This Year Was Great Quotes & Sayings

This was a time of life, she understood, in which you might not know what you were, but that was all right. You judged people not on their success - almost no one they knew was successful at age twenty-two, and no one had a nice apartment, owned anything of value, dressed in expensive clothes, or had any interest in making money - but on their appeal. The time period between the ages of, roughly, twenty to thirty was often amazingly fertile. Great work might get done during this ten-year slice of time. Just out of college, they were geraing up, ambitious not in a calculating way, but simply eager, not yet tired. — Meg Wolitzer

I'm living every ten-year-old boy's fantasy. The other day, Chris and I had this big scene where we had to pull out our guns, and I was thinking, 'Here we are in New York City - a place where every actor wants to be - and we are literally playing cops and robbers. How great is that?' — Mariska Hargitay

Wholly unprepared, we embark upon the second half of life. Or are there perhaps colleges for forty-year-olds which prepare them for their coming life and its demands as the ordinary colleges introduce our young people to a knowledge of the world? No, thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. — C. G. Jung

He wrote and kept reading aloud what was written, while Vasilisa considered what she ought to write: how great had been their want the year before, how their corn had not lasted even till Christmas, how they had to sell their cow. She ought to ask for money, ought to write that the old father was often ailing and would soon no doubt give up his soul to God ... but how to express this in words? What must be said first and what afterwards? — Anton Chekhov

I would like to like to make one thing clear at the very outset and that is, when you speak of a train robbery, this involved no loss of train, merely what I like to call the contents of the train, which were pilfered. We haven't lost a train since 1946, I believe it was - the year of the great snows when we mislaid a small one. — Peter Cook

The Romans had, like other Pagan nations, a nature festival, called by them Saturnalia, and the Northern peoples had Yule; both celebrated the turn of the year from the death of winter to the life of spring - the winter solstice. As this was an auspicious change the festival was a very joyous one ... The giving of presents and the burning of candles characterized it. Among the Northern people the lighting of a huge log in the houses of the great and with appropriate ceremonies was a feature. — Samuel L. Jackson

Time and space flowed around me in never-ending circles.
I delighted in each moment of day or year.
I dreamt through centuries yet focused on the intimate second.
I felt my strength grow until it was too great to be constrained by bark and leaf and then, as I expanded, stretching out toward the universe, I felt the shock of connection with someone who stopped to rest in my shade. This was only the first of many such communions with the human soul; so fragile and yet so brave. Now and then, as centuries passed, a special soul drew near, one who could hear my song and who, for a short time sang with me. — Tonia Parronchi

I thought about how my great-grandparents had starved to death. I thought about their wasted bodies being fed to incinerators because people they didn't know hated them. I thought about how the children who lived in this house had been burned up and blown apart because a pilot who didn't care pushed a button. I thought about how my grandfather's family had been taken from him and how because of that my dad grew up feeling like he didn't have a dad. And how I had acute stress and nightmares and was sitting alone in a falling down house and crying hot stupid tears all over my shirt. All because of a seventy year old hurt that had somehow been passed down to me like some poisonous heirloom. — Ransom Riggs

I love being white. Seriously, I really do. If you're not white, your missing out. 'Cuz this shit is thoroughly good. Let me clear this up by the way: I'm not saying white people are better. I'm saying that BEING white is clearly better. Who could even argue? If it was an option I would re-up every year! 'Oh yeah, I'll take white again. Absolutely.' Here's how great it is to be white: if I would have a time machine I could go to any time and it would be awesome when I get there! That is exclusively a white privilege! Black people can't fuck with time machines! . — Louis C.K.

