Quotes about balance
page 2

“Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Happiness

“For every bad thing in life, there are more good things to tip the balance.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus on Top

Life

“the number 108 is held to be the most auspicious, a perfect three-digit multiple of three, its components adding up to 9, which is three threes. And 3, of course, is the number representing supreme balance.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Perfection

“What sense did the world make? Where was God, the Bloody Fool? Did He have no notion of fair and unfair? Couldn't He read a simple balance sheet? He would have been sacked long ago if He were managing a corporation, the things he allowed to happen…”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

God, World, Fools, Sense

“1 Peter 5 - Be well balanced because Satan 'roams about like a hungry lion seeking who he can devour.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“Somehow, we'll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be. But for now, we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

“Only in our darkest hour do we find the light. Humans are destructive by nature. The world is lacking balance. Terrors are beginning to triumph over the simple joys. Stand back and watch, because you're going to be here when we fall.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (1984) Novelist

World, Nature, Light, Joy

“Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Appearance, Personality

“Sometimes happiness consists of finding the right balance of misery.”

Orson Scott Card Sarah

Source: Sarah

Happiness

“I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Love, Change

“No person has ever held all the power. There must be a balance between chaos and order, dark and light. With the Temple magic bound to you, the realms are no longer in balance. The power could change you… and you could change the magic.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Light, Change, Personality

“There is no cosmic scale on which you can weigh your actions; you learn too late what choices ruin the fragile balance.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Learning

“Kalos Kai Agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Beauty

“Marriage, each of them realized intuitively, was about compromise and forgiveness. It was about balance, where one person complemented the other.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Travis Parker, Chapter 16, p. 203
Variant: Relationship is about forgiveness and compromise. It is about balance where one person complements each other.
Source: 2000s, The Choice (2007)

Marriage, Forgiveness, Personality

“i wish i could freeze this moment, somehow delay my final decision, and just hang here in the balance between two places, two worlds, two loves.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Love the One You're With

Love, World, Decision

“The greatest mania of all is passion: and I am a natural slave to passion: the balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase.”

Hunter S. Thompson book The Curse of Lono

Source: The Curse of Lono

Soul, Nature, Passion

“I really can't believe what a state the Pyramids are in. I thought they had flat rendered sides, but when you get up close, you see how they are just giant boulders balanced on top of each other, like a massive game of Jenga that has got out of hand.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Source: An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington

Game

“Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries.”

Elizabeth Peters book The Mummy Case

Source: The Mummy Case

Marriage

“I've got forward momentum. There's no virtue in it. It's just a balancing act. I don't dare stop.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book The warrior's Apprentice

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)

“The proper, wise balancing
of one's whole life may depend upon the
feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.”

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) English novelist

Source: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

Life, Tea, Dependency

“Truth is neither ojectivity nor the balanced view; truth is a selfless subjectivity.”

Knut Hamsun book Hunger

Source: Hunger

Truth

“He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.”

Ken Kesey book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Variant: Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.
Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), Ch. 25
Context: While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water — laughing at the girl, at the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier... and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.

World, Hurt

“The art of being a warrior is to balance the wonder and the terror of being alive.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Art

“Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Art, Loneliness

“Even if lives did hang in the balance, it would depend on whose they were.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Dependency

“It seems to me that in the orbit of our world you are the North Pole, I the South--so much in balance, in agreement--and yet… the whole world lies between.”

Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again

Source: You Can't Go Home Again

World

“I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it's medically conservative to cut people open or put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives … Animal products are the main culprit in what is killing us. We can absolutely live better lives without them.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

Quoted in Roberto Suro, "Hearts and Minds", New York Times Magazine (29 December 1991).

