Quotes & Sayings About Well Laid Plans

We cannot foresee when a bolt from the blue will put an end to the best-laid plans of mice and men. — Ruskin Bond

That was something people had. Normal people. Episodes. And then they laid cool cloths over their eyes and made plans to spend time near the sea. — Rainbow Rowell

The reality of death has come upon us and a consciousness of the power of God has broken our complacency like a bullet in the side. A sense of the dramatic, of the tragic, of the infinite, has descended upon us, filling us with grief, but even above grief, wonder. Our plans were so beautifully laid out, ready to be carried to action, but with magnificent certainty God laid them aside and said, "You have forgotten - Mine?"
A meditation on her fathers death. — Flannery O'Connor

Decisions by committee are almost always long in coming and dead wrong. A world-changing vision comes from one person, not five or or twenty or a hundred, and more often than not, the best of plans are laid to waste by the many. — Patrick Carman

These what-if equations have kept her life static since adolescence. And if life proves one thing, it's that the best laid plans don't necessarily lead to the best results. — Nick Alexander

I had utterly abandoned myself to Him. Could any choice be as wonderful as His will? Could any place be safer than the center of His will? Did not he assure me by His very presence that His thoughts toward us are good, and not evil? Death to my own plans and desires was almost deliriously delightful. Everything was laid at His nail-scarred feet, life or death, health or illness, appreciation by others or misunderstanding, success or failure as measured by human standards. Only He himself mattered. — V. Raymond Edman

Fail. But I also believe this: One bold prayer can accomplish more than a thousand well-laid plans. So go ahead and plan, but make sure you circle your plans in prayer. If your plans aren't birthed in prayer and bathed in prayer, they won't succeed. — Mark Batterson

There is no plan, no future laid out for any of us beyond what we make for ourselves. — Charles De Lint

I try not to make plans. Because, even the best laid plans etc. etc. — Brent Spiner

There is an old Yiddish phrase I find apropos - but not by choice: "Man plans, God laughs." I am a prime example. My life was pretty much laid out for me. I was a basketball star my entire childhood, destined to be an NBA player for the Boston Celtics. But in my very first preseason game, Big Burt Wesson slammed into me and ruined my knee. I tried gamely to come back, but there is a big difference between gamely and effectively. My career was over before I hit the parquet floor. I — Harlan Coben

One word more, a final caution: Do not forget whom to fear at the last. I have had to be content with killing and torment; but now my plans are laid, and I have begun. I shall not rest until I have eradicated hope from the Earth. Think on that, and be dismayed! — Stephen R. Donaldson

Our destinies are riddled with challenges that have a tendency to ruin well laid plans. Many have attempted to take fate into their own hands and have been unsuccessful in changing it.
Others find that their paths differ from what they have dreamed for themselves. We must be aware that our choices may come back to haunt us later in life, but to trust that is is all part of fate's desing. — Peter Koevari

Resignation to misfortune is the only attitude, but not an easy one to adopt. It seems undeserved where plans were well laid and so nearly crowned with a first success. I cannot see that any plan would be altered if it were to do again, the margin for bad weather was ample according to all experience and this stormy December - our finest month - is a thing that the most cautious organiser might not have been prepared to encounter. It is very evil to lie here in a wet sleeping-bag and think of the pity of it all. — Robert Falcon Scott

Gather up your telegrams
Your faded pictures, best laid plans
Books and postcards, 45's
Every sunset in the sky
Carry with you maps and string, flashlights
Friends who make you sing
And stars to help you find your place
Music, hope and amazing grace
Maybe what we leave
Is nothing but a tangled little mystery
Maybe what we take
Is nothing that has ever had a name — Mary Chapin Carpenter

I was planning on writing a detailed review of several books on web security tonight, but the Obama collapse has superseded my best-laid plans. Here's another open thread for this important topic, as America wrestles with the issue of whether it would be a good idea to elect a President with a 20-year history of associating with people who hate America. — Charles Foster Johnson

Chaos is roving through the system and able to undo, at any point, the best laid plans. — Terence McKenna

The best-laid plans of mice and comedians usually wind up on the cutting-room floor. — Jon Stewart

