbed if ever thou shouldst not have them. — Marcus Aurelius

The present: It is interesting that the "NOW" is called "the present." The present is the ultimate gift; it is the gift of truth and life. You are given the present every second, and you will receive it forever. The present is the only thing that exists, the only thing you are ever conscious of. Your life is a series of presents moving through time. The future does not exist until it becomes the present.

Life is one perpetual present.

Creation is happening now: Your body, mind, and the world around it are being created from microsecond to microsecond. Things may look the same, but they are not; everything is constantly changing and being recreated. Our life and our world is being created from moment to moment.

Life and everything in it is always new. — Michael Smith

Being a movie star isn't easy. It requires a lot of commitment and sacrifice. Your career goes through extreme ups and downs. You are judged all the time. Great things are written about you, but at the same time, not-so-good things are also said. At times, things are said about you that are completely untrue, and people mostly try to pull you down. — Deepika Padukone

Men are indeed wretched ... Everything beautiful happens without them. Cholera and catchwords are what they make. The foam with jealousy or die of boredom, which comes down to the same thing, if they're not allowed to interfere. And whenever they do interfere, there's a premium on hypocrisy and raving. One need only be up here o in the wilderness that I rode through the other day, to realize where the true battles lie, to become very particular about the victories one strives for. In short, to cease being content with little. As soon as you're alone, things lay hold of you by themselves and always force you to take the roads that are hardest to climb. And even if you don't get there, what fine views you have, and how reassuring everything is. — Jean Giono

For years I was so busy building walls I did not see I was imprisoning myself behind them, and did not recognize this pattern as being addiction. My addictive thinking and behavior became the bars of my cell. Denying feeling empty inside, I constantly looked for new things to acquire, people to be around, substances to take, and new goals to achieve in order to feel better about myself. Over the last four decades I have focused on healing my addictive mind and helping others do the same. — Lee L Jampolsky

Being busy and being productive are not necessarily the same. Many people keep busy to avoid taking action on things they're afraid to pursue. — Lauren Mackler

People are conditioned to believe that error is inevitable ... However, we do not accept the same standard when it comes to our personal life. If we did, we would resign ourselves to being shortchanged now and then when we cash our paychecks. We would expect hospital nurses to drop a certain percentage of all newborn babies. We would expect to go home to the wrong house periodically. As individuals we do not tolerate these things. Thus we have a double standard, one for ourselves, one for the company. — Phil Crosby

Being alone," I snapped, without meaning to be intentionally rude. I was simply being truthful. "Being alone," she said, nodding. I could see that she was not put off by my bristling reply. "There's a lot to be said for being alone. But you and I know, don't we, Flavia, that being alone and being lonely are not at all the same thing?" I brightened a bit. Here was someone who seemed at least to have thought through some of the same things I had. — Alan Bradley

Some might say I was seeing things, but the true optical illusion was in seeing others and oneself as undivided and whole, as if being in focus was more real than being out of focus. We thought our reflection in the mirror was who we truly were, when how we saw ourselves and how others saw us was often not the same. Likewise, — Viet Thanh Nguyen

She's tall - maybe a mite too tall for some folks' notions - and mid-Victorian mamas would never have approved of her, because she's no more coy, or shy, or artful than the blue sky overhead. She has violet eyes, riotous hair of a shade between brown and gold, a straight, shapely little nose, a mouth that is all laughter, and a way of carrying herself that puts you in mind of all out-doors. I've seen her in evening dress with diamonds on; and much more frequently in riding-breeches and a soft felt hat; but there's always the same effect of natural-born honesty, and laughter, and love of trees and things and people. She's not a woman who wants to ape men, but a woman who can mix with men without being soiled or spoiled. For the rest, she's not married yet, so there's a chance for all of us except me. She turned me down long ago. — Talbot Mundy

Tomber amoureux. To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment "already"? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a "cristallisation," so it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among the naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different. — Czeslaw Milosz

Hemingway was a jerk. I mean he was really a great jerk. He was a good writer, and he did all sorts of things that I would never have the courage to do, but I don't think I'd enjoy being in the same room with him. He's not my kind of person. — Joe Haldeman

