Wooden Quotes & Sayings

At the entrance of this street, a Janissary was pinned to a wooden door by an eight-foot-long spear, which Jack looked on as proving that Yevgeny had passed by there recently. — Neal Stephenson

A leader must listen to those under their supervision. — John Wooden

Repetition. "Don't look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That's the only way it happens - and when it happens, it lasts," he wrote in The Wisdom of Wooden. — Daniel Coyle

What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player. — John Wooden

She sat on a worn wooden bench, and read her book, and nibbled on her sandwich. The air was warm syrup, was literally thick with pollen and dandelion clocks and photons moving at the speed of light. An hour passed, then two. I never arrived at the park, wearing the only suit I never had, the one with a hole in the side pocket that no one ever saw. — Charles Yu

Christians could agree or argue about God as much as we wanted, but it was all essentially chatter. What bound that driver and me together was the obvious thing, so plain and dumb between us we could almost ignore it: the rough wooden pallet of onions that organized our days. Feed the hungry, heal the sick, visit prisoners. We fed people. — Sara Miles

You haven't taught until they've learned. — John Wooden

You may be better than the rest, but you are not a success until you have made the effort to become the best you can be. — John Wooden

To touch this abomination with anything less perfectly attuned to its nature than the carefully dispersed wings of an engine field would be like an ancient, fragile rocket ship falling into a sun, like a wooden sea-ship encountering an atomic blast. — Iain M. Banks

As long as you try your best, you are never a failure. That is, unless you blame others. — John Wooden

I do not judge success based on championships; rather, I judge it on how close we came to realizing our potential — John Wooden

If we magnified blessings as much as we magnify disappointments, we would all be much happier. — John Wooden

He'd given her all the love he could give tonight without taking her maidenhead, undressing her, carrying her to his bed, kissing away her tears, caressing her, bringing her to her peak with his hands again and again, until she lay, weak and utterly spent, in his arms. Then he'd held her through the watches of the night, wishing dawn would never come.
"Tha moran ghradh agam ort, dh'Amaliedh," he whispered. My love lies upon you, Amalie.
He lifted the rosary from around his neck and placed the wooden beads in her palm. Then he took the tartan sash from his French uniform and draped it across the pillow beside her, branding her with Clan MacKinnon's colors. Would she know what that meant? — Pamela Clare

Go to any Shinto temple in Japan and you'll see it: a simple stand from which hang hundreds of wooden postcard-size plaques with a colorful image on one side and, on the other, densely scribbled Japanese characters in black felt-tip pen, pleas to the gods for help or succor. — Hanya Yanagihara

Just try to be the best you can be; never cease trying to be the best you can be. That's in your power. — John Wooden

A Successful Journey Is the Destination — John Wooden

The patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hayfield; but to the left an overgrown box-garden full of dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled a ghostly summer-house of trellis-work that had once been white, surmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow and arrow but continued to take ineffectual aim. — Edith Wharton

Why do we dread adversity when we know that facing it is the only way to become stronger, smarter, better? — John Wooden

Ernst Dwinger in his Siberian Diary
mentions a German lieutenant - for years a prisoner in a camp where cold and hunger were almost
unbearable - who constructed himself a silent piano with wooden keys. In the most abject misery,
perpetually surrounded by a ragged mob, he composed a strange music which was audible to him alone.
And for us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished
beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection
which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity. — Albert Camus

I don't know how to be myself. It's like I'm permanently outside myself. Like, like you could push your hands straight through me if you wanted to. And I can see the type of man I want to be versus the type of man I actually am and I know that I'm doing it but I'm incapable of what needs to be done. I'm like Pinocchio, a wooden boy. Not a real boy. And it kills me. — Richard Ayoade

Failure is never fatal. But failure to change can and might be. — John Wooden

Never try to be better than anyone else, but never cease to be the best you can be. That's achievement. — John Wooden

Approval is a greater motivator than disapproval, but we have to disapprove on occasion when we correct. It's necessary. I make corrections only after I have proved to the individual that I highly value him. If they know we care for them, our correction won't be seen as judgmental. I also try to never make it personal. — John Wooden

