Worse Before Better Quotes & Sayings

What do you know of the Knights?" he asked.

Fin shrugged. "I thought knights were only in children's stories until a few days ago."

Jeannot smiled. "A man could do worse than to live in the stories of a child. There is, perhaps, no better remembrance."

"Until the child grows up and finds out the stories aren't true. You might be knights, but I don't see any shining armor," Fin said.

Jeannot stopped near the gate of the auberge and faced her. "Each time a story is told, the details and accuracies and facts are winnowed away until all that remains is the heart of the tale. If there is truth at the heart of it, a tale may live forever. As a knight, there is no dragon to slay, no maiden to rescue, and no miraculous grail to uncover. A knight seeks the truth beneath these things, seeks the heart. We call this the corso. The path set before us. The race we must run. — A.S. Peterson

All change brings bad things and good things to replace the bad and good things that were before. It is natural to look back and say it was better before - but that does not make it true. Different is not worse. It is just different. — Patricia Briggs

Sometimes it has to feel worse before it feels better. — Carol Plum-Ucci

I think it's false, shallow, to be giving to others when your own need is great. The idea is not to comfort people, not to make them feel better but to make them feel worse, to constantly put before them the degradations and humiliations they go through to get what they call a living wage. — John Lennon

Where was it that I read of how a condemned man, just before he died, said, or thought, that if he had to live on some high crag, on a ledge so small that there was no more than room for his two feet, with all about him the abyss, the ocean, eternal night, eternal solitude, eternal storm, and there he must remain, on a hand's-breadth of ground, all his life, a thousand years, through all eternity-it would be better to live so, than die within the hour? Only to live, to live! No matter how-only to live! ... How true! Lord, how true! How base men are! ... And he is worse who decries them on that account! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You will lose touch with people you thought you wouldn't, watch from a distance while these people get married, gain weight, lose weight, move across the country, and get new sets of friends you will never meet. But you will look at your pictures of them and remember the nights you drank too much rum with them and you will enjoy those moments immensely. You will know what it is like to experience true nostalgia - the feelings a Hot Pocket can elicit will be astounding. It will not be a bittersweet kind of thing, because you know that it's not as much growing apart as it is growing up.
There will be successes, and failures, and a lot of good and bad things. You will watch yourself and the people you choose to be with fall in love and get married, get jobs, get fired, get a terrible tattoo, have babies, get sick, get better, get worse, lose parents, grow older, grow smarter. Things will flash forward, pass before your eyes like the lights at a terrible nightclub. — Alida Nugent

When in life you are destined great, but fated to a humble background, it always gets really worse before it gets really better. — Darmie Orem

Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? — Henry David Thoreau

It won't be that simple though, will it?' She sounded wise beyond her years. 'Things are going to get worse before they get better, aren't they? — Richelle Mead

I used to wish I had an easier life," he mused. "Some families sail through years with nothing touching them. They have no tragedies. They go on about how lucky they are. Yet sometimes it seems to me they're half alive. When something goes wrong for them, and it does for everyone sooner or later, their trauma is much worse. They've had nothing bad happen to them before. In the meantime, they think little problems, like losing a wallet, are big deals. They think it's ruined their day. They have no idea what a hard day's like. It's going to be incredibly tough for them when they find out."
He'd also developed his own version of making the most of every minute. "Through Sam I found out how quickly things can change. Because of him I've learned to appreciate each moment and try not to hold on to things. Life's more exciting and intense that way. It's like the yogurt that goes off after three days. It tastes so much better than the stuff that lasts three weeks. — Helen Brown

There's always room to improve in a restaurant. A restaurant is better or worse every day than it was the day before. It's impossible not to be, because it's human. — Michael Mina

My comrades, hardly strangers to pain before now, we all have weathered worse. Some god will grant us an end to this as well. You've threaded the rocks resounding with Scylla's howling rabid dogs, and taken the brunt of the Cyclops' boulders, too. Call up your courage again. Dismiss your grief and fear. A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this. Through so many hard straits, so many twists and turns our course holds firm for Latium. There Fate holds out a homeland, calm, at peace. There the gods decree the kingdom of Troy will rise again. Bear up. Save your strength for better times to come. — Virgil