Christians should not compromise in hating sin, says Lewis. Rather we should hate the sins in others in the same way we hate them in ourselves: being sorry the person has done such things and hoping that somehow, sometime, somewhere, that person will be cured. — Philip Yancey

I would beg the wise and learned fathers (of the church) to consider with all diligence the difference which exists between matters of mere opinion and matters of demonstration ... [I]t is not in the power of professors of the demonstrative sciences to alter their opinions at will, so as to be now of one way of thinking and now of another ... [D]emonstrated conclusions about things in nature of the heavens, do not admit of being altered with the same ease as opinions to what is permissible or not, under a contract, mortgage, or bill of exchange. — Galileo Galilei

The old adage that people only want what they can't have or what they can't tame - is totally primitive. A being of higher origins will know instinctively that life on earth is a series of chances, moments and concepts. That's really all that you have. So when you find one of these things and it makes you burn, or it makes you feel peace inside, or it makes you look forwards and backwards and here all at the same time - that's when you know to hold onto it. And you hold onto it with every fiber of your being. Because it's in the holding on of these chances and moments and concepts that life is lived. Every other kind of living is only in vitro. I don't care what psychologists say today about how the human mind works. Because one day they will reach this pinnacle and they will see what I see and they will look upon the old ways as primitive. As long and gone. We do not wish to have what we can't have. We wish to burn in whatever flame we have stepped into. — C. JoyBell C.

I was in trouble, my life was a moderate-going-on-severe mess, and not being able to write was only part of it. I wasn't raping kids or running around Times Square preaching conspiracy theories through a bullhorn, but I was in trouble just the same. I had lost my place in things and couldn't find it again. No surprise there; after all, life's not a book. — Stephen King

Being productive and being busy are not necessarily the same thing. Doing things won't create your success; doing the right things will. — Jeff Olson

After 9/11, there were a lot of things being said about how the God of Islam and the God of the Christian faith were one and the same, but that's simply not true ... The God that I worship does not require me to kill other people. The God that I worship tells me I am to love my enemy, to give him food when he's hungry and water when he's thirsty. — Franklin Graham

It's okay if no one believes like you, all experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting, life's magic things in reach, and it doesn't mean you aren't connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. — Tanya Davis

As you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that things truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. It is not the things you have that make you happy. It is love and kindness and helping each other and just plain being good. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

I will remark, that it is a common misconception of Ravenclaws that all the smart children are Sorted there, leaving none for other Houses. This is not so; being Sorted to Ravenclaw indicates that you are driven by your desire to know things, which is not at all the same quality as being intelligent. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I wanted to tell them that I'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. I wanted to tell them so many things and yet I didn't have the words. So I just stupidly repeated myself. Dante's my friend. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

Adversity is a school that you need not apply to be enrolled. It has no respect for age, wealth, education, race, power, fame or beauty. It is a school among schools and every human being passes through the school in one format or the other. It is also possible to attend the post graduate department without your consent. You can never attend the school and be the same again. It will change you and purge you of all the things you think that you know. It will bring you to a leveling far beyond all your imaginations. You may also be required to repeat a class with different course or instructors. — FRESH IN THE SCHOOL OF ADVERSITY By M M Kirschbaum

The biggest obstacle is that when people fall in love, they tend to seek out the qualities of their ex in the people they date afterwards. A guy will seem attractive because he has the same hair as your ex, because he dresses similarly, because he drives the same car, or because he has similar mannerisms or interests. You are liable to believe that it is those things about him that attract you; however, the truth is that those things merely remind you of being attracted. On a psychological level, those two feelings are not so incredibly different, so they are easily confused. — Andrew Aitken

A mixture, before the English, of irritation and bafflement, of having this same language, same past, so many same things, and yet not belonging to them any more. Being worse than rootless ... speciesless. — John Fowles

I think it's our job to write about what we're going through at the moment, and being 41, I'm not going to write about the same things I wrote about at 20. I don't think artists should be farmed out to pasture just because they're in rock n' roll. — Bonnie Raitt