If there's anything you could point out where I was a little different, it was the fact that I never mentioned winning. — John Wooden

The arm was the arm, and it was the arm - not her husband, or even herself - that she thought about seven years later, on June 28, 1941, as the first German war blasts shook her wooden house to its foundations, and her eyes rolled back in her head to view, before dying, her insides. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Only Esmeralda was not weeping. Instead she wore that wooden look that whites mistake for churlishenss or indifference. Woodrew knew it was neither. It was familiarity. This how real life is constituted, it said. This is grief and hatred and people hacked to death. This is the everyday we have known since we were born and you Wazungu have not. — John Le Carre

You are not my dream girl.

You are this earth. You are not a fantasy: you are my love. And love is friendship lit by a wooden match with a white tip on its red tip. I am your match, and you are mine. — Waylon H. Lewis

I don't think I was a fine game coach. I'm trying to be honest. I think I was a good practice coach. — John Wooden

The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team. — John Wooden

The purpose is to help, to prevent, to correct, to improve, rather than to punish. Criticism is not meant to punish, but rather to correct something that is preventing better results. The only goal is improvement. — John Wooden

Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines farther on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath. — Lewis Thomas

The most powerful leadership tool you have is your personal example. — John Wooden

When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece.
Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can't do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
This rule is even more important in life than basketball. You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better. Only then will you will be able to approach being the best you can be. It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day. — John Wooden

Twisted and perverse are the ways of the human mind," Jane intoned. "Pinocchio was such a dolt to try to become a real boy. He was much better off with a wooden head. — Orson Scott Card

In the summer of that year two women were stripped and beaten with rods, their ears nailed to a wooden post, for having said that 'queen Katherine is the true queen of England — Peter Ackroyd

School. I never tried to talk a student into coming to UCLA. I tried to show him what was there and what to expect, and I never told him he was going to play; I told him he would have the opportunity to play, and if he was good enough, then he'd be able to. Rosy forecasts during the "courtship" of a player can only lead to disappointment and distrust if anything fails to meet that student's expectations. — John Wooden

I don't believe in looking back. If you make a decision that you think is the proper one at a time, then that's the correct decision. — John Wooden

later i sat in the mosque balcony as the sun rose, watching while it unpicked the dark and misty folds of the forest and coloured the Bashgul river. We were all overcome by the fabulous richness of the landscape, the opulence of the wooden architecture, the yellow green coombes of ripening corn, the glistening trees. — Peter Levi

Promise yourself that you will talk health, happiness, and prosperity as often as possible. — John Wooden

APOPHYGE (APO'PHYGE) n.s.[ flight, or escape.]Is, in architecture, that part of a column, where it begins to spring out of its base; and was originally no more than the ring or ferrel, which anciently bound the extremities of wooden pillars, to keep them from splitting, and were afterward imitated in stone work. We sometimes call it the spring of the column.Chambers. — Samuel Johnson

And what's wrong with headstrong girls?" she pressed. "Other than the fact that they're not wooden-headed ninnies who can only open their mouths to give orders and gossip? — Sarah J. Maas

If you help load a cart you get a ride in it, as often as not. It gives him to think, how bad people are at loading carts. Men trying to walk straight ahead through a narrow gateway with a wide wooden chest. A simple rotation of the object solves a great many problems. — Hilary Mantel

When I was 9 years old, I really wanted to be in the show business. I really wanted to be an artist. I would grab a wooden spoon and I would start singing, even if it was for my uncles and my aunts. And I would just sing any lah-lah song. — Ricky Martin

Like most Maya rulers, Chak Tok Ich'aak spent a lot of his time luxuriating in his court while dwarf servants attended to his whims and musicians played conch shells and wooden trumpets in the background. But — Charles C. Mann

God save me ere I have any babies. They are grabby, clingy creatures who steal your figure and always want a ribbon or a wooden sword. And who sometimes make you die bearing them. — J. Anderson Coats

The man who is afraid to risk failure seldom has to face success. — John Wooden

Its what you learn when you know it all that counts — John Wooden

Nobody is defeated until he starts blaming somebody else. My advice to you is don't fix the blame. Fix the problem. — John Wooden

