Quotes about being

page 7

“Why settle for what is provided instead of being motivated to achieve what you want. Complacency is your contentment.”

“Then, there is the secret life.
There, alone and in our own realm;
Here, we fantasize about sex, romance,
and being wealthy. No one knows.
Except, when we cross over
and violate societal mores. We betray,
experience relationships that would be scorned
in the other two lives. And to the extent we deviate
from the norms, the greater amount of time
is expended for clandestine pursuits.
And we stay here, because it’s addictive.”

“We have spent these last years disciplining anyone who disagrees with our line on divorce, on birth control, on being gay. While our planet was being destroyed, while inequality grew like a cancer. We worried whether it was alright to speak the Mass in Latin, whether girls should be allowed to be altar servers. We built walls around us, and all…”

“My formula for greatness in a human being is … that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.
Not merely bear what is necessary, …but love it.”

“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.”

“If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.”

“Our dedication to good actions as human beings is what most nourishes our souls”

“Life is being ready for trials and being able to overcome them.”

“Being alive is about messing up gloriously, and I will fight for that ability to gloriously mess up because I don't believe that humans are statues or sculptures.”

“You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.”

“The church is unlike school. Simply, because you can't ask questions while the service is being delivered.”

“Being an author is not as easy as it sounds. In short, an author can create thousands of actors. Also an actor can produce several musicians.”

“Children are only terrified of invisible ghosts. But some human beings are just as terrible as these creatures.”

“Sometimes, you just can't help yourself but to learn quickly when being taught by the opposite gender.”

“The act of divorce shows the immaturity of the human being in love. We think and imagine that we know so much about love, but we don't know anything at all.”

“Who are the best sinners between corporeal and spiritual beings?”

“[...] above a certain intellectual level people are ashamed of being antisemitic and are careful to draw a distinction between “antisemitism” and “disliking Jews.””

“Having lived in an oriental country I have developed a certain indifference to miracles, and I well know that having delusions, or even being an outright lunatic, is quite compatible with what is loosely called genius.”

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

“If you are not truthful and if you are not in reality about yourself and if you are not in reality about the truth of other people, you have no chance at being happy in any of your relationships.”

“The Light failed; but the Darkness that followed was more than loss of light. In that hour was made a Darkness that seemed not lack but a thing with being of its own: for it was indeed made by malice out of Light, and it had power to pierce the eye, and to enter heart and mind, and strangle the very will.”

“I think I did have a reputation for being grumpy. I don't think I'm grumpy. I have opinions. I have an independent vision. I am a purposeful person. But on a daily basis, I think I'm other than grumpy. I think it is a case where I am coming to do business and not there just to be flattered and cajoled and used.”

“You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at.”

“No one thought up being. He who thinks he has, step forward.”

“Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.”

“I saved a girl from being attacked last night. I controlled myself.”

“A human being is nothing but a story with skin around it.”

“It is the universal nature of human Bildung to constitute itself as a universal intellectual being. Whoever abandons himself to his particularity is ungebildet ("unformed")—e. g., if someone gives way to blind anger without measure or sense of proportion. Hegel shows that basically such a man is lacking in the power of abstraction. He cannot turn his gaze from himself towards something universal, from which his own particular being is determined in measure and proportion.”

“Being sent to bed is a terrible command to all children, because it means the most public possible humiliation in front of adults, the confession that they bear the stigma of childhood, of being small and having a child's need for sleep.”

“But if you can't tell the truth to the people you care about the most, eventually you stop being able to tell the truth to yourself.”

“I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right.”

“Being human means having doubts and yet still continuing on your path.”

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”

“Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.”

“Assassins did have a certain code, after all. It was dishonorable to kill someone if you weren't being paid.”

“I've learned…. That being kind is more important than being right.”

“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. … I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.”

“Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being.”

“To act—that is true wisdom. I can be what I want to be, but I have to want whatever it is. Success consists in being successful, not in having the potential for success.”

“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”

“The life of every human being on earth can depend on the experience, judgment, and vigilance of the person in the Oval Office.”

“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”

“The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.”

“It’s never simple.” Avery slid an arm around Hope’s waist. “It shouldn’t be. Because being with someone should matter enough to be at least a little bit complicated.”

“Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different.”