The effects which follow too constant and intense a concentration upon evil are always disastrous. Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes even perceptibly worse than it was, before the crusade began. By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself. — Aldous Huxley

I saw 'Animal House' in the theater the night before I left for college. And for better or worse, it made an impression. Within a week, I was in a fraternity myself. — Neil Flynn

Seems like nothing's getting safer or better," I said. "Seems like everything's getting worse."
"Maybe that's what's gotta happen," Willa Mae said.
"Maybe everything's gotta break lose and fall apart before we can put it back together again right. — Margaret McMullan

My husband is my most ruthless critic ... sometimes he will say, 'It's been said better before.' Of course it has. It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I'd never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn't what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die. — Madeleine L'Engle

She bent down and reached around his trim waist to grab the handcuffs. A bit of a compromising position, given the state of her thoughts, but she had to help the poor guy out before his nose froze off. "There's a saying here in Switzerland. To be a fool at the right time is an art." She caught his eye before continuing with the knot. "You better hush, now."
"Well, there's a saying in the US, too. Imagination is worse than the truth. I have a real vivid imagination, and you bent over me like this is not helping. — Melinda Dozier

It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It's simply a matter of is and is no longer. — David Levithan

I'm sorry I never really believed," I said. "Not the way Jack did."
"It doesn't make any difference," my mother replied. Her eyes focused on the beanstalk for a moment, then returned to mine. "You believe now. Be safe and smart up there, my Gen. Be yourself."
Before I could answer, my mother turned away and walked quickly toward the house. I turned to face the beanstalk.
There is no going back now, I thought.
For better or worse, there was only going forward. There was only going up. Seizing the trunk of the beanstalk with both hands, I pushed off from the World Below and began to climb. — Cameron Dokey

Thanks to my mother, I was raised to have a morbid imagination. When I was a child, she often talked about death as warning, as an unavoidable matter of fact. Little Debbie's mom down the block might say, 'Honey, look both ways before crossing the street.' My mother's version: 'You don't look, you get smash flat like sand dab.' (Sand dabs were the cheap fish we bought live in the market, distinguished in my mind by their two eyes affixed on one side of their woebegone cartoon faces.)
The warnings grew worse, depending on the danger at hand. Sex education, for example, consisted of the following advice: 'Don't ever let boy kiss you. You do, you can't stop. Then you have baby. You put baby in garbage can. Police find you, put you in jail, then you life over, better just kill youself. — Amy Tan

I felt as if it were better, or not worse, to have compressed my enjoyments and sufferings into a few wild years, and then to rest myself in an early grave, than to have chosen the untroubled and ungladdened course of the crowd before me, whose days were all alike, and a long lifetime like each day. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

As we travel again between life and death,
Waking and dream, blinking, while layers within layers,
None better, none worse, unravel and knit up before us ... — Jay Woodman

Complexity theory shows that great changes can emerge
from small actions. Change involves a belief in the possible, even the "impossible."
Moreover, social innovators don't follow a
linear pathway of change; there are ups and
downs, roller-coaster rides along cascades
of dynamic interactions, unexpected and
unanticipated divergences, tipping points
and critical mass momentum shifts. Indeed,
things often get worse before they get better
as systems change creates resistance to and
pushback against the new.
Traditional evaluation approaches — Michael Quinn Patton

In a few days you'll be twenty-something - twenty-five, twenty-six, sixty-three, doesn't matter.
You're no better off - mentally, physically, financially, emotionally, and so on - than you were at the time of your last birthday; and maybe the one before that even.
In fact, things seem kind of worse.
Then again, maybe things are too much the same.
Maybe sameness worsens as time moves forth.
Shouldn't sameness stay the same? — Brian Alan Ellis