From '86 until the summer of last year, wherever I went, people would say, You would have made a great James Bond! Weren't you going to be James Bond? You should have been, you could have been, you may have been. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like unfinished business in my life. I couldn't say no to it this time around. — Pierce Brosnan

To honour its first creation, no sound was permitted within the home of Muse for a full year, no sound save that of its Art: the slow, crisp, click of polished brass gears, the sensual hiss of pneumatic release, the insidious sibilance and decisive thud of a withdrawing and thrusting piston, and the soft groan of the boy held within the cube as each rod ran him through, over and over and over.
Powered by this action, the music box played.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down...
And another piston rammed home.
A mechanism of intricate complexity exchanging great pain for a little beauty. This, here, then, was Life.
Muse was fulfilled. — Cameron Rogers

Shopping was great." A week later, it was finally Christmas Eve. We were hosting Christmas this year, and I'd spent the week trying to — Lacey Silks

Where are you? Have you arrived yet?" she asked eagerly.
"I have. I'm here and it's great. I love it."
"I knew you would!" cried Hannah. "So are you coming down? Help me pull a pint or two?"
"Yeah, sure. Give me half an hour or so, and I'll be there."
"Brilliant. See you soon."
"Bye," replied Layla, hanging up.
No time for eating then, she'd better unpack the car, sort out the bedraggled mess that she was, and get down to the pub. Start learning the ropes.
Hauling one of the bags upstairs, she went into her bedroom and plonked it on the bed. Before doing anything else, however, she couldn't resist peering out of the window again, having to imagine Gull Rock this time as the deepening night had hidden it completely. A year, she thought. That's all I've got, a year. Enough time to get over anyone, surely?
Taking in a deep breath then letting it slowly out, she bloody hoped so. — Shani Struthers

The black land slid by and he was going into the country among the hills. For the first time in a dozen years the stars were coming out above him, in great processions of wheeling fire. He saw a great juggernaut of stars form in the sky and threaten to roll over and crush him ... the river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for supper. The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last, the leisure, to consider this month, this year, and a lifetime of years. He listened to his heart slow. His thoughts stopped rushing with his blood. — Ray Bradbury

Immediately after 11 September, the U.S. closed down the Somali charitable network Al-Barakaat on grounds that it was financing terror. This achievement was hailed one of the great successes of the 'war on terror.' In contrast, Washington's withdrawal of its charges as without merit a year later aroused little notice. — Noam Chomsky

1541 In this year 1 on March 1st came at last the Passing of King Elessar. It is said that the beds of Meriadoc and Peregrin were set beside the bed of the great king. Then Legolas built a grey ship in Ithilien, and sailed down Anduin and so over Sea; and with him, it is said, went Gimli the Dwarf. And when that ship passed an end was come in Middle-earth of the Fellowship of the Ring. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Best thing that's happened this year? Maybe Hostel. It was a great experience. I loved it. — Jay Hernandez

What I have learned from the year past is something about miracles
miracles of healing and answered prayer and unexpected happy endings. Each came quietly and simply, on tiptoe, so that I hardly knew it had occurred.
All this makes me realize that miracles are everyday things. Not only the sudden, great good fortune, wafting in on a new wind from the sky. They are almost routine, yet miracles just the same.
Every time something hard becomes easier; every time you adjust to a situation which, last week, you didn't know existed; every time a kindness falls as softly as the dew; or someone you love who was ill grows better; every time a blessing comes, not with trumpet and fanfare, but silently as night, you have witnessed a miracle. — Faith Baldwin

Back in July 2003, he'd written them a long essay on the causes and consequences of what he took to be a likely housing crash: "Alan Greenspan assures us that home prices are not prone to bubbles - or major deflations - on any national scale," he'd said. "This is ridiculous, of course ... . In 1933, during the fourth year of the Great Depression, the United States found itself in the midst of a housing crisis that put housing starts at 10% of the level of 1925. Roughly half of all mortgage debt was in default. During the 1930s, housing prices collapsed nationwide by roughly 80%. — Michael Lewis

I had a great deal of independence from the president and the White House during the entirety of my five years. And I'm not sure exactly what that is, but our friend, Walter Dellinger, has a theory about it, and I think he's probably right. And the theory starts with the fact that I worked in the White House for a year and a half before coming over to the position of SG. And because of that, when I was nominated, there was some chatter out there that, "Oh. They're putting a political hack in. This has never happened before." — Donald Verrilli Jr.