I believe we are most likely to succeed when ambition is focused on noble and worthy purposes and outcomes rather than on goals set out of selfishness. — John Wooden

It was all so meaningless when I looked at it that way. It was meaningless in the same way as when I stood up from a game and then looked down on the scatter of playing pieces, and realized that they all were just bits of polished stone on a wooden board marked with squares. All the meaning they'd had moments before when I'd been trying to win a game were meanings that I'd imbued them with. Of themselves, neither they nor the board had any significance. — Robin Hobb

Are you afraid in there?" she said softly, as the men called out for them.
"No," he said. "I'm not afraid. You lock me in. They won't get me."
She closed the door on the little white face, turned the key in the lock. Then she slipped the key into her pocket. The lock was hidden by a pivoting device shaped like a light switch. It was impossible to see the outline of the cupboard in the paneling of the wall. Yes, he'd be safe there. She was sure of it.
The girl murmured his name and laid her palm flat on the wooden panel.
"I'll come back for you later. I promise. — Tatiana De Rosnay

When Pa was at home the gun always lay across those two wooden hooks above the door ... The gun was always loaded, and always above the door so that Pa could get it quickly and easily, any time he needed a gun. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

When our stoicism interferes with our humanity, we risk developing a wooden emotional life and an equally wooden personality. In contrast, the realization that our ability to work through pain makes us stronger than all of our efforts to exorcise it may in the long run alleviate its burden. It may enable us to take up our destiny as creatures whose very vulnerability renders us capable of inspired and truly awe-inspiring love. — Mari Ruti

I always stress condition with my basketball players. I don't mean physical condition only. You cannot attain and maintain physical condition unless you are morally and mentally conditioned. — John Wooden

Loyalty is very important when things get a little tough, as they often do when the challenge is great. Loyalty is a powerful force in producing one's individual best and more so in producing a team's best. — John Wooden

Promise to be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit trouble to press on you. — John Wooden

There is a choice you have to make in everything you do. So keep in mind that in the end, the choice you make, makes you. — John Wooden

I was talking to Coach Wooden after I had signed at UCLA and over the summer, and we used to talk all the time. The thing is, talking to Bill Walton, once you throw in your two cents, he throws in the other 98 cents. He will not stop talking, I'll tell you what. — Kevin Love

I came to that wooden marching band. I stopped and looked. There was a trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and drum. Birds don't live alone, I told myself. They live in flocks. Like people. People are always in a group. Like that little wooden band. — Paul Fleischman

I lived that year on top of a wooden tower in an area east of Santa Rosa known as the Valley of the Moon. — Frederick Weisel

The imagination doesn't crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever's there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time; and yes, oh dear, while he's been hard at work downstairs, up in the attic there are puckering skins, warning spots, a sudden brown collapse and the sprouting of snowflakes. What can he do about it? — Julian Barnes

Then the wooden benches along the walls, where so many outcasts had slept, would be lit by a sort of slow, clocked lightning til the bulb steadied and fastened its tiny feral fury upon the center of the room like a single sullen and manic eye. To burn on there with a steady hate. Til morning wearied and dimmed it away to nothing more than some sort of little old lost gray child of a district-station moon, all its hatred spent. — Nelson Algren

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard.
I don't know where you are, but you're living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I'm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we'll walk through and we'll be full of a future and of a past and we'll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can't meet now, I don't know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we'll be caught in something so bright ... and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet. — Richard Bach

Bwenawa brought my attention to two wooden planks raised about four feet above the ground. On the ledges were lagoon fish sliced open and lying in the sun, the carcasses just visible through an enveloping blizzard of flies. "You see, " said Bwenawa. "The water dries in the sun, leaving the salt. It's kang-kang [tasty]. We call it salt fish."
"Ah," I said. "In my country we call it rotten fish. — J. Maarten Troost

To all the kids from the "special" reading class back in high school (the one where you tried to form words using wooden blocks)
PLEASE stop telling me that I can't blame an "inanimate object" for the off-the-hook gun violence in this country. YES! ... I CAN!!! I blame all the "inanimate objects" in Congress who refuse to pass sensible gun legislation because they're too chicken-shit to take on Wayne LaPierre and the gun lobby. — Quentin R. Bufogle