During the last two centuries and a half, physical knowledge has been gradually made to rest upon a basis which it had not before. It has become mathematical. The question now is, not whether this or that hypothesis is better or worse to the pure thought, but whether it accords with observed phenomena in those consequences which can be shown necessarily to follow from it, if it be true — Augustus De Morgan

Maputo was much praised as a desirable destination, but it was a dreary, beat-up city of desperate people who had cowered there while war raged in the provinces for twenty-five years, destroying bridges, roads, and railways. Banks and donors and charities claimed to have had successes in Mozambique. I suspected they invented these successes to justify their existence; I saw no positive results of charitable efforts. But whenever I expressed skepticism about the economy, the unemployment, the potholes, or the petty thievery, people in Maputo said, as Africans elsewhere did, 'It was much worse before.' In many places, I knew, it was much better before. It was hard to imagine how much worse a place had to be for a broken-down city like Maputo to seem like an improvement. — Paul Theroux

Some people make you feel better about living. Some people you meet and you feel this little lift in your heart, this 'Ah', because there's something in them that's brighter or lighter, something beautiful or better than you, and here's the magic: instead of feeling worse, instead of feeling 'why am I so ordinary?', you feel just the opposite, you feel glad. In a weird way you feel better, because before this you hadn't realised or you'd forgotten human beings could shine so. — Niall Williams

I'm going to say this one time and one time only, so you had better listen up. The world is going to hell in a hand basket. We got Jacque running off into ponds like a crazy woman; Fane thinking he's Aqua Man, diving in after her and getting his ass captured by the wicked witch; we have freak lightening shows; thunder that shakes the ground; and wind strong enough to knock you over. And you know what's really scary? It's going to get worse before it gets better. The fan is broken from all the shit that has hit it. Yes, I have a potty mouth. I get to have one when the world as we know it is crumbling around us. — Quinn Loftis

Like other presidents before him, Barack Obama inherited a recession. But unlike them, he has made it worse, not better. — Mitt Romney

A robin perched on the branch of the apple tree, his feathers ruffled, his red chest blazing.
'No need to look so down in the mouth,' he chirruped. 'Things'll get worse before they get better.'
'I don't know what it is about that tree,' Geno grumbled, 'that makes everything that sits in it talk in proverbs.'
'It's easier than thinking,' the robin stated. — Felix Salten

Things will get worse before they get better. — Lauren DeStefano

The civil rights situation is like a pregnancy. It will get worse, I believe, before it gets better. What the usual pregnancy comes to is a decent baby. That is what we all hope will be the end product of this stress. It is customary, at the end of a pregnancy, to have for your pains a decent baby. — Gwendolyn Brooks

Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,
the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead.The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

John Bunyan: "But one day, as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy righteousness is in heaven; and methought withal, I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand; there, I say, as my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was adoing, mGod could not say of me, He wants my righteousness, for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 35-36) — John Bunyan

The idea of infection began to be taken far more seriously than it ever had before. Hospitals transformed themselves in response to the new plague - sometimes for the better, but often for the worse, as when, in fear, they cast their ulcerated patients out into the streets. — Peter Lewis Allen

There is no better mirror in which to see your need than simply the Ten Commandments, in which you will find what you lack and what you should seek. If, therefore, you find in yourself a weak faith, small hope and little love toward God; and that you do not praise and honor God, but love your own honor and fame, think much of the favor of men, do not gladly hear mass and sermon, are indolent in prayer, in which things every one has faults, then you shall think more of these faults than of all bodily harm to goods, honor and life, and believe that they are worse than death and all mortal sickness. These you shall earnestly before God, lament and ask for help, and with all confidence expect help, and believe that you are heard and shall obtain help and mercy. — Martin Luther

When I begin to work on myself, sometimes things get worse before they get better. It is okay if this happens, because I know that it's the beginning of the process. It's untangling old threads. I just flow with it. It takes time and effort to learn what I need to learn. I don't demand instant change. — Louise Hay

It was the nature of our relationship to be lusty and emotional, earthy and raw. The trust that held us together also opened us up to each other in ways that made us both vulnerable and dangerous. And it would get worse before it got better. — Sylvia Day