I wanted to say two further things to you today: irony: Do not let yourself be governed by it, especially not in unproductive moments. In productive ones try to make use of it as one more means of seizing life. Used purely, it is itself pure, and one need not be ashamed of it; and when you feel too familiar with it, when you fear the growing intimacy with it, then turn towards great and serious subjects, before which it becomes small and helpless. Seek for the depth of things: there irony never descends - and when you have thus brought it to the edge of greatness, test at the same time whether this mode of perception springs from a necessity of your being. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Scholars postulate that the only thing that does not change is the every varying world. Other renowned thinkers postulate that the natural state of all things is to remain the same. Perhaps both propositions are vital. Perhaps it is normal to resist change because it threatens our present state of being. Perhaps it is natural to attempt to preserve the status quo because we are part of the external world and we wish to persevere, not expire. Perhaps it is inevitable that we all change. The natural forces are impossible to blunt. — Kilroy J. Oldster

How can you regret never having found true love? That's like saying you regret not being born a genius. People don't have control over such things. It either happens or it doesn't. It's a gift - a present that most never get. It's more like a miracle, really, when you think of it. I mean, first you have to find that person, and then you have to get to know them to realize just what they mean to you - that right there is ridiculously difficult. Then ... then that person has to feel the same way about you. It's like searching for a specific snowflake, and even if you manage to find it, that's not good enough. You still have to find its matching pair. What are the odds? — Michael J. Sullivan

I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud. It is just the same with people ... When we call a man "manly" or a woman "womanly" we touch the deepest philosophy. — G.K. Chesterton

When it comes to staying myself - my career isn't my life, it doesn't come home with me. So it's a piece of piss staying grounded and not being changed by it. The same things I've always liked still satisfy me. My team's the same and my group of friends are the same. Of course I'm bowled over by people's response to 21, and when I meet artists I love, it blows my mind. But it baffles me as well. I go home and my best friend laughs at me, rather than going to a celebrity-studded party to rub shoulders with people who know me but who I don't know. I'm Z-list when it comes to that sh**. — Adele

That same moment he ordered the hateful portrait taken out. But that did not calm his inner agitation: all his feelings and all his being were shaken to their depths, and he came to know that terrible torment which, by way of a striking exception, sometimes occurs in nature, when a weak talent strains to show itself on too grand a scale and fails; that torment which gives birth to great things in a youth, but, in passing beyond the border of dream, turns into a fruitless yearning; that dreadful torment which makes a man capable of terrible evildoing. — Nikolai Gogol

People really do not change from one generation to another, as far back as we know history people are about the same as they were, they have had the same needs, the same desires, the same virtues and the same qualities, the same defects, indeed nothing changes from one generation to another except the things seen and the things seen make that generation, that is to say nothing changes in people from one generation to another except the way of seeing and being seen, the streets change, the way of being driven in the streets change, the buildings change, the comforts in the houses change, but the people from one generation to another do not change.

The creator in the arts is like all the rest of the people living, he is sensitive to the changes in the way of living and his is is inevitably influenced by the way each generation is living, the way each generation is being educated and the way they move about, all this creates the composition of that generation. — Gertrude Stein

In the matter of belief, I have always found that defenses have the same irrelevance about them as the criticisms they are meant to answer. I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things. We participate in Being without remainder. No breath, no thought, no wart or whisker, is not as sunk in Being as it could be. And yet no one can say what Being is. — Marilynne Robinson

It was beautiful not despite but because of the friction it has had to endure. It had been thrashed around, but instead of being destroyed, it was improved with every scratch and scrape, sculpted. In fact, the scuffs themselves are what gave it its quiet splendor; they are responsible for turning a simple piece of glass (which could have just as easily been trash) into a gem. It wouldn't be the same without the wear and tear; it wouldn't be something pretty enough to be turned into jewelry if it hadn't been damn near broken. I closed my fist around this tear-shaped gem and thought about my own uneven edges, my own abrasions, and things I have endured that have, instead of breaking me, completed me, prepared me for the next tumble. Its odd beauty was hard-won. It came from reinventing itself. From having risen to the top of the discard pile. Like a phoenix, from victim to victor. (325) — Wendy Blackburn

Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again. — C.S. Lewis

I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that there never had been anything in the past either, but that it had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I guessed that there would be nothing in the future either. Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to notice them. Indeed this showed itself even in the pettiest trifles: I used, for instance, to knock against people in the street. And not so much from being lost in thought: what had I to think about? I had almost given up thinking by that time; nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many there were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am not bound by material things. It's being successful that drives me forward. I love success. I don't wake up in the morning thinking 'Great - I've got one million pounds in the bank'. I wake up happy because I am a successful part of a successful team. It's that success that brings all the media coverage, the first-night parties, the endorsements. I will never lose sight of that. It has come very quickly - sooner than even I expected. But it's great to know that if I continue in the same vein, then I can do exactly what I want with the rest of my life. I will be financially secure. — Kevin Pietersen

It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay. — Raymond Chandler

It would be a very naive sort of dogmatism to assume that there exists an absolute reality of things which is the same for all living beings. Reality is not a unique and homogeneous thing; it is immensely diversified, having as many different schemes and patterns as there are different organisms. Every organism is, so to speak, a monadic being. It has a world of its own because it has an experience of its own. The phenomena that we find in the life of a certain biological species are not transferable to any other species. The experiences - and therefore the realities - of two different organisms are incommensurable with one another. In the world of a fly, says Uexkull, we find only "fly things"; in the world of a sea urchin we find only "sea urchin things. — Ernst Cassirer

So if waiting is an aggravation, it is at least partly because we do not like being reminded of our limits. We like doing
earning, buying, selling, building, planting, driving, baking
making things happen, whereas waiting is essentially a matter of being
stopping, sitting, listening, looking, breathing, wondering, praying. It can feel pretty helpless to wait for someone or something that is not here yet and that will or will not arrive in its own good time, which is not the same thing as our own good time. — Barbara Brown Taylor

What motivates Olympic athletes to train for years for one event - in some cases, for just seconds of actual competition? It's the same thing that kept my friend Pete nosing around old bookstores for years. It's the same thing that makes a person venture out of a comfortable job to start a new business. We see it in the artist who spends day after day in a studio chipping away at a block of stone. Look closely and you'll find it in the shopper who passes up the good deal in search of the best deal. It's one of the things that makes us most human. We consciously pursue what we value. It's not simply a matter of being driven by biology or genetics or environmental conditioning to satisfy instinctive cravings. Rather, we perceive something, prize it at a certain value, then pursue it according to that assigned value because we were created that way. This ability to perceive, prize, and pursue is part of our essential humanness, and it's the essence of ambition. — Dave Harvey

...the water was scarcely inviting; for, through fear lest the output of the source should not suffice, the Fathers of the Grotto only allowed the water of the baths to be changed twice a day. And nearly a hundred patients being dipped in the same water, it can be imagined what a terrible soup the latter at last became. All manner of things were found in it, so that it was like a frightful consomme of all ailments, a field of cultivation for every kind of poisonous germ, a quintessence of the most dreaded contagious diseases; the miraculous feature of it all being that men should emerge alive from their immersion in such filth. — Emile Zola

The things you were talking about. The lights and the flowers. Do they expect those things to make them romantic, not the other way around?"
"Darling, what do you mean?"
"There wasn't a person there who enjoyed it," she said, her voice lifeless, "or who thought or felt anything at all. They moved about, and they said the same dull things they say anywhere. I suppose they thought the lights would make it brilliant."
"Darling, you take everything too seriously. One is not supposed to be intellectual at a ball. One is simply supposed to be gay."
"How? By being stupid? — Ayn Rand

The color of one's creed, neckties, eyes, thoughts, manners, speech, is sure to meet somewhere in time of space with a fatal objection from a mob that hates that particular tone. And the more brilliant, the more unusual the man, the nearer he is to the stake. Stranger always rhymes with danger. The meek prophet, the enchanter in his cave, the indignant artist, the nonconforming little schoolboy, all share in the same sacred danger. And this being so, let us bless them, let us bless the freak; for in the natural evolution of things, the ape would perhaps never have become man had not a freak appeared in the family. — Vladimir Nabokov