That's the great thing about New Year's, you get to be a year older. For me, that wasn't such a joke, because my birthday was always around this time. When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that everybody was celebrating my birthday. That's what the trees are all about. — Alan King

The process which had begun in her - and in he a little earlier only than it must come to all of us - was the great renunciation of old age as it prepared for death, wraps itself up in its chrysalis, which may be observed at the end of lives that are at all prolonged, even in old lovers who have lived for one another, in old friends bound by the closest ties of mutual sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make the necessary journey or even to cross the street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know that they will communicate no more in this world. — Marcel Proust

Just looking at all the faces here reminds me of some of the great work that was done this year ... by cosmetic surgeons. — Ricky Gervais

The first year I was in office, only about 800 people came out of the Soviet Union, Jews. By the third year I was in office ... second year, 1979, 51,000 came out of the Soviet Union. And every one of the human rights heroes - I'll use the word - who have come out of the Soviet Union, have said it was a turning point in their lives, and not only in the Soviet Union but also in places like Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Poland [they] saw this human rights policy of mine as being a great boost to the present democracy and freedom that they enjoy. — Jimmy Carter

Some people appear to thrive after trauma. Loss emboldens them, they form great ambitions and stride forward as if nothing, now, could hurt them. They are exhibits in those old stories about disaster being character-building, strength in adversity. My experience, to my shame, was nothing like this. I couldn't find it in me to do much more than reel from one day and year to the next, with little optimism about what lay ahead... I had no idea how to grieve. — Catriona Menzies-Pike

I couldn't be messing around and acting like an 11-year-old if we expected to compete well. I wanted to compete well, because it was great to see the looks in the eyes of men-like, "Wow, I am having a hard time beating this kid." — Karch Kiraly

It was a great time here in the States this year, and definitely I feel like I'm playing well again. I gained a lot of confidence in the last couple of weeks, and I just have to, you know, keep going and keep the momentum now. — Daniela Hantuchova

It was a very unusual year [2015]. You usually don't have five campaigns operating full time in a state this late into the process, three states in. But I feel great that now that the choices have become less and less, more and more that new voter or alternative to Donald Trump vote, is going to coalesce around us. — Marco Rubio

I was asked this morning if it was frustrating to be 13-1 last year and not have more recognition and I said, "Hey man, I'd take that every year. I'd take that kind of frustration and not worry about it one bit. It wasn't frustration, it was one of those great runs and I enjoyed it." — LaVell Edwards

I love you. Yes, you've heard that before, heard it a million times, but I don't know what else to say." He lifted a hand to my face and touched my cheek. "I need you. This last year, when you were gone, it was hell. I made up my mind that when you came back, I'd do whatever it took to get you back. No more tricks. No more tantrums. I know I didn't do a great job. Hell, you probably never noticed the difference. But I was trying. I'll keep trying. Come back home with me. Please. — Kelley Armstrong

The Christmas after Mom & Dad split up, they both went crazy buying us presents. Matt, Jonny, and I were showered with gifts at home and at Dads apartment. I thought that was great. I was all in favor of my love being paid for with presents.
This year all I got was a diary and a secondhand watch.
Okay, I know this is corny, but this really is what Christmas is all about. — Susan Beth Pfeffer

There is a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in. But of course this was at rare intervals. Ferryboats used to lose valuable trips because their passengers grew old and died, waiting for us to get by. — Mark Twain

That was 1986. That year I felt myself to be drowning in the news reports of murder. I was aware that these murders very often did not land upon the intended targets but fell upon great-aunts, PTA mothers, overtime uncles, and joyful children - fell upon them random and relentless, like great sheets of rain. I knew this in theory but could not understand it as fact until the boy with the small eyes stood across from me holding my entire body in his small hands. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

At the time, I prayed to God only intermittently, and then mainly to ask for things, such as: "Please let me get an A on my next test." "Please let me do well in Little League this year." "Please let my skin clear up for the school picture." I used to envision God as the Great Problem Solver, the one who would fix everything if I just prayed hard enough, used the correct prayers, and prayed in precisely the right way. But when God couldn't fix things (which seemed more frequent than I would have liked), I would turn to St. Jude. I figured that if it was beyond the capacity of God to do something, then surely it must be a lost cause, and it was time to call on St. Jude. — James Martin

