Quotes & Sayings About Things Not Working Out

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I dedicate my work today to the furtherance of all things good. Whether I am paid or not, whether I am working out in the world or planting my own garden, I dedicate whatever I am doing today to the uplifting of all things. May the activity of my mind and work of my hands be of service to the healing of the world. Today I remember that there is only one work: to be who I am capable of being, to do what I am capable of doing to make the world a better place. May my life be of use to something greater than myself, that I might feel the joy of being used. Dear God, Today I dedicate all I am and all that I have, That love might use me as a conduit of its power. Illumine my mind and increase my understanding, Hone my personality and deepen my skills, That all I do might glorify Your presence in the world. And so it is. Amen. — Marianne Williamson

Now I see things differently. It took me some time, but I know the secret now. Freedman Town serves a good purpose
not for the people who live there, Lord knows; people stuck there by poverty, by prejudice, by laws that keep them from moving or working. Freedman Town's purpose is for the rest of the world. The world that sits, like Martha, with dark glasses on, staring from a distance, scared but safe. Create a pen like that, give people no choice but to live like animals, and then people get to point at them and say 'Will you look at those animals? That's what kind of people those people are.' And that idea drifts up and out of Freedman Town like chimney smoke, black gets to mean poor and poor to mean dangerous and all the words get murked together and become one dark idea, a cloud of smoke, the smokestack fumes drifting like filthy air across the rest of the nation. — Ben H. Winters

For me, the reason I keep working out and want to get bigger and focus on staying fit is because when you do fall it's easier to tighten up and not get hurt. I also wrestle, and that helps me a lot with taking a fall. A lot of what I do at the end of they day are things that will help me to not get hurt. — Ryan Sheckler

I could take the greatest deal-makers of all time and they've always had something that didn't quite work out. You never want to put yourself in the position where something not working out is bigger than what you are and therefore takes you down. It's got to be in smaller chunks. In all cases, I want to learn something from things that didn't quite work out and learn, so that it doesn't happen again or so that in the future, you make great decisions. You don't want to make the same mistake twice and you have to learn that early on in your life. — Donald Trump

There have been prophets and students who handle the Bible like a child's box of bricks; they explain to us the design and structure and purpose; but as time goes on things do not work out in their way at all. They have mistaken the scaffolding for the structure, while all the time God is working out His purpose with a great and undeterred patience. — Oswald Chambers

The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out. — William James

Death in everyday life could also be defined as experiencing all the things that we don't want. Our marriage isn't working; our job isn't coming together. Having a relationship with death in everyday life means that we begin to be able to wait, to relax with insecurity, with panic, with embarrassment, with things not working out. — Pema Chodron

I always set out to just work, as an actor, and try to do as many different things as I possibly could, and not be too selective or too careful. I think just working is fun. — Jason Lee

God often has to untangle some things in you to help you see Him. Even if this process takes months, it's not because he is waiting to see how sincere you are; it's because he is working deep inside you to sort out those things that crowd him out of your heart and set your focus on your own efforts or your own failures. — Wayne Jacobsen

Do not wonder why things are "taking so long." In fact, everything is rolling out exactly as it needs to, using not a minute more than Perfection requires. Rest easy and be at peace. Life is working its magic even as you take your very next breath. — Neale Donald Walsch

If you're trying to figure out why something's not working," Old Lou had explained, "just focus on the things that do work. Move through those things first and eventually you'll find the one part that's stuck. — Danika Stone

Republicans ... are conservatives who think it would be best if we faced the fact that people are no damned good. They think that if we admit that we have selfish, acquisitive natures and then set out to get all we can for ourselves by working hard for it, that things will be better for everyone. They are not insensitive to the poor, but tend to think the poor are impoverished because they won't work. They think there would be fewer of them to feel sorry for if the government did not encourage the proliferation of the least fit among us with welfare programs. — Andy Rooney