People, Understanding, Animals

“The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

“and I wondered if, in the end, this is how all disputes are settled, with a shared silence as things become equal. You take something from me, I take something from you. We all want balance, one way or another.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Way, Silence

“Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Source: The Tent

God, Hell, Universe

“We wanted to define her, to wrap her up as we did each other, but we could not seem to get past "weird" and "strange" and "goofy." Her ways knocked us off balance.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

Way, Past

“Toleration … is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Part III, Ch. 2: Personality http://books.google.com/books?id=zev1dMhB7C4C&q=Toleration+&quot;is+the+greatest+gift+of+the+mind+it+requires+the+same+effort+of+the+brain+that+it+takes+to+balance+oneself+on+a+bicycle&quot;&pg=PA295#v=onepage The Story of My Life (1903)

Effort, Wise

“… love is essentially a much simpler phenomenon--it becomes complicated, corrupted or obstructed by an unequal balance of power.”

Shulamith Firestone (1945–2012) Feminist

Source: The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution

Love

“I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can't give up love. Maybe it's the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The Powerbook

Love

“I think to myself that when you're in love, sometimes you have to swallow your pride, and sometimes you have to fight to keep your pride. It's a balance. But when the relationship is right, you find that balance.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Variant: When you’re in love, sometimes you have to swallow your pride, and sometimes you have to keep your pride. It’s a balance. But when the relationship is right, you find the balance.
Source: Something Borrowed

Love, Thinking, Fight

“The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,… The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Light, Madness

“I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Speech at Amherst College

Wisdom, Beauty, Nature, Past

“The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Success

“We’re on this planet for too short a time. And at the end of the day, what’s more important? Knowing that a few meaningless figures balanced—or knowing that you were the person you wanted to be?”

Sophie Kinsella (1969) British writer

Time, Personality

“In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. For nothing is more precious than the life force and may the love of that force guide you as you go.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

Source: Early Work, 1970-1979

Love, Life, Dreams, Art

“Adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

“Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

People

“I know why familles were created, with all their imperfections. They humanize you. They are made to make you forget yourself occasionally, so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Life, Beauty, Forgetting

“You know, bicycling isn't just a matter of balance," I said. "it's a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground. I'm going to call that the Bicyclist's Philosophy of Life.”

Susan Vreeland (1946–2017) US author

Source: Clara and Mr. Tiffany

Life, Faith

“Being polite to a person is not a sign of respect for them. It is merely a sign of a good upbringing and a balanced nature.”

Brandon Sanderson The Wheel of Time

Source: A Memory of Light

Nature, Personality

“Myrnin turned away to pick up his Ben Franklin spectacles, balanced them on his nose, and looked over them to say,
"Don't do drugs. I feel I ought to say that.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Ghost Town

Feeling

“You said your mom is the goddess of balance," I reminded him. "The minor gods deserve better, Ethan, but total destruction isn't balance. Kronos doesn't build. He only destroys.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

God, Moms

“Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Thinking, Decision, Success

“Kate," Lucern interrupted.
"What?" she asked warily.
"I do not need blood." He tugged her off balance and into his lap. "All I need is you.”

Lynsay Sands Canadian writer

Source: Single White Vampire

“My point is, life is about balance. The good and the bad. The highs and the lows. The pina and the colada.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

Life

“Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner.”

Amy Bloom (1953) Fiction writer, screenwriter, social worker, psychotherapist

Marriage, Sense, Dance, Wedding

“Misogyny… is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who is confronted with it.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Life, Soul, Parting

“The trick… is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.”

Wendy Wasserstein (1950–2006) American playwright

Love, Color

“Balancing your money is the key to having enough.”

Elizabeth Warren (1949) 28th United States Senator from Massachusetts

Money

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Time

“All of my own impulses to balance and move seemed to conflict with those of the guards, and I was jerked and jostled down the portico, just as graceful as a sick cat.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

Jerk, Cats

“You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Hate, Evil

“People want to believe that every marriage is perfect balance but it isn't. One person always loves more deeply than the other”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

Love, Marriage, People, Personality

“She maintained a careful balance by her window, never allowing the men to come too close, never allowing them to stray too far.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Men

“Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Source: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Money

“For every reader who dies today, a viewer is born, and we seem to be witnessing… the final tipping balance.”