Put your energies into creativity. Forget about anger as a problem, ignore it. Channelise your energy towards more creativity. Pour yourself into something that you love. Rather than making anger your problem, let creativity be your object of meditation. Shift from anger to creativity and immediately you will see a great change arising in you. And tomorrow the same things will not feel like excuses for being angry because now energy is moving, is channelised, is being sublimated, is enjoying itself, its dance. Who cares about small things? — Rajneesh

Things weren't the same with us, not right away, and maybe not ever. We were growing up. We were still figuring out how to be in each other's lives without being everything to each other. — Jenny Han

We have seen many other not just writers and intellectuals, but including writers and intellectuals in the Muslim world being attacked and murdered by Islamic fanatics, accused of exactly the same things that I was, these medieval crimes of apostasy And heresy, but then broadening from that into a broader attack on all of us. — Salman Rushdie

I'm just flowing through, when I see things, I talk about 'em. And it's cool. I don't want any title. I just say what I say, and hopefully somebody gets it. I'm not perfect, and I'm just here and trying to make a dollar, and being real at the same time — Nas

Stories don't teach us to be good; it isn't as simple as that. They show us what it feels like to be good, or to be bad. They show us people like ourselves doing right things and wrong things, acting bravely or acting meanly, being cruel or being kind, and they leave it up to our own powers of empathy and imagination to make the connection with our own lives. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. It isn't like putting a coin in a machine and getting a chocolate bar; we're not mechanical, we don't respond every time in the same way ...
The moral teaching comes gently, and quietly, and little by little, and weighs nothing at all. We hardly know it's happening. But in this silent and discreet way, with every book we read and love, with every story that makes its way into our heart, we gradually acquire models of behaviour and friends we admire and patterns of decency and kindness to follow.
Philip Pullman from his Award Lecture, Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Recipient 2005 — Philip Pullman

They talk about a lot of different things, but I think they definitely have the same school of thought as my husband [Games Of Thrones creator David Benioff], which is that the difference between being a writer and not being a writer is finishing. — Amanda Peet

PHi2.1 If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, PHi2.2 Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. PHi2.3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. PHi2.4 Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. — Anonymous

What propels things into being is intention, attention, and strong emotion. If we are not careful, we can manifest things we are afraid of, because the Spirit World reads resistance the same way it reads desire. According to shamanic wisdom, what you resist is what you become. — Jose Luis Stevens

The Ph.D is one of the chosen who know that some things can never be fathomed, no matter how hard you try. What good are explanations? There is no possibility of explaining how such a work [Mozart's Requiem, in the instance] could ever have come into being. (The same holds true for certain poems, which should not be analyzed either.) — Elfriede Jelinek

I looked at other couples and wondered how they could be so calm about it. They held hands as if they weren't even holding hands. When Steve and I held hands, I had to keep looking down to marvel at it. There was my hand, the same hand I've always had - oh, but look! What is it holding? It's holding Steve's hand! Who is Steve? My three-dimensional boyfriend. Each day I wondered what would happen next. What happens when you stop wanting, when you are happy. I supposed I would go on being happy forever. I knew I would not mess things up by growing bored. I had done that once before. — Miranda July

You know, I think everybody I've seen has come from some other therapy, and almost invariably it's very much the same thing: the therapist is too disinterested, a little too aloof, a little too inactive. They're not really interested in the person, he doesn't relate to the person. All these things I've written so much about. That's why I've made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there. — Irvin D. Yalom

If hard things ultimately have a purpose, then they aren't so hard anymore. Therefore, I listed what I had learned: 1. It's easy to forget that people can think you think what you don't think. 2. Don't write when you're angry and under deadline, with time to test it only on friends who know what you mean, not on strangers who don't. 3. A writer's greatest reward is naming something unnamed that many people are feeling. A writer's greatest punishment is being misunderstood. The same words can do both. — Gloria Steinem

People do go back, but they don't survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities. There is much pain here. Some people think you can have your cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what's left. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different. — Jeanette Winterson

My ambitions for you are slowly being realised, and, even though you are unhappy, console yourself with the thought that it was part of my plan for you to be unhappy for a while. The fact that you associate intimately with girls who do not care for the things you do should strengthen your own artistic integrity and fortify you against the world; remember, Natalie, your enemies will always come from the same place your friends do. — Shirley Jackson