Even the best-laid plans turn to hell when exposed to reality. — Michael Anthony

You can take care of everything except chance. Chance can kill you. — Charles Williams

Thus do we wish as we float down the stream of life, whilst chance does more to gratify our desire for knowledge than our best-laid plans. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Powers rise and fall. Leaders come and go. History makes a mockery of our best-laid plans, in the end, you aare left with thosecthings you have shared with one another — Kirsten Beyer

Willpower is a myth. The problem with trying to use willpower to achieve and sustain a behavioral change is that it is fueled by emotion. And as we all know, our emotions are, at best, fickle. They come and go. When your emotions start running down
and they will
even your best-laid plans will fall flat. — Phil McGraw

I've laid out my economic plans. I want to grow the economy. That's why I have plans for jobs and raising incomes. I do want to go after bad actors on and off Wall Street, because I think companies that take money from federal, state, and local governments and then pick up and move should have to pay that back. — Hillary Clinton

You know, the best-laid plans of mice and men ... I like playing bad guys, and I don't have a problem doing that. They're interesting characters, and there's as many different kinds of bad guys as there are good guys - they're rich, they're strong, they're powerful, and so that's fine with me. — Tobin Bell

I want to laugh one of those strange, high-pitched, delusional laughs that signals the end of a person's sanity. Because this world, I think, has a terrible, terrible sense of humor. It always seems to be laughing at me. At my expense. Making my life infinitely more complicated all the time. Running all of my best-laid plans by making every choice so difficult. Making everything so confusing. — Tahereh Mafi

Under the leadership of Henry Kissinger, first as Richard Nixon's national security adviser and later as secretary of state, the United States sent an unequivocal signal to the most extreme rightist forces that democracy could be sacrificed in the cause of ideological warfare. Criminal operational tactics, including assassination, were not only acceptable but supported with weapons and money. A CIA internal memo laid it out in unsparing terms: On September 16, 1970 [CIA] Director [Richard] Helms informed a group of senior agency officers that on September 15, President Nixon had decided that an Allende regime was not acceptable to the United States. The President asked the Agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him and authorized up to $10 million for this purpose. . . . A special task force was established to carry out this mandate, and preliminary plans were discussed with Dr. Kissinger on 18 September 1970. — John Dinges

I came to understand that we do not change gradually, peacefully, over time, but that we undergo sudden upheavals that overthrow our best-laid plans, change our character and redesign the shape of our life, all in the matter of moments. — Catherine Delors

Carefully laid plans aren't always the best. Sometimes Plan B is the real dream come true. — S.J.D. Peterson

...[T]he teaching of writing is fraught with difficulties. Teaching well, in my experience and that of my students, can be very time-consuming, demanding, frustrating, and, given institutional constraints, sometimes infuriating. It demands the recognition that, in Burns's words, 'The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay.' At the same time, composition lies at the heart of education. When students make gains as writers, the gains are likely to affect other educational endeavors. And for teachers, the joy of seeing students create some new part of themselves, and do it well, washes the difficulties to insignificance and provides the impetus to try, like the Bruce's unrelenting spider, again, and again, and again. — George Hillocks

Adventure, my dear, is as much a state of mind as anything else. One can travel the world and never find the excitement to be found within arm's reach.
Remain true to yourself, but understand happiness may not always be found in the plans we have laid out for ourselves, but rather in the unforeseen turns life takes us. Do not close your mind, or your heart, to the unexpected twists of life. It is those unexpected paths that could well lead to the greatest adventures of all. — Victoria Alexander

The best laid plans may not get you laid the way you planned. — Susan Block

Carry with you maps and string, flashlights, friends who make you sing, and stars to help you find your place, music, hope, and amazing grace. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

The devil fools with the best laid plans. — Neil Young

The best laid plans take 40 years to complete. — Robert Burns

Riches do not come by crossing your fingers and walking through the day hoping. Riches and wealth comes from well-laid plans. — Jim Rohn

Yeah, but going by that cold tone of voice, she had to wonder whether the best-laid plans of mice and vampires, blah, blah, blah ... — J.R. Ward