Jonathan Franzen book How to Be Alone

Source: How to Be Alone

“The trickster, the riddler, the keeper of balance, he of the many faces who finds life in death and who fears no evil; he who walks through doors.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Life, Death, Fear, Evil

“Life, love, boys—it was all about balance.
~Anna Percy”

Zoey Dean book Tall Cool One

Source: Tall Cool One

Love, Life, Boy

“Balance every thought with its opposition. Because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Marriage

“It’s never something huge that changes the everything, but instead the tiniest of details, irrevocably tweaking the balance of the universe while you’re busy focusing on the big picture.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Business, Universe, Change

“Throughout history, every period of enlightenment has been accompanied by darkness, pushing in opposition. Such are laws of nature and balance.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

Law, History, Nature

“There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Life, Fight, Back To Work

“You can't possibly conduct a proper affair without a lot of deliberating, scheming, speculating, and conniving. It's a delicate balance where the excitement must equal the guilt and sex must be as bright as the future you gamble.”

John Dufresne (1948) Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, playwright

Source: Love Warps the Mind a Little

Sex, Future

“You can never really know someone completely. That’s why it’s the most terrifying thing in the world, really—taking someone on faith, hoping they’ll take you on faith too. It’s such a precarious balance, It’s a wonder we do it at all. And yet..”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

World, Faith, Hope

“Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Support, Help

“Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and
farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your
thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Source: Focal Point: A Proven System to Simplify Your Life, Double Your Productivity, and Achieve All Your Goals

Cars, Feeling, Perfection

“Be warned - Hammond does tend to be a bit optimistic about these kind of things. If the army were made up of one-legged mutes, he would praise their balance and their listening skills.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

“He was free to enjoy the breathless glee that overwhelmed him: the speed, the clear cold air, the total silence, the feeling of balance and excitement and peace.”

Lois Lowry (1937) American writer

Peace, Feeling, Silence, Speed

“To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Mettre tout en équilibre, c'est bien; mettre tout en harmonie, c'est mieux. Quatre-vingt-treize (Ninety-Three) (1874), Book VII, Chapter V http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Quatre-vingt-treize_-_III%2C_7#V_LE_CACHOT Ninety-Three (1874)

Deep

“Do you not see how strange and wonderful that is? That all history balances on an affair of the human heart?”

Robin Hobb book Ship of Destiny

Source: Ship of Destiny

History, Heart

“But it seemed to me that this was the way we all lived: full to the brim with gratitude and joy one day, wrecked on the rocks the next. Finding the balance between the two was the art and the salvation.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: The Year of Pleasures

Art, Way, Joy, Gratitude

“When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Memory

“See I'm the reckless and wild one who saves him from being boring. It's why we're perfect for each other. We balance. - Madame Selena”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Seize the Night

Perfection

“I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed in FBI Memo, February 13, 1950 (item 61-4099-25 in Einstein's FBI file—viewable online as p. 72 of "Albert Einstein Part 1 of 14" here http://vault.fbi.gov/Albert%20Einstein, as well as p. 72 of the pdf file which can be downloaded here http://vault.fbi.gov/Albert%20Einstein/Albert%20Einstein%20Part%201%20of%2014/at_download/file). There is no other information in the FBI's released files as to what source attributed this statement to Einstein, and the files are full of falsehoods, including the accusation that Einstein was secretly pro-communist, when in fact he was openly so Albert Einstein#Vierick Interview (1929) Disputed Context: In December, 1947, he made the following statement: "I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my life."

Freedom, Country

“April's air stirs in
Willow-leaves… a butterfly
Floats and balances”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Source: Japanese Haiku

“Writing is a matter of finding the appropriate balance of dinosaurs and sodomy.”

Michael Swanwick (1950) American science fiction author

“He felt that there is a loose balance of good and evil, and that the art of living consists in getting the greatest good out of the greatest evil.”

Machado de Assis book Iaiá Garcia

Entendia que há larga ponderação de males e bens, e que a arte de viver consiste em tirar o maior bem do maior mal.
Source: Iaiá Garcia (1878) ch. 3; Albert I. Bagby, Jr. (trans.) Iaiá Garcia (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1977) p. 23.