The worl is ful of things waiting to happen. Thats the meat and boan of it right there. You myt think you can jus go here and there doing nothing. Happening nothing. You cant tho you bleeding cant. You put your self on any road and some thing wil show its self to you. Wanting to happen. Waiting to happen. You myt say, 'I dont want to know.' But 1ce its showt its self to you you wil know wont you. You cant not know no mor. There it is and working in you. You myt try to put a farness be twean you and it only you cant becaws youre carrying it inside you. The waiting to happen aint out there where it ben no more its inside you. — Russell Hoban

Even if people have disappointed you or circumstances have not turned out as you had hoped or prayed, know that God is with you, cares for you, and loves you. He is working all these things together for your good right at this very moment. — Christine Caine

Sometimes it is the sharp contrasts in life, the bitter and the sweet; things not working out as planned, relationships falling apart, losing your loved ones - these are the things that shake you and make you appreciate life, see the good in it and love anew the people around you. — Amy Passantino

I work out hard, and I do things that I feel make me better throughout the race and after the race. And I feel better mentally because of working out, being prepared and being in great shape. Driving the car, I think with reflexes and things throw at your so quickly, you have to make adjustments - the feeling of your car, the heat. Some tracks can be tough on your neck and arms, and other tracks, not so much. I think there's a lot there that definitely takes some athletic ability, and I think that helps being athletic and being prepared like that. It helps me for sure. — Kasey Kahne

It is, rather, self-constructed as kids play with other kids. Taking turns in a game is like pouring water back and forth between glasses. No matter how often you do it with three-year-olds, they're just not ready to get the concept of fairness,7 any more than they can understand the conservation of volume. But once they've reached the age of five or six, then playing games, having arguments, and working things out together will help them learn about fairness far more effectively than any sermon from adults. — Jonathan Haidt

I've been working with Operation Smile for a number of years, and $240 changes and saves, in many cases, saves a child's life. But one of the things I'm super excited about is my partnership with Boston Market this holiday season and we've partnered up not only to help everybody out during the holidays because we know how crazy it gets. — Kate Walsh

In getting from Windsor to Detroit there is a choice between a free tunnel and a toll bridge, which turned out to be a short ride for a dollar, which I mentioned to the toll-collector who said, 'One of those things,' impelling me to remark to my cousin, 'Almost everything said by people one sees for only an instant is something like poetry. Precise, incisive, and just right, and the reason seems to be that there isn't time to talk prose. This suggests several things, the most important of which is probably that a writer ought not to permit himself to feel that he has all the time in the world in which to write his story or play or novel. He ought to set himself a time-limit, and the shorter the better. And he ought to do a lot of other things while he is working within this time-limit, so that he will always be under pressure, in a hurry, and therefore have neither the inclination nor the time to be fussy, which is the worst thing that happens to a book while it's being written. — William, Saroyan

I watch all the classic films that film people say that you ought to have seen, and I try to watch things in the cinema when they come out, just to keep my eye on the competition. I'm bored when I'm not working. — Sam Riley

More importantly, I didn't know then that one day I would genuinely be free. That freedom came out of a thousand small steps of obedience, most of which I took during the waiting or limbo time. The more I learned to lean into Him on a daily basis and simply live out my faith in the everyday elements, the more I was prepared for the bigger steps when they arrived. Not only that, I was given the gift of living my life fully in the present, rather than being fixated and frustrated over some distant time or hope. In the crossroads called limbo, you do arrive at mile markers. You become more mature. More healed. Less surprised by or resistant to or unprepared for the good things God is giving you in the ordinary. Your challenge is to begin to embrace the waiting times as part of the overall journey. Limbo is a key part of the healing process! As you are faithful daily, He is working in you powerfully, and it all counts. Every single moment! — Suzanne Eller