I got through so much ink in the learning that the inkseller took to knocking at least once a week on the garden door. He had a gray solemn face that looked as if it was chiseled out of stone; he was stooped down like the letter C, as if he were Atlas carrying the weight of the world in his wooden barrel of ink. Maybe he did. I have learned that there is great power in words, no matter how long or short they be. — Sally Gardner

When I write this in bed, I can almost hear the echo of the wind over the sand, or the groans of wooden panels around me. I can almost smell the dustiness of the camel, taste the bitterness of saltbush. And when I dream, your warm hands cover my shoulders. Your whispers carry stories and sound like the rustle of spinifex. I still wear that ring, you know ... at night, when no one is watching. — Lucy Christopher

Japanese architecture is traditionally based on wooden structures that need renovating on a regular basis. — Tadao Ando

A leader in sports, business, or any other field of endeavor should possess and provide the same qualities inherent in a good parent: character, consistency, dependability, accountability, knowledge, good judgment, selflessness, respect, courage, discipline, fairness, and structure. — John Wooden

He limped slowly over to his own wooden sword and stooped awkwardly to pick it up. Trailing it on the ground behind him, he limped toward the queen, and the courtyard quieted as he approached and was silent again as he dropped to his knees before her and laid the sword across her lap.
"My Queen," he said.
"My King," she said back.
Only those closest saw him nod his rueful acceptance. He lifted his hand to brush her cheek softly. As the entire court listened breathlessly, he said, "I want my breakfast."
The queen's lips thinned, and she shook her head as she said, "You are incorrigible. — Megan Whalen Turner

Their meal was illuminated by torches, which Gwen found were utterly without fire. What the children called torches were really just small platforms on tall, wooden poles. The reason they radiated light was because fairies had flown up to them to waltz and glow on the tiny dance floors. — Audrey Greathouse

You must define success as making the complete effort to maximize your ability, skills, and potential in whatever circumstances - good or bad - may exist. — John Wooden

Afraid of a wooden sword?"
"Just demonstrating my skills in evading an attack. Impressed? — Jennifer A. Nielsen

It is impossible to attain proper physical condition without being sound both mentally and morally. — John Wooden

the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, — Arthur Conan Doyle

I think anyone's success depends on working hard, Industriousness and Enthusiasm, enjoying what you are doing. You can't work your best if you're not enjoying what you are doing. No way you can force yourself to. — John Wooden

What you do in practice is going to determine your level of success. I used to tell my players, 'You have to give 100 percent every day. Whatever you don't give, you can't make up for tomorrow. If you give only 75 percent today, you can't give 125 percent tomorrow to make up for it.' — John Wooden

Defense is a definite part of the game, and a great part of defense is learning to play it without fouling. — John Wooden

Keep unscathed the good name; keep out of peril the honor without which even your battered old soldier who is hobbling into his grave on half-pay and a wooden leg would not change with Achilles. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Growing up, my parents were very, very strict. And then I went to UCLA with John Wooden, who was just off the charts. — Bill Walton

Losing is only temporary and not encompassing. You must simply study it, learn from it, and try hard not to lose the same way again. Then you must have the self-control to forget about it. — John Wooden

The steep tiled roof had grown dark and mossy with age and rain. The triangular wooden frames fitted into the gables were intricately carved, the light that slanted through them and fell in patterns on the floor was full of secrets. Wolves. Flowers. Iguanas. Changing shape as the sun moved through the sky. Dying punctually at Dusk. — Arundhati Roy

The cabin door swung open and Molly belly-crawled onto the deck until she could see me. "Who started shooting at us?"
"Bad guys!" I cringed as another round hit the side of the boat and peppered me with wooden splinters. "Obviously! — Jim Butcher

Remember when the music Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire, For we believed in things, and so we'd sing. — Harry Chapin