Americanomics works, and I won't argue that is true.
But if the economy is getting better, getting better for who?
Well, if you ask me, I'm doing much worse than before,
With the welfare cuts, I don't eat no more.
So if I did wanna go out, I couldn't go nowhere,
Cause I ate every last one of them reindeer.
Rudolph first, I went down the list,
I got so hungry, I just couldn't resist.
I ate Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Dixon,
Fried them up and then started to mix them.
And before you knew it, they were all gone,
I wonder what y'all gonna do about my reindeer song! — Kool Moe Dee

A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life. — Richard Ford

There is not much future in men being friends with great women although it can be pleasant enough before it gets better or worse, and there is usually even less future with truly ambitious women writers. — Ernest Hemingway,

Habits don't just happen overnight. If a habit takes 30 days to form, then those 30 days will tell you a lot about your commitments. Are you cutting down on your Starbucks habit so that you can read Scripture in the morning before work? Or are you routinely hitting snooze and falling off your exercise program 10 days in? We all have the same 24 hours in a day, and have to make choices about we're using our time. We make trade-offs based on what we deem most important at the time - for better or for worse. — Jarrid Wilson

It may get worse before it gets better. But it WILL get better. — Debby Ryan

Children I implore you
get out of the burning house now
three carts wait outside
to save you from a homeless life
relax in the village square
before the sky everything's empty
no direction is better or worse
east is just as good as west
those who know the meaning of this
are free to go where they want — Han-shan

Once we break out of the framework of national states as unified entities with no internal divisions within them, we can see that there is a global shift of power, but it's from the global workforce to the owners of the world: transnational capital, global financial institutions. So, for example, the earnings of working people as a percentage of national income has by and large declined in the last couple of decades, but apparently it's declined in China more than in most places. There is certainly economic growth in China and India. Hundreds of millions of people live a lot better than they did before, but then there are hundreds of millions more who don't. In fact, it's getting worse for them in many ways. — Noam Chomsky

Why do you continue your... charade? Your current position would seem to be a good one for revealing the truth'.
'A few people know, sir. Bobby, Jane, some of the Leatherbacks. For the rest... it just seems easier to keep things as they are.' Winter thought of Novus and his tirade. 'It would be one thing if I had just joined up, but it's been so long. People might be upset that they'd been fooled. And...'
Janus raised an eyebrow. Winter hesitated.
'It's all right for the Girl's Own,' she said. 'They joined up because Vordan needs them, and when the war's over they'll go home. I... I haven't anywhere to go.' She tugged the collar of her uniform. 'This is who I am now, for better or worse. This is my home. After the war, maybe it will be all right for a woman to keep this on, but... maybe not.'
Winter found her throat getting thick. She'd never put it that way before, never even thought it so bluntly. This is my home. — Django Wexler

The thing about second chances", Mom interrupted, laying a hand on my arm "is we always walk into them assuming we'll feel better, when nine times out of ten things get worse before the ever get better. — Rachel Van Dyken

I think I hate snow, downright hate it. There is something stupefying in it, a kind of 'You must be worse before you're better,' and down it spins. — Katherine Mansfield

Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better — Susane Colasanti

Here is the truth, Darrel. She is not at the end. She is at the beginning. Her fear has not become greater; it has become less and less until now, her fear is gone altogether. And she is not experiencing something bad that gets worse until there is nothing at all ... she is experiencing something incredible that gets better, until there is everything." Jones looked down at the woman and lightly touched her head. "Before this woman was ever born, when she was warm and snug inside her mama's belly, she kicked and twisted, moving this way and that. For months — Andy Andrews

Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock. It is ... difficult to think of a single natural system that has not, for better or worse, been substantially modified by human culture. The cultural habits of humanity have always made room for the sacredness of nature. — Simon Schama

You realize we can't go back to Sheridan."

"I know."

"Have to keep heading southwest now, and I don't know anything about the area. We'll probably get lost or walk into a road and a patrol."