Video games teach these boys that if you manipulate things a certain way, you will get an easy win. These boys have little interaction with people during the years when such interaction is crucial in developing the skills they need to handle themselves as an adult. They shut themselves off to the real world and get caught up in their fantasy worlds. After a while, they prefer their fantasies to the real world. In the real world, things are not so easy to control. They can't rule with a joystick. In the real world they have to talk to people. They have to work. That brings up another point. Laziness. A guy addicted to video games can waste hour after hour after hour without doing anything productive. Playing games is easy. Studying is hard. Taking care of daily chores is hard. Working on a real job is hard. We parents are to blame for some of this because it started out as a way to entertain our kids. We — Leonard Sax

It was sometimes praised as a noble public endeavor, but nearly all other Atlanteans found more important things to do on any given day than help. Even the Atlantean nobles ignored the prospect of somebody other than themselves obtaining unchallengeable power, which a less experienced cynic might expect to catch their attention. With relatively little support, the tiny handful of would-be makers of this device labored under working conditions that were not so much dramatically arduous, as pointlessly annoying. Eventually time ran out and Atlantis was destroyed with the device still far from complete. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

God sees and understands what we do not see and understand. He asks us to put aside our natural tendencies to want to figure out what should happen in our lives and when it should happen. He also desires us to stop being frustrated because things do not go according to our plan, and instead to relax, enjoy the ride, and trust He is working everything out according to His timing and the wisdom of His plan. — Joyce Meyer

I used to pile on the detail, which was probably a way of hedging my bets while I was working out my own way of doing things. I've cut it back over the years, but some of the descriptions can still be still pretty dense. So the answer is somewhere between fairly detailed and maybe too detailed. Fortunately, people are seeing the final pages and not my raw script. — James Vance

To live a spiritual life does not mean that we must leave our families, give up our jobs, or change our ways of working; it does not mean that we have to withdraw from social or political activities, or lose interest in literature and art; it does not require severe forms of asceticism or long hours of prayer. Changes such as these may in fact grow out of our spiritual life, and for some people radical decisions may be necessary. But the spiritual life can be lived in as many ways as there are people. What is new is that we have moved from the many things to the kingdom of God. What is new is that we are set free from the compulsions of our world and have set our hearts on the only necessary thing. What is new is that we no longer experience the many things, people, and events as endless causes for worry, but begin to experience them as the rich variety of ways in which God makes his presence known to us. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

The first step into getting in the zone is to turn off your judgment switch. Let go, and move away from a nagging inner voice, questions, or anything that prevents you from getting things done. Other negative thoughts might include not being productive out of fear that your work will turn out to be unacceptable. Don't worry about the quality of work you are creating. You have to keep your energy flowing and continue to contribute, that's the most important part, whether the work is good or not. We become stagnant and procrastinate because we want things to be just right; we want to feel inspired and good, before we start working. This is counter intuitive because once we start working, that is when we will begin to feel inspired from the creation of our own work. Get your dream energy rolling now. — Christian Cee

I don't like working out of any kind. Not the body or the heart. Just thinking about working things out makes me tired. — Tarryn Fisher

I want to be efficient and effective in everything I do. I start every day with a protein shake, with my vanilla Almond Breeze, and my kids start their day the same way as well. [Nutrition] is a huge piece of the puzzle. It's not just about working hard and being physical. It's about being smart and mindful of what's going in and out of our bodies. And also taking the time to enjoy things, and to appreciate the process. — Kerri Walsh

As I said before, I took to miniature painting without a completely whole heart, on the advice of my elders and betters. Generally speaking, I do not think that one should ever take another person's advice in the things of life that really matter, but follow the dictates of the still small something in one's innermost self. But 'they' advised, and I bowed to the advice; and in this particular instance it was a good thing I did, because the advice turned out to be so resoundingly wrong that it turned me into another direction altogether. If I had gone on working in oils I might very well have been a dedicated but unsuccessful painter to this day. — Rosemary Sutcliff

There are a lot of things that got me into working with photos. The main thing is that I saw both what was being said and not being said with photos in the newspapers ... I found out how you can fool people with photos, really fool them ... You can lie and tell the truth by putting the wrong title or wrong captions under them, and that's roughly what was being done ... — John Heartfield