Art, Evil

“To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Health

“To hell, to hell with balance! I break glasses; I want to burn, even if I break myself. I want to live only for ecstasy. I’m neurotic, perverted, destructive, fiery, dangerous - lava, inflammable, unrestrained.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Hell

“You’ll only fall if you doubt your balance.”

Willa Okati

By Your Side

“Live a balanced life — learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

Life, Thinking, Learning, Singing

“I guess it’s like an airplane: they’re the drag and we’re the thrust, together we make the thing fly. Too much of us and we’re nose-heavy, too much of them and we’re tail-heavy—it’s a matter of balance.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Flying

“It is not the terrible occurrences that no one is spared, — a husband’s death, the moral ruin of a beloved child, long, torturing illness, or the shattering of a fondly nourished hope, — it is none of these that undermine the woman’s health and strength, but the little daily recurring, body and soul devouring care s. How many millions of good housewives have cooked and scrubbed their love of life away! How many have sacrificed their rosy checks and their dimples in domestic service, until they became wrinkled, withered, broken mummies. The everlasting question: ‘what shall I cook today,’ the ever recurring necessity of sweeping and dusting and scrubbing and dish-washing, is the steadily falling drop that slowly but surely wears out her body and mind. The cooking stove is the place where accounts are sadly balanced between income and expense, and where the most oppressing observations are made concerning the increased cost of living and the growing difficulty in making both ends meet. Upon the flaming altar where the pots are boiling, youth and freedom from care, beauty and light-heartedness are being sacrificed. In the old cook whose eyes are dim and whose back is bent with toil, no one would recognize the blushing bride of yore, beautiful, merry and modestly coquettish in the finery of her bridal garb.”

Dagobert von Gerhardt (1831–1910) German writer

To the ancients the hearth was sacred; beside the hearth they erected their lares and household-gods. Let us also hold the hearth sacred, where the conscientious German housewife slowly sacrifices her life, to keep the home comfortable, the table well supplied, and the family healthy."
"von Gerhardt, using the pen-name Gerhard von Amyntor in", A Commentary to the Book of Life. Quote taken from August Bebel, Woman and Socialism, Chapter X. Marriage as a Means of Support.

Love, Life, Death, God

“Decentralization may bring flexibility and fast response to changing business needs, as well as other benefits, but decentralization also makes systems integration difficult, presents a barrier to standardization, and acts as a disincentive toward achieving economies of scale. As a result, there is a need to balance the decentralization of IT management to business units with some centralized planning for technology, data, and human resources”

Gerardine DeSanctis (1954–2005) American organizational theorist

Gerardine DeSanctis, Brad M. Jackson, in: Coordination of information technology management: team-based structures and computer-based communication systems http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1189653, Journal of Management Information Systems - Special issue: Information technology and organization design Volume 10 Issue 4, March 1994, pp 85-110.

Business, Change

“We must examine the traditional demands of our race and social structure in light of the resources we have at hand and strike a workable balance.”

Teimumu Kepa (1945) Fijian politician

Speech celebrating Ratu Sukuna Day (31 May 2005)

Light

“Balanced means the entire negative and positive considerations are given attention so that the road in thinking that is being taken always be moderate.”

Abdul Halim of Kedah (1927–2017) King of Malaysia

56th International Quran Recital and Memorisation Competition https://books.google.com.my/books?id=P3ZODwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false, 16/6/2014

Thinking

“On hearing: "It’s an extremely important faculty which helps to balance the nervous system. Besides, people do not hear or see the same thing. There are specialists, especially in France, that measure hearing and determine the frequencies that the ear cannot hear or can only hear at greater intensity. This can cause psychological problems".”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

1979

People, Problem, Help

“Action is the pointer which shows the balance. We must not touch the pointer but the weight.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

L’action est l’aiguille indicatrice de la balance. Il ne faut pas toucher à l’aiguille, mais aux poids.
La pesanteur et la grâce (1948), p. 57
Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 97