After years of falling into the same pattern of disappointments and heartbreak, I finally began to realize something profound. I had always thought that love of dunya meant being attached to material things. And I was not attached to material things. I was attached to people. I was attached to moments. I was attached to emotions. So I thought that the love of dunya just did not apply to me. What I didn't realize was that people, moments, emotions are all a part of dunya. What I didn't realize is that all the pain I had experienced in life was due to one thing, and one thing only: love of dunya. — Yasmin Mogahed

I have to admit I've found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I'm pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me. — Kurt Cobain

I learned a lot about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to black men. I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, "Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?" This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman. This same man, by the way, would often talk about his experience as a black man. (To which I should probably have responded, "Why not your experiences as a man or as a human being? Why a black man?") — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Since it is likely that, being men, they would sin every day, St. Paul consoles his hearers by saying 'renew yourselves' from day to day. This is what we do with houses: we keep constantly repairing them as they wear old. You should do the same thing to yourself. Have you sinned today? Have you made your soul old? Do not despair, do not despond, but renew your soul by repentance, and tears, and Confession, and by doing good things. And never cease doing this. — John Chrysostom

For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. — Anonymous

It's important for me to try to find new ways to express myself, but at the same time, have integrity, and still be me, and not lose myself in the midst of this crazy Rap that I'm in. It's important, it's critical, to just try things out. I think, mainly, it's just me being fearless, and not being afraid to conquer anything that comes in my path, I guess. — Fashawn

I think: there at the point where thought joins with me I am able to subtract myself from being, without diminishing, without changing, by means of a metamorphosis which saves me from myself, beyond any point of reference from which I might be seized. It is the property of my thought, not to assure me of existence (as all things do, as a stone does), but to assure me of being in nothingness itself, and to invite me not to be, in order te make me feel my marvelous absence. I think, said Thomas, and this visible, inexpressible, nonexistent Thomas I became meant that henceforth I was never there where I was, and there was not even anything mysterious about it. My existence became entirely that of an absent person who, in every act I performed, produced the same act and did not perform it. — Maurice Blanchot

About Differences: Those who would believe in a higher power by whatever name must also believe that same higher power made all things. On that basis, people of good character will recognize that some people are different from ourselves, in color, gender, speech, opinion, lifestyle, and in other ways. Different is not an evaluation. As I taught my children while they were growing up, "Different is only different." Celebrate differences for therein lies the basis for much of what we learn in life. — James Osborne

Liberalism is the ideology at the center of conservative arguments against affirmative action and equal opportunity. By proposing that, all things being equal, everyone has the same opportunity to compete in the U.S. marketplace, success is determined by how hard someone works and not by their economic class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or race. Ethnic and racial identities are to be assimilated, lost, and erased through the celebrated "melting pot" of U.S. culture. Liberalism thus devalues the importance of communitarian experiences and social identities as determinants or barriers to individual success. Instead, it proposes that all individuals are fundamentally equal and that, regardless of their social identity, everyone can control his or her fate through hard work, learned skills, and acquired education- the foundational myth of a U.S. meritocracy. — Isabel Molina-Guzman

The story being told in 'Star Wars' is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you're in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they're actually not. — George Lucas

14Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise h partook of the same things, that i through death he might j destroy k the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15and deliver all those who l through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 16For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he m helps the offspring of Abraham. 17Therefore he had n to be made like his brothers in every respect, o so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest p in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18For because he himself has suffered q when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. — Anonymous

All things being equal (fortunately things are seldom equal, not exactly), people prefer to be with others who look like them, speak the same dialect, and hold the same beliefs. An amplification of this evidently inborn predisposition leads with frightening ease to racism and religious bigotry. Then, also with frightening ease, good people do bad things. I know this truth from experience, having grown up in the Deep South during the 1930s — Edward O. Wilson

She looks out at the woods through the screen of limbs. Watching in the same way he is, for the same terrible things he is, with the same expectation, with equally haunted, hollow eyes. She's still gripping the butcher's cleaver tightly and her knuckles show through the skin. He puts a hand gently on hers. I think we're good, he says to her. It's gone. We're good.