I don't work at night. I'm not very good about working at night. I get tired during the day and I usually like to save my nights to try things out recording. — Sune Rose Wagner

I'm in my 30's, and I'm still struggling with defining myself. I'm working every day to take control of things that are out of my control, and not letting them bring me down or frustrate me, to the point of paralysis. — Lauren Iungerich

Mothers, are you so busy with social life, [with projects], with clubs, with working out of the home, or with housework, that you have not time to sit down and talk to your little girls and tell them the things they should know when they are nine, and ten, and eleven, and older? Can you be frank and loving to them so that they in turn can be frank in giving you their confidences? — Spencer W. Kimball

I mean, so if I've talked to whites in City of Refuge, sometimes they'll wonder, "Why do we do things a certain way, and why do we make a big deal out of events?" And what's happening is they're falling back on their understanding of the way that church should work. It's not always working exactly like that, and they feel frustration or confusion. Sometimes people leave. That's certainly common in mixed churches. — Michael Emerson

I like doing very high action things. Running, boxing, a lot of free weights. They're not heavy. I eat what I want, really, because I think that while you're working out you can eat better. — Natasha Bedingfield

Many of us are sundials in the shade. Things aren't working, but we are not broken. We are just in the wrong spot. We need to move out of the shade and into the sun, or we need to start chopping down trees. — David J. Rendall

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for. — Seamus Heaney

Earlier, looking lighter or slimmer never mattered to me. Frankly, I didn't care. I had more important things to do. But when I figured that it's not that hard, and I have the time, passion and patience to take it up, I jumped onto the health-wagon. I started working out. — Kajol

Fortunately he had nothing resembling a plan, so he didn't have to worry about things not working out according to it. He simply let them happen, unable to make up his mind whether he was losing his judgement or finally developing some perspective. — L.J. Davis

The most successful entrepreneur that every lived (God) was and is successful because Jesus and the Holy Spirit showed they cared for poor lost souls. They were willing share knowledge and demonstrate how things should be done. Not one successful entrepreneur has every done it alone or has not had help from another. Teaching and working together is becoming a lost art. The lack of this may seem like job security for the some, but it's not. The one who does this must come to the realization that his security is threaten by the desperate fuel by his own selfishness. Even inventors have to find caring distributors who get their products out before the masses. Perseverance is just a link in the chain of success. 99% of the chain is sharing knowledge and showing that you care. The opposite of this is fleeting success. Success that is like a vapor, here one moment and gone the next. — Delaine Robins

I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down. But once something is really under way, I don't want to do anything else. I don't go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little. It's a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I'm too interested in many other things. — Susan Sontag

I'm often asked, "Isn't nursing depressing?" I have experienced real depression in my life, but not because of my profession. Nursing is the opposite of despair; it offers the opportunity to do something about suffering. But you have to be strong to be a nurse. You need strong muscles and stamina for the long shifts and heavy lifting, intelligence and discipline to acquire knowledge and exercise critical thinking. As for emotional fortitude- well, I'm still working on that. Most of all, you need moral courage because nursing is about the pursuit of justice. It requires you stand up to bullies, to do things that are right but difficult, and to speak your mind even when you are afraid. I wasn't strong like this when I started out. Nursing made me strong. — Tilda Shalof

went from hoping things would work out to seeing that they were working out. I am actually doing this, I thought. Maybe I'm not just flying by the seat of my pants. I didn't want to be passive anymore, personally or professionally. In that moment, I came into being as my real and present professional self. — Padma Lakshmi

I learned that working out gives me a space to get clear. It's not just about the body. It gives me space to process things and get clear in my mind about decisions and things I want to do. — Estelle

Believe it or not working in libraries is very similar to working on an ambulance or a fire truck. You take care of a lot of homeless people, you sometimes have to clean up things that require latex gloves, you always wear comfortable shoes, and you put out a lot of "fires"! — Lori Reed

I'm not a good tourist. I don't like walking around and looking at things. I like being in a city and working and finding out how other people live. — Marian Seldes