"Well"-Hadrian looked down at Royce's side-"you're bleeding again, and I think I am, too, so the good news is we'll likely die before morning. Still, I suppose it could be worse."

"How?"

"They could have caught us at the tavern, or we could have drowned in that river."

"Either way we'd be dead. At this point I'm inclined to see that as better off."

"Anything can always be worse," Hadrian assured him.

They lay staring up at the sky and watching clouds blot out the stars. Royce heard it before he felt it. A distant patter on the blades of grass along the hillside. He turned once more to Hadrian. "I'm really starting to hate you. — Michael J. Sullivan

Boundaries come after grace, because compassion minds the fragile places but boundaries keep them from compromising the rest. Brokenness may have legitimate origins, but left unchecked, a wound becomes infected and poisons the whole body (and subsequently, everyone around). Wounds must be attended to heal. With an unhealthy limb, the rest of the body overcompensates through manipulation, aggression, or blaming. Boundaries here are kind. Better to apply direct pressure to the wound than pretend it is well; this may get worse before better, but it is way of healing. — Jen Hatmaker

Barack Obama said yesterday that the economy was 'going to get worse before it gets better.' See, that's when you know the campaign is really over. Remember before the election? 'The audacity of hope!' 'Yes, we can!' 'A change we can believe in!' Now it's, 'We're all screwed.' — Jay Leno

It was a moment before she replied. And in that moment, she realized that what was gone from her was the child in her, she'd crossed a brink from which there was no turning back. Whoever she had been, she was not anymore. And her life, for better or worse, would never again be what it had. — Allan Folsom

With the kinds of progress we're seeing in Africa, we have people who have a very high expectation, and often people think that, you know, things would happen overnight. But I want people to understand that sometimes it even gets worse before it gets better. — John Dramani Mahama

DRAMA: Be careful about being baited into the personal battles and confusion of others. If you want to help someone out emotionally, be certain he or she has made a commitment to the sacrifice before you intervene for his or her success. If you don't, you're likely to be drained of all your healthy energy with his or her selfish petty, pitiful pretending and negotiating. Be encouraged but more importantly if you can't make it better, whatever you do don't make it worse, for them and especially yourself — Kerry E. Wagner

It is better to have no hope than just a little hope. A little hope just gets you thinking something good is about to happen. And when that little hope is taken away, you are worse off than before. — Richard LeMieux

Everything will usually get worse before it gets better, but when it does get better ... remember all who put you down and all who helped you up. Forgive but never forget. Let Karma take care of all the rest. — Timothy Pina

When you hit a plateau you have to be willing to get a little bit worse before you get massively better. — Tony Robbins

Michael Cole does not deserve to be piled on like many are doing. He deserves respect. Michael is fulfilling a role on a fictional, TV show. He has been 'cast' to play this role as best as he can. For those that have never sat in that particular seat, let me assure you that it isn't easy. Cole's new persona must be working because never before have so many fans, for better or for worse, commented on Cole's work. — Jim Ross

Things'll get worse before they get better. — Karen M. McManus

This Obamacare thing really scares me. The United States government / politicians are trying to turn the American people into a brand X "One size fits all" country. The past ten years has been very grim for Americans. Our current state is very grim. Our future is even more grim than ever. I used to tell people that it will get worse before it gets better. Now, I just say it will get worse. — Carroll Bryant

You're a terrible feller," said Butcher. "If you had your way, you'd leave us stark naked. We should all be standing on our little island in the savage state of the Ancient Britons; figuratively." He hiccuped. "Yes, figuratively. But in reality the country would be armed better than it ever had been before. And by the sacrifice of these famous 'national characteristics' we cling to sentimentally, and which are merely the accident of a time, we should lay a soil and foundation of unspecific force on which new and realler 'national flavours' would very soon sprout." "I quite agree," Butcher jerked out energetically. He ordered another Laager. "I agree with what you say. If we don't give up dreaming, we shall get spanked. I have given up my gypsies. That was very public-spirited of me?" He looked coaxingly. "If every one would give up their gypsies, their jokes and their gentlemen - . 'Gentlemen' are worse than gypsies. — Wyndham Lewis