Supposing an emperor was persuaded to wear a new suit of clothes whose material was so fine that, to the common eye, the clothes weren't there. And suppose a little boy pointed out this fact in a loud, clear voice ...
Then you have The Story of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes.
But if you knew a bit more, it would be The Story of the Boy Who Got a Well-Deserved Thrashing from His Dad for Being Rude to Royalty, and Was Locked Up.
Or The Story of the Whole Crowd Who Were Rounded Up by the Guards and Told 'This Didn't Happen, OK? Does Anyone Want to Argue?'
Or it could be a story of how a whole kingdom suddenly saw the benefit of the 'new clothes', and developed an enthusiasm for healthy sports in a lively and refreshing atmosphere which got many new adherents every year, and led to a recession caused by the collapse of the conventional clothing industry.
It could even be a story about The Great Pneumonia Epidemic of '09.
It all depends on how much you know. — Terry Pratchett

It's always great to play at home. I won here last year and it's great to start with a win like this today. The first match was difficult and I thought it was step in the right direction. — Gustavo Kuerten

In theory, sure, Gregor could still go home. Pack up his three-year-old sister, Boots, get his mom out of the hospital, where she was recovering from the plague, and have his bat, Ares, fly them back up to the laudry room of their appartment building in New York City. Ares, his bond, who saved his life numerous times and who had had nothing but suffering since he had met Gregor. He tried to imagine the parting. "Well, Ares, it's been great. I'm heading home now. I know by leaving I'm completely dooming to annihilation everbody who's helped me down here, but I'm really not up for this whole war thing anymore. So, fly you high, you know?" Like that would ever happen. — Suzanne Collins

This was the Mecca of the American Dream, the world that everyone wanted. A world of sleek young women (allied with Slenderella to be so) in shorts and halters, driving 400-horsepower station wagons to air-conditioned, music-serenaded supermarkets of baby-sitter corporations and culture condensed into Great Books discussion groups. A life of barbecues by the swimming pool and drive in movies open all year. It did't appeal to me. Fuck health insurance plans and life insurance. They wanted to live without leaving the womb. It made me more alive to play a game without rules against society, and I was prepared to play it to the end. A tremor almost sexual passed through me as I anticipated the comming robbery. — Edward Bunker

Alan Greenspan assures us that home prices are not prone to bubbles - or major deflations - on any national scale," he'd said. "This is ridiculous, of course ... . In 1933, during the fourth year of the Great Depression, the United States found itself in the midst of a housing crisis that put housing starts at 10% of the level of 1925. Roughly half of all mortgage debt was in default. — Michael Lewis

The year 1915 was one of meager results, the advantages remaining on the side of the Central Powers, with this understanding, however: The Allies were growing stronger because Great Britain was making rapid progress in marshaling her resources for war. — Kelly Miller

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

It had to do with the knowledge that the world was as it was because of what men believed it was ... year by year, these past three or four generations, the minds of men had been hardened to believing that there was one God, one world, one way of describing reality, and that all things which intruded on the realm of that great one-ness must be evil and of the fiends, and that the sound of the bells and the shadow of their holy places would keep the evil afar. And as more and more people believed this, it was so, and Avalon no more than a dream adrift in an almost inaccessible other world — Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Economy was studying the purpose of The War, which is to purchase and not have. The customers of The War (all of us, that is) purchase life at a great cost and yet lose it. And The War was just as busily studying the purpose of The Economy, which is to cause people to purchase what they do not need or do not want, and to receive patiently what they did not expect. Having paid for life, we receive death. By now, in this nineteen hundred and eighty-sixth Year of Our Lord, we all have purchased how many shares in death? How many bombs, shells, mines, guns, grenades, poisons, anonymous murders, nameless sufferings, official secrets? But not the controlling share. Death cannot be marketed in controlling shares. — Wendell Berry

One of the great compliments paid the Savior was that he taught as one having authority. The missionary who knows scripture and can quote it speaks with the voice of authority ... May I suggest that in our family night gatherings we make it a project to memorize one scripture a week pertinent to this work. At the conclusion of a year our children will have on their lips a fund of scripture which will remain with them throughout their lives. — Gordon B. Hinckley