She doesn't say anything. She just stares awhile. Clutching that glinting meat hatchet in a tight, mudded fist. The whites of her teeth and eyes in the dark. There is no good, she tells him. Not for us. There's only being ready for the next bad thing coming. — Jonathan R. Miller

You are the most incredible being I have ever met. And its not just because of the things my grandfather did to you. You're strong all on your own. You care about all of them, even if you don't really know what love even means.
Eden is a wonderful place but it wouldn't be anywhere near the same without you. I know I don't fit in there, that people still don't fully trust me. But you're there so its all okay. When I'm with you, I feel something I didn't think it was still possible to feel in this world. I feel alive like there is still hope in this world. Like maybe things will still be okay someday. — Keary Taylor

It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everthing's being decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that. — Haruki Murakami

Being a footballer is not just about wearing the shirt and playing football on the pitch. You have to be clean, you have to do right things, you have to show courage, you have to show many many things you know. I always say that you play the same way on the pitch as you do in life. — Emmanuel Petit

Hugh Grant and I both laugh and cringe at the same things, worship the same books, eat the same food, hate central heating and sleep with the window open. I thought these things were vital, but being two peas in a pod ended up not being enough. — Elizabeth Hurley

Andy had been a good friend, and a good human being. Someone who was loyal, and upbeat, and funny. You think if you're not in touch with someone, everything is probably okay with them. Life just ticks along. They do the same things as you. They grow up. They meet a girl. Maybe they get married. They progress in their work. Perhaps they get into IT, or move abroad, or have a kid. Maybe they get rich, maybe they stay poor. But you never, ever think, that maybe they're dead. — Danny Wallace

When I have passed that same reality on to another human being, the result most often has been the inner healing of their heart through the touch of my affirmation. To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful. When a person is evoked for who she is, not who she is not, the most often result will be the inner healing of her heart through the touch of affirmation. FINALLY, BRETHREN, WHATEVER IS TRUE, WHATEVER IS HONORABLE, WHATEVER IS RIGHT, WHATEVER IS PURE, WHATEVER IS LOVELY, WHATEVER IS OF GOOD REPUTE, IF THERE IS ANY EXCELLENCE AND IF ANYTHING WORTHY OF PRAISE, DWELL ON THESE THINGS. (PHIL. 4:8 NASB) — Brennan Manning

I will not let myself think that things are suddenly better. I will not let myself think that we've somehow escaped the us we always end up being. But at the same time, I will not deny what's happening. I will not deny this happiness. Because if happiness feels real, it almost doesn't matter if it's real or not. — David Levithan

The principle that every people, insofar as it is possible, must be allowed to live as they want is not based on any notions of cultural relativism, in which all ways of doing things are viewed as being of equal value for all peoples, everywhere.
It is, instead, strictly pragmatic: war and revolutions are without exception worse than the alternative, which is simply to leave the development of each society to the people who are actually living there.
For this reason we should not wage wars or foment revolutions and otherwise subvert the established orders in others' lands.
In return for this direct opposition to intervention and violence against cultures and peoples, we demand the same for ourselves. Mass immigration to Europe must cease. — Daniel Friberg

Delirium: Um. What's the name of the word for things not being the same always. You know. I'm sure there is one. Isn't there? There must be a word for it ... the thing that lets you know time is happening. Is there a word?
Dream: Change.
Delirium: ... I was afraid of that. — Neil Gaiman

When we allow material things to be more important than spiritual things, we lost a lot of very important ways in life, many fear dying and are so concerned about what they do if someone stole all their position, did we not come into this world naked? can we take all our riches with us when we pass? is success what really makes a man or women hear? can we actually buy real love? the twisted ways of thinking come from greedy people, a person who work hard should be paid more than one who work less but that's not the case here, it is all backwards this is what a man has brought forth because of the attitude that being certainly religion or family tree entitles them to it what they really forget is what we are from the same family — Wisdom

Spiritual science attempts to speak about non-sensory things in the same way that the natural sciences speak about sense-perceptible things ... No one can ever deny others the right to ignore the supersensible, but there is never any legitimate reason for people to declare themselves authorities, not only on what they themselves are capable of knowing, but also on what they suppose cannot be known by any other human being. — Rudolf Steiner