I regret not working harder to create true friendships with other couples, not seeking out people with whom to go do things and go places - people with whom to have a few crazy, memorable bonding adventures. — Robin Marantz Henig

You've got to live right, too. It's the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence. If you're a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren't working on your machine, what trap avoidance, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together ... The real cycle you're working in is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Qaulity or fall away from Qaulity together. — Robert M. Pirsig

A particularly significant example of brain against body, or measures against matter, is urban man's total slavery to clocks. A clock is a convenient device for arranging to meet a friend, or for helping people to do things together, although things of this kind happened long before they were invented. Clocks should not be smashed; they should simply be kept in their place. And they are very much out of place when we try to adapt our biological rhythms of eating, sleeping, evacuation, working, and relaxing to their uniform circular rotation. Our slavery to these mechanical drill masters has gone so far and our whole culture is so involved with it that reform is a forlorn hope; without them civilization would collapse entirely. A less brainy culture would learn to synchronize its body rhythms rather than its clocks. — Alan W. Watts

Most of the work that I have done for the American Hollywood things have not been in Hollywood. The studios are going out in Europe or around the place working. — Ciaran Hinds

I go through phases as far as working out goes. I'll do yoga for a few months or then work out at the gym, and then if I'm not doing either, there are things that I usually try and do something active, whether it's trying to jump in the ocean with the surfboard or go hiking. — Sarah Roemer

Well technology has changed a lot of things, making it possible for just about anyone to make music. But not everybody is a songwriter, so that puts me in a completely different ballpark than the other DJs out here that are writing and producing tracks. I don't stop at tracks, I try to complete the whole package with the song. So working at that level has put me in a completely different place. — Frankie Knuckles

Critics do not have the satisfaction of working on things that actually exist, like sick dogs or dental cavities. So they are tempted to pluck a virtue out of necessity and claim that they toil in an altogether superior realm, that of the imagination. This implies, rather oddly, that things which do not exist are inevitably more precious than those that do, which is a fairly devastating comment on the latter. What kind of a world is it in which possibility is unquestionably preferable to actuality? — Terry Eagleton

I, too, had set out to be remembered. I had wanted to create something permanent in my life- some proof that everything in its way mattered, that working hard mattered, that feeling things mattered, that even sadness and loss mattered, because it was all part of something that would live on. But I had also come to recognize that not everything needs to be durable. the lesson we have yet to learn from dogs, that could sustain us, is that having no apprehension of the past or future is not limiting but liberating. Rin Tin Tin did not need to be remembered in order to be happy; for him, it was always enough to have that instant when the sun was soft, when the ball was tossed and caught, when the beloved rubber doll was squeaked. Such a moment was complete in itself, pure and sufficient. — Susan Orlean

When things fall apart and we can't get the pieces back together, when we lose something dear to us, when they whole thing is just not working and we don't know what to do, this is the time when the natural warmth of tenderness, the warmth of empathy and kindness, are just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be embraced. This is our chance to come out of our self-protecting bubble and to realize that we are never alone. This is our chance to finally understand that wherever we go, everyone we meet is essentially just like us. Our own suffering, if we turn toward it, can open us to a loving relationship with the world. — Pema Chodron

I gather," he added, "that you've never had much time to study the classics?"
"That is so."
"Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way."
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
"Eh bien, I have got on very well without them."
"Got on! Got on? It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view all together. The classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success, like a modern correspondence course! It's not a man's working hours that are important
it's his leisure hours. That's the mistake we all make. Take yourself now, you're getting on, you'll be wanting to get out of things, to take things easy
what are you going to do then with your leisure hours? — Agatha Christie