“‎Mark it down: God loves you with an unearthly love. You can't win it by being winsome. You can't lose it by being a loser. But you can be blind enough to resist it”

“In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the
cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat
could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.”

“When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself; you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom and your soul.”

“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”

“All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.”

“Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.”

“But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the complete indifference of other people.”

“People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.”

“The only way love can last a lifetime is if it's unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love.”

“They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged.”

“One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strenth alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

“Passion is the love of turning being into action. It fuels the engine of creation. It changes concepts to experience…. Never deny passion, for that is to deny Who You Are, and Who You Truly Want To Be.”

“Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.”

“The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean-
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.”

“When someone refuses to tell me a certain piece of information, it only makes me that much more determined to find out the truth. I hate being ignorant. For me, a question unanswered is like a thorn in my side”

“A born king is a very rare being.”

“The best remedy for what ails me is being with you here under the sun.”

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'
Quite often men are fools.”

“For we did makeup. But we didn't forgive each other. And we didn't take steps. And it got to be too late and we saw that each of us had invested too much in being in the right and we walked away and it was a relief.”

“Never underestimate the meanness in people's souls… Even when they're being kind… especially when they're being kind.”

“Doing is never enough if you neglect Being.”

“that as long as we are being remembered, we remain alive.”

“Love has nothing to do with someone else. It is all about you. It is a way of being. It essentially means you have brought sweetness into your emotion. If a loved one travels to another country, would you still be able to love them? You would. If a loved one passed away, would you still be able to love them? You would. Even if a loved one is not physically with you anymore, you are still capable of being loving. So, what is love then? It is just your own quality. You are only using the other person as a key to open up what is already within you.”

“All I care to know about a man is that he is a human being… he can't be any worse.”

“Don’t waste a minute not being happy. If one window closes, run to the next window—or break down a door.”

“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.”

“Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.”

“You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.”

“What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"Ask a glass of water!”

“I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being one.”

“We don’t do what we do for the glory or the fame or the credit; we do it for the quiet satisfaction of making the world a better place, saving the lives of innocents, and being better than you are.”

“Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.”

“If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do.”

“Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn't take you seriously until you'd actually killed them, by which time it didn't really matter anyway.”

“But memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.”

“During our recent Human Rights Defenders Forum at The Carter Center, it was reported that between two hundred and three hundred children are sold in Atlanta alone each month! Our city is considered to be one of the preeminent human trafficking centers in the United States, perhaps because we have the busiest airport in the world and because, until recently, the penalty for someone convicted of selling another human being was only a $50 fine. A much heavier penalty of up to twenty years’ imprisonment can be imposed by the federal government, but only if there is proof that the trafficking took place across state lines. An analysis by Atlanta social workers found that 42 percent of the sexual exchanges they investigated were in brothels and hotel rooms in the most affluent areas of the city, while only 9 percent were in the poorer neighborhoods in the vicinity of the airport. Like Kara, they too conclude that the primary culprits are the men who buy sexual favors and the male pimps and brothel owners who control the women and garner most of the financial gains.”

“Seeming and being are not one and the same.”

“To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”

“We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”

“My father had taught me to be nice first, because you can always be mean later, but once you've been mean to someone, they won't believe the nice anymore. So be nice, be nice, until it's time to stop being nice, then destroy them.”

“Who, being loved, is poor?”

“I discovered that I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all”

“Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.”

“The aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love.”

“For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.”

“O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head
As is a winged messenger of heaven”

“Having totality means being capable of following "what is," because "what is" is constantly moving and constantly changing. If one is anchored to a particular view, one will not be able to follow the swift movement of "what is.”

“I just… I just miss him. And hate being so alone. Does he miss me? He must”

“Modern traveling is not traveling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.”

“Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation…”

“One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.”

“Before I could figure out how to apologize for being such an idiot, she tackled me with a hug, then pulled away just as quickly. "I'm glad you're not a guinea pig."
"Me, too." I hoped my face wasn't as red as it felt.”

“Betrayal was a stone beneath a mattress of thr bed you shared, something you felt digging into you no matter how you shifted position. What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you'd never forget?”

“What a terrible mistake, thought Drogo, perhaps everything is like that — we think there are beings like ourselves around us and instead there is nothing but ice and stones speaking a strange language; we are on the point of greeting a friend but our arm falls inert, the smile dies away because we are completely alone.”