The world's in a bad way, my man, And bound to be worse before it mends; Better lie up in the mountain here Four or five centuries, While the stars go over the lonely ocean. — Robinson Jeffers

Can you play the piano like Beethoven? Or sing like Carly Simon? Can you take fie pages' worth of quotes and turn them into a usable story ten minutes before deadline? I don't think so, unless you have more hidden talents I don't know about. We all have our special sills. They don't make us better or worse than each other. Just different — Jennifer Estep

I tell my students all the time is, for better or worse, no publisher is going to come wrench your story out of your hands before you're ready to let it go. You will have time to take stuff out. You don't have to show it to anybody. That's what I did. — Melissa Febos

Things get worse before they get better, but this is a worse that feels too big. — Stephen Chbosky

Maybe we aren't so very different after all. There's good and bad in both of us, and that's what binds us together, for better or worse. — S.R. Grey

A strange cold fear gripped him as he looked down at that angelic face resting against his shoulder. Her thick dark lashes lay heavy against her perfect olive skin like two perfect dark crescent moons concealing those glorious starry green eyes burdened with anguish much too raw and intense for a teenager to bear. She was frail and tiny and much too beautiful, light as a feather in his arms, like a pure white dove. Things were only going to get worse before they were going to get better but that was okay because Logan was determined to be there for Sienna every step of the way. — Ali Harper

And I know things have to get worse before they get better. — Stephen Chbosky

But in new Princedoms difficulties abound. And, first, if the Princedom be not wholly new, but joined on to the ancient dominions of the Prince, so as to form with them what may be termed a mixed Princedom, changes will come from a cause common to all new States, namely, that men, thinking to better their condition, are always ready to change masters, and in this expectation will take up arms against any ruler; wherein they deceive themselves, and find afterwards by experience that they are worse off than before — Niccolo Machiavelli

The housing market will get worse before it gets better. — James Wilson

I've loved you my whole life, Chas, from that first day you took me home after Michelle died. And I'm terrified you'll leave me or you'll stop loving me or even worse, something will happen to you. But I can't be without you anymore." He takes my hands, which are shaking wildly, and swallows.
"Today I watched Mike give away the woman he loves. I can't do that, Chas. I thought I could, I thought it would be better if you were with someone else, but I was wrong. And I swear to you, I will love you the rest of my life and nothing will ever come before you. Please, Chastity. Forgive me and marry me and have a bunch of babies with me, and I'll- — Kristan Higgins

Whenever I come across someone speaking negatively about escapism or looking down on those who seek a temporary escape from this world, I can't help but look at them as absolute fools. To deny someone the right to find temporary peace in escapism is to deny human nature itself as well as all the benefits of such a beautiful concept. Often times, these instances show them saying that "it'll only make things worse" or "it's not gonna change anything", except, a lot of times, that's not the case at all. How many times has someone shut themselves away from the world by listening to a song they hold dear only to return more ready to face the world than before, how many times has someone learned something about themselves through the fictional events of a novel that they wouldn't have other wise, how many times has society experienced great change through people who dreamed of making the world a better place, only to eventually make those dreams into a reality. — Justin Allen

There is plenty of other evidence, however, that the nominal conversion of the Roman Empire to the Christian religion had effected no visible improvement in the common morals. The world was worse rather than better. Out of its besetting temptations men fled to save their souls. They fled from the world, which in the first century was believed by the Christians to be doomed, and liable to be destroyed by divine fire before the end of the year, and which in the fourth century was believed by the Christians to be damned: it belonged to the devil. They fled also from the church, which they accused of secularity and of hypocrisy. Many of the monks were laymen, who in deep disgust had forsaken the services and sacraments. They said their own prayers and sought God in their own way, asking no aid from priests. They were men who had resolved never to go to church again. — George Hodges