Time has to be converted, then, from chronos, mere chronological time, to kairos, a New Testament Greek word that has to do with opportunity, with moments that seem ripe for their intended purpose. Then, even while life continues to seem harried, while it continues to have hard moments, we say, "Something good is happening amid all this." We get glimpses of how God might be working out his purposes in our days. Time becomes not just something to get through or manipulate or manage, but the arena of God's work with us. Whatever happens - good things or bad, pleasant or problematic - we look and ask, "What might God be doing here?" We see the events of the day as continuing occasions to change the heart. Time points to Another and begins to speak to us of God. We — Henri J.M. Nouwen

It was a Friday morning, and Walmart was populated only by the occasional mom with very young children and the random senior citizen, which made my bathroom makeover less conspicuous. Only one woman came in while I stood in front of the mirror, and she went straight to the toilets. I made sure that when she came out I was no longer standing in front of the mirror but was huddled with my palms stretched out beneath a loud hand dryer, my face completely averted. No one expects to see a celebrity in their local Walmart bathroom. Most of us don't really look at each other anyway. Our eyes glance off without really registering what we're seeing. It's human nature. It's polite society. Ignore each other unless someone is grotesquely fat or immodestly dressed or disfigured in some way - and then we pretend not to see, but we see everything. I was none of those things, and so far human nature was working in my favor. — Amy Harmon

You don't get to see your family much. In the movie business, directors often go out of town for long periods of time, and even if you're in town, you're working 14-15 hour days. People tend to not balance out the important things in their lives with their career. — Jon Favreau

I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground, and you just pick them up. Someone once told me that that was me low-balling my own creativity. That might or might not be the case. But still, on the story I am working on now, I do have some unresolved problem. It doesn't keep me awake at nights. I feel like when it comes down, it will be there ... — Stephen King

I'm not a perfect person who doesn't mess up, eat bad, not work out - I do all those things. It's just for the most part, when I'm working, I don't feel like I have the choice. I have to bring my A-game. — Jessica Biel

The way Smith sees it, this kind of approach denotes a certain category of writer: the Micro Manager. Authors fall into one of two primary camps, she explained in her 2009 book of essays, Changing My Mind.691 Macro Planners work out the structure of their novels and then write within that structure. Micro Managers, on the other hand, don't rely on an overarching configuration (don't even conceive of one), but rather home in on each sentence, one by one, and each sentence, as they come to it, becomes the only thing that exists. If there is a spectrum starting with Macro Planners on one end and Micro Managers on the other, Smith would be somewhere to the right of the page. Smith's writing is entirely incremental and cumulative. The grand plan is that there is no grand plan; working things out ahead of time ruins everything, "feels disastrous."She prefers the writing of a novel as a process of discovery. "The thinking goes on on the page," not beforehand. — Sarah Stodola

I don't think this is working out between us," I told him. "You and I want different things. It's not me, it's you. — T.J. Klune

I don't like talking about my work at all. I find it very difficult. I never know what to say. It's too close to me, and there's so many things happening unconsciously while I'm working that I'm not aware of, and people will point these things out to me, and I'll say, "That's interesting." But I don't know what to make of it. — Paul Auster

I hate even the idea of a synopsis. When stories are really working, when you're providing subtextual exploration and things that are deeply layered, you're obligated to not say things out loud. — Shane Carruth

I feel any time you enter a dream world it's like you're working out things, it's all inside your mind and you're working it out, be it Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or the kids in Narnia, they go through this weird journey that's not real, and they're going through this journey psychologically. It's that journey of discovery, of getting onself together, that fantasy and fairy tales are so good at. And while some people still look upon them as completely unrealistic, for me they're more real than most things that are perceived as real. — Tim Burton

Support a small chef. Not these big chains ... but support the people who are out there trying to do things right and working hard to do that. — Tom Douglas

The ultimate test is always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build our personal problems right into the machine.
The machine responds to your personality. It's just that the personality that it responds to is your real personality, the one that genuinely feels and reasons and acts, rather than any false, blown up personality images your ego may conjure up. These false images are defaulted so rapidly and completely you're bound to be very discouraged very soon if you've derived your gumption from ego rather than Quality.
The real machine you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be out there and the person that appears to be in here are not 2 separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together. — Robert M. Pirsig