I am very happy to announce my renewal with HRC. I had always dreamed about being part of the Repsol Honda Team, and thanks to Honda, the dream came true a year and a half ago. Everything happened very quickly last season, and I would have never imagined that I could achieve what we did. Becoming World Champion during my first s eason was another dream turned into reality. It is a great honor to be a part of the Honda family, and I'm glad to remain with this special group of people for another two seasons. — Marc Marquez

Not until my fourteenth or fifteenth year did I begin to come across the word 'Jew,' with any frequency, partly in connection with political discussions ... For the Jew was still characterized for me by nothing but his religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection of religious attacks in this case as in others. Consequently, the tone, particularly that of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation. — Adolf Hitler

Knowing the superiors' intentions, however, is a prerequisite for the successful employment of the famous Auftragstaktik, a cornerstone of the German military culture that will be more closely discussed later. Moltke the Elder is one of the earliest proponents of this revolutionary concept. As early as 1858 he remarked at the annual Great General Staff war games, which were traditionally held in a different part of Germany every year, that "as a rule an order should contain only what the subordinate for the achievement of his goals cannot determine on his own."52 Everything else was to be left to the commander on the spot. — Jorg Muth

1971 was the year of spaghetti.
In 1971 I cooked spaghetti to live, and lived to cook spaghetti. Steam rising from the pot was my pride and joy, tomato sauce bubbling up in the saucepan my one great hope in life ...
This is the story from the Year of Spaghetti, AD 1971. — Haruki Murakami

There was a storyline this year where Taylor lied to Brooke. It was supposed to be set up in a way that I was so outraged by her that I let it stay. I thought that was human, which was great. — Hunter Tylo

I can't believe this heat," Abbey said, taking her tunic and pulling it over her head. Underneath was a form-fitting top that showed a figure unaccustomed to idleness or excess. Kip stared at her the way he had at the shiney curves of the steel horse back in the garage. "Can you imagine what it must have been like hundreds of years ago, when weather changed just a few times a year?" she said, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. "Yeah, it must have looked great," Kip said. "What do you mean looked great?" Abbey said, turning her eye on Kip. "Must have been great, like you said," he corrected. — Shawn Keenan

We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those year in the Home of the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked at us. — Ayn Rand

More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God: That's why this all happened."

In the process [the process of his 50 year study of the Russian Revolution] I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have contributed eight volumes toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God, that's why this has happened. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

They had always been accustomed to eat a great deal of smoked sausage, and how could they know that what they bought in America was not the same - that its color was made by chemicals, and its smoky flavor by more chemicals, and that it was full of "potato flour" besides? Potato flour is the waste of potato after the starch and alcohol have been extracted; it has no more food value than so much wood, and as its use as a food adulterant is a penal offense in Europe, thousands of tons of it are shipped to America every year. It was amazing what quantities of food such as this were needed every day, by eleven hungry persons. A — Upton Sinclair

Are you busy?" the caller would ask. "Yes I'm working." Sitting in my chair, cats nearby, I was reading a great book. That was my job this year, and it was a good one. The salary was nonexistent, but the satisfaction was daily and deep. — Nina Sankovitch

I'm actually taking advantage of my time off. You know, I had a film that was pushed, so I'm home spending time with my family, going to the gym and actually enjoying taking care of myself ... This year has been great for me because I've learned how to relax. The last three years have been amazing but kind of crazy. So I don't know, I feel grounded. I feel really good. — Eva Mendes

Don't worry about being nervous. A lot of vampires have trouble with this from time to time. It happens to everyone."
"If I was a forty-year-old man suffering from erectile dysfunction, that would be a great comfort to me, thanks. — Molly Harper

At last, after completing year 12, I failed the great final examination, repeated the following year and failed again even more dismally than before. This was not an easy thing to do. My mates did the simple thing in the first place and mainly passed with honours and went on to have remarkably successful lives. — Michael Leunig

I think racing in Mexico will prove to be a great move for our sport in the future. The reaction we received from the fans last year was outstanding. The fans were unbelievable, and I expect the same reaction this year. — Kevin Harvick