With reason did the Athenians adjudge Diagoras guilty of atheism, in that he not only divulged the Orphic doctrine, and published the mysteries of Eleusis and of the Cabiri, and chopped up the wooden statue of Hercules to boil his turnips, but openly declared that there were no gods at all. — Athenagoras Of Athens

Hagrid. You live in a wooden house! — J.K. Rowling

Are you pair mad? You pitch up as if you own the place, and then you offer to relieve me of two centuries' worth of
equipment?' He glared across the wooden expanse at Marcus and Qadir. 'An officer fresh out of his napkin, and a chosen man in fancy dress with a bad suntan. Well, the pair of you can fuck right off. — Anthony Riches

There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy! — Anton Szandor LaVey

The dragonets found the carpenters to be even more fascinating than the furniture, and followed the poor men from pen to pen, crowding around to watch, tasting the wooden planks, trying to steal the tools. It made for an interesting day for everyone, as the boys tried to keep the dragonets away from the carpenters, and the dragonets tried to get at the carpenters, and the carpenters worked probably a great deal faster than they ever had in their lives, sure that the dragonets would go from tasting the wood to tasting them. — Mercedes Lackey

When I was tiny, the county fair came through town. Our parents took us, and got tickets for the rides, even though I was scared to death of all of them. Edward was the one who convinced me to go on the merry-go-round. He put me up on one of the wooden horses and he told me the horse was magic, and might turn real right underneath me, but only if I didn't look down. So I didn't. I stared out at the pinwheeling crowd and searched for him. Even when I started to get dizzy or thought I might throw up, the circle would come around again and there he was. After a while, I stopped thinking about the horse being magic, or even how terrified I was, and instead, I made a game out of finding Edward.
I think that's what family feels like. A ride that takes you back to the same place over and over. — Jodi Picoult

We may not be the best conditioned team in the country, but our players think they are. — John Wooden

Joseph, you're out of clean towels." Lucia poked her head into the living room, the rest of her hidden behind the wall. Her red hair dripped water onto my wooden floors.
"She's in the buff." Jenna guffawed. Gabriella rolled her eyes, beaming.
I rose. "Go back to the bathroom. I'll bring you a towel," I ordered Lucia. She disappeared down the hall.
"You have naked angels running around your house," Jenna continued through her laughter. Gabby laughed louder. — Laura Kreitzer

In every big-budget science fiction movie there's the moment when a spaceship as large as New York suddenly goes to light speed. A twanging noise like a wooden ruler being plucked over the edge of a desk, a dazzling refraction of light, and suddenly the stars have all been stretched out thin and it's gone. This was exactly like that, except that instead of a gleaming twelve-mile-long spaceship, it was an off-white twenty-year-old motor scooter. And you didn't have the special rainbow effects. And it probably wasn't going at more than two hundred miles an hour. And instead of a pulsing whine sliding up the octaves, it just went putputputputput ...
VROOOOSH.
But it was exactly like that anyway. — Neil Gaiman

A word about TV: If a television is on, an infant will stare at it. This is not a sign of advanced development. TV entertains at a cost. Young children easily become dependent on the TV for stimulation and lose some of their natural drive to explore. A child with a plastic cup and spoon, a few wooden blocks, and a board book can think up fifty creative ways to use those objects; a child in front of a TV can only do one thing. — Benjamin Spock

The wise say that it is not an iron, wooden or fiber fetter which is a strong one, but the besotted hankering after trinkets, children and wives, that, say the wise, is the strong fetter. It drags one down, and loose as it feels, it is hard to break. Breaking this fetter, people renounce the world, free from longing and abandoning sensuality. — Gautama Buddha

My mom said the two most important kitchen utensils are attached to your arms ... you cannot mix up meatballs with a wooden spoon, get in there, get your fingers dirty! — Rachael Ray

Be prepared and be honest. — John Wooden

Winning and losing aren't all they're cracked up to be, but the trip to the destination is. — John Wooden

A push-and-go wooden duck on wheels can cause quite a lot of damage if wielded with enough force. — Terry Pratchett

She drove home and grabbed the things she would need to check out a book: strong rope and a grappling hook, a compass, a flare gun, matches and a can of hair spray, a sharpened wooden spear, and, of course, her library card. — Joseph Fink