Look back, believer: think of your doubting God when he has been so faithful to you
think of your foolish outcry of "Not so, my Father," when he crossed his hands in affliction to give you the larger blessing; think of the many times when you have read his providences in the dark, misinterpreted his dispensations, and groaned out, "All these things are against me," when they are all working together for your good! Think how often you have chosen sin because of its pleasure, when indeed, that pleasure was a root of bitterness to you! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

People I know who succeed don't mind working. Those who are competent seem to like doing things well
not stopping because they haven't accomplished what they wanted to on the first go-round. They're willing to do it twenty times, if necessary. There's an illusion that the good people can easily do something, and it's not necessarily true. They're just determined to do it right. I was impressed by hearing one of the women at Radcliffe talk about writing a poem, how many revisions a single poem sometimes has to go through
fifty or sixty revisions to come out with a poem sixteen lines long. — Sylvia Earle

It takes the entire Bible to help us understand all the reasons that Jesus' death on the cross was not just a failure and a tragedy but was consummate wisdom. It takes a major part of Genesis to help us understand God's purposes in Joseph's tribulations. Sometimes we may wish that God would send us our book - a full explanation! But even though we cannot know all the particular reasons for our crosses, we can look at the cross and know God is working things out. — Timothy J. Keller

I just want to work on things that are really hard, and when I'm not working on things that are really hard, I want to hang out with people I like to be with, and that's it. — Scarlett Johansson

The big guys who ran things didn't want you thinking or feeling. It slowed down production. They wanted you scared and working so you wouldn't bump up against the truth
life could be fun. Yup, they wanted you scared. They wanted you grim. They wanted you madly cranking out Barbie dolls or Post Toasties or Xerox, or they wanted you overworked and underpaid at teaching so you could at least feel smart, and they wanted you to keep having kids so you'd have to keep working at whatever job you were stuck in and not have time to think or feel or, if you did, you certainly wouldn't have time to do anything about it, or even get close to the big fun, the fun that belonged only to them. And then they wanted your kids to hop on the same treadmill. — Bill Ripley

May 20, '95 - Mississippi calls. She says, "All my working life I have done things to help black people. I can drive into the black part of town where no white person would dare to go. I have nothing to fear. They say, 'Hi there, Mizz Mississippi.' I still call them niggers, but only because of the way they act. I'd have an affair with Johnnie Cochran in a minute." Once she said to me, "I don't see why I should have to feel guilty about the Holocaust. It's not my fault." I hadn't been talking or thinking about the Holocaust, and hadn't told anyone to feel guilty. Her remark came out of nowhere. We were in a diner, about to have a sandwich and suddenly the moment was explosive. Simply being a Jew arouses a peculiar expectation mixed with resentment, even in a highly intelligent woman. Amazing to me is that she doesn't do much but watch television, drink beer, and smoke Marlboros, and yet seethes with dark thoughts and tumultuous feeling. — Leonard Michaels

I can get a tune out of most things with strings, but I'm not really sure I'm what could be called a musician. I find it fascinating working with people who can play other instruments and sing. — Withered Hand

It is not enough just to identify a problem; there are plenty of people who were very skilled at pointing out what was wrong with the world, but they were not always so adept at working out how these things could be righted. — Alexander McCall Smith

Don't be afraid to start out small. You see tech companies selling for millions, but you shouldn't be afraid to start small and grow it. I work closely with my employees. I don't believe in things working if you're not passionate about things. — Shawne Merriman

I can't believe
no one else can hear
I am screaming
inside my head.
Things are moving too fast.
I am going to die.
I am going to die.
I am going to die.
My hands are shaking.
I try to squeeze them, try to make it stop,
but now my fists are shaking,
and this shaking is working it's way through me.
It must look like I am having a fit.
I want to let the scream out,
but I think if I start,
I'll never stop.
It's not supposed to be like this.
I am too young to die.
I don't know how to make this end,
and if it doesn't, I'll have to go to the hospital,
be medicated, force-fed soft foods.
I don't want to be that person.
I am not that person.
I am not.
I am not. — Samantha Schutz