The best=laid plans, one's most fastidious contingency strategies have revealed themselves in the cold light of day to be laughably inadequate, no match for the happenstance that seems of late only to promise death, mayhem, poverty, flood. And here you are, having spent all that time protecting your home from the oncoming elements only to find that it has been shored up with crackers. — David Rakoff

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. — Robert Burns

We all have the best laid plans for our children, and they go and ruin it all by growing up any way they want to. What the hell was it all for, then? (Real Life and Liars) — Kristina Riggle

I'm a working parent and I understand that sometimes you want to have a very productive Saturday to feel that you are in control of your life, which of course you are not. Children and Jimmy Carter ruin all your best-laid plans. — Tina Fey

It is best to lay our plans widely in youth, for then land is cheap, and it is but too easy to contract our views afterward. Youths so laid out, with broad avenues and parks, that they may make handsome and liberal old men! Show me a youth whose mind is like some Washington city of magnificent distances, prepared for the most remotely successful and glorious life after all, when those spaces shall be built over and the idea of the founder be realized. I trust that every New England boy will begin by laying out a Keene Street through his head, eight rods wide. — Henry David Thoreau

However, even during the preparations for action, we laid our plans in such a manner that should there be progress through diplomatic negotiation, we would be well prepared to cancel operations at the latest moment that communication technology would have permitted. — Hideki Tojo

Is it dangerous to plan too much? Yes, we all need to plan, to have a plan, but life goes on regardless of our plans and we know only too well what happens to so many of the best laid plans of mice and men! — Leslie W.P. Garland

Our best-laid plans are often our worst-made decisions. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Back when I was five, I thought my mom was being mean to me, so I decided to run away. Carried my slingshot with me because I was a big strong man, you see. Could take care of myself. I believe I also took a flashlight and a package of Oreos."
Despite my embarrassement, I couldn't help smiling. "I think you packed better than I did."
I swaggered out of the house where we were staying and took myself all the way to ... the far corner of the backyard. There I made my stand. Stayed out there all day, until it started to reain. I hadn't thought about taking an umbrella."
The best laid plans." I sighed.
I know. It's tragic. I cam back in, all wet and my stomach aching from eating about twenty Oreo, and my mom
who is a smart lady even is she drives me nuts
well, she acted like nothing happened." Lucas shrugged. — Claudia Gray

Watching the Dallas Cowboys perform, it is not difficult to believe that coach Tom Landry flew fourengines bombers during World War II. He was in B17 Flying Fortresses out of England, they say. His cautious, conservative approach to every situation and the complexity of the plays he sends in do seem to reflect the philosophy of a pilot trained to doggedly press on according to plans laid down before takeoff. I sometimes wonder how the Cowboys would have fared all this years had Tom flown fighters in combat situations which dictated continuously changing tactics. — Len Morgan

Love ... it complicates our games, old friend, it insinuates itself, disrupting the most carefully laid plans and unmanning the most disciplined heart. — Juliet Marillier

We have to trust the Lord God for so many things, and it is but one thing more to trust him in the issues of life and death, and to accept the fact that his plans and promises and purposes transcend the bounds of this world and of this life. With such faith the years are kind, and peace and reconciliation do come to those who have laid to rest their loved ones - who, even in death, are not far removed from us, and of whom our Father in heaven will be mindful until we meet again even as we are mindful of our own children. — Richard L. Evans

There are a lot of memories we imagine. We play them over and over in our minds, trying to orchestrate our movements and words to perfection. Or maybe it's just that I've lived inside of my head more than any other person in the history of the world. Maybe none of us can really predict how we will act at any give moment. Maybe we're all at the mercy of circumstance in spite of our well-laid plans. — Mary E. Pearson

I had great plans to surgically excise the quaking, complaining teenager within someday. If I could just get rid of her and her thousands upon thousands of issues - Do I look fat? Am I ugly? Will anyone ever love me? Will I always be alone? Is she fatter than me? How ugly am I? Are they making fun of me? - I was convinced I would immediately become the sort of casual and laid back adult person who was forever smiling and was genuinely unconcerned with the size and/or shape of her body.
I wasn't holding my breath. — Megan Crane