I did always want to write. And then, when I left New York, where I was working very steadily in the theater - I had done three Broadway shows in a row and was a bit burnt out - I moved out to L.A. and I was not working very much. I came in cold and I'd work for a week, but then I'd have a month or two off. I thought, "I'm going to go crazy unless I actually do write." Like a lot of things in life, it was a situation that came about by circumstances. — Jim Piddock

I don't resent working long hours. I shouldn't- I'm the one who set up my life this way. I love to work. It's the thing that I get the most satisfaction out of-nd probably what I do best. Not that I don't enjoy days off. I love vacations and loafing around. But I think much of the world has the wrong idea of working. It's one of the good things in life. The feeling of accomplishment is more real and satisfying than finishing a good meal- or looking at one's accumulated wealth. — Jim Henson

I really feel like a walking testimony of like if you set your mind to things, how things can come true for you. I feel like I'm like, like the law of attraction. I feel like I'm living that life wholeheartedly. Everything that I've looked for out of life, it's come to be so far ... I'm working hard, I'm not getting lucky, I'm earning things ... I feel like a living testament to how you can just put your mind to anything and make it happen. — Jon Jones

My books have all been very deeply felt. You don't spend eight years of your life working on a trendy knockoff. In that sense I've been serious. But I don't do lots of things that other serious writers do. I don't write book reviews. I don't sit on panels about the state of the novel. I don't go to writer conferences. I don't teach writing seminars. I don't hang out at Yaddo or MacDowell. I'm not concerned with my reputation as a writer and where I stand relative to other writers. I'm not competitive or professionally ambitious. I don't think about my work and my career in an overarching or systematic way. I don't think about myself, as I think most writers do, as progressing toward some ideal of greatness. There's no grand plan. All I know is that I write the books I want to write. All that other stuff is meaningless to me. — Bret Easton Ellis

The working class do things differently. I can hear it. I can see we are not wrong. We are not just poor people who have not yet evolved into something else - i.e., people with money. We are something else - just as we are. The working classes do it differently. We are the next thing. We power popular culture - just as, before, we powered the Industrial Revolution. The past is theirs, but the future's mine. They're all out of time. — Caitlin Moran

So from now on, screw "perfect." Forget for a while about what kind of person you want to be, and just be the best version of the person you are. Figure out which of your classmates you genuinely like (not who you want to like you), and get to know them by telling your own stories and listening to theirs. Hang out with the people you think are cool, not the people you'd like to be considered cool by. Do things because they interest you, not because they make you look interesting ... and then, take stock in a month and see whether you're not happier, healthier, and working on some actual friendships with other imperfect-but-lovely humans. — Kat Rosenfield

Don't talk to yourself in such a way that if you did so to a friend, it would end your friendship. If you had a friend dealing with the same things, you wouldn't berate that person, say, 'You're not working hard enough,' 'You suck,' or 'You're not as good as [whomever].' You'd offer your friend encouragement, you'd try to point out all the things your friend did right, and how much progress your friend had made.
You should do no less for yourself.

Be very careful how you talk to yourself. Because you are listening. — Pat Cadigan

The trouble is that when you read criticisms about the other films that I've made you get the impression that they're all about themes, or problems, or ideas. But those are actually things that develop out of characters, out of images and out of other things. These more abstract things develop while working on the material, and out of it. It's not a theoretical exercise from the outset. — Michael Haneke

But that peek into his uncensored brain made it clear he too realized there was a good chance things weren't going to work out for us, that the idea of it not working out was already in his mind, and in some corner of his heart he was already preparing for it. And since I was already preparing to prepare for it too, I'm not sure why it made me so sad. But it did. It was like someone cut my lifeline. — Josh Lanyon

I think that you can take things personally or get hurt feelings as a result of something not working out just because your psyche said it should or you deserve it, or whatever it is. — Michael Shanks