Quotes about doing

page 23

“I have gained this by philosophy … I do without being ordered what some are constrained to do by their fear of the law.”

“To THINK BIG and to use our talents doesn't mean we won't have difficulties along the way. We will—we all do. How we view those problems determines how we end up. If we choose to see the obstacles in our path as barriers, we stop trying. “We can't win,” we moan. “They won't let us win.”However, if we choose to see the obstacles as hurdles, we can leap over them. Successful people don't have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward.Whatever direction we choose, if we can realize that every hurdle we jump strengthens and prepares us for the next one, we're already on the way to success.”

“One of the better definitions of insanity - doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting the result to be different.”

“If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul.”

“Steadfastness in believing doth not exclude all temptations from without. When we say a tree is firmly rooted, we do not say the wind never blows upon it.”

“I hope you will grow up gentle and good, and never learn bad ways; do your work with a good will, lift your feet up well when you trot, and never bite or kick even in play.”

“Neither at things, nor at people should one look. Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks.”

“The problem is that most people spend their lives looking but not truly seeing, or, as Sherlock Holmes, the meticulous English detective, declared to his partner, Dr. Watson, “You see, but you do not observe.”

“If it is not right, do not do it, if it is not true, do not say it.”

“Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means.”

“Do not let anyone stop you from succeding”

“Remember, do the things that you believe in, alright? This is what it's all about right now. [MTV Awards 2005]”

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

“But forgetting's not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn't happen to me”

“The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.”

“Alas, why are my nights all thus lost? Ah, why do I ever miss his
sight whose breath touches my sleep?”

“The difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention.”

“Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.”

“I do what I can do when I can do it.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “No harm in that. I’ve never known what to do,” said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. “Been completely at a loss my whole life.” He hesitated. “I think it’s called being human, or something.”

“Quite often somebody will say, 'What year do your books take place?' and the only answer I can give is, in childhood.”

“Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.”

“All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.”

“The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).”

“But then, in his lifetime, Halt had often ignored what was technically legal. Technicalities didn't appeal to him. All too often, they simply got in the way of doing the right thing.”

“The problem in my life and other people's lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.”

“Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”

“You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being.”

“The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing because it is demanding all of you.”

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities.”

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”

“I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”

“The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but NEVER hit softly.”

“If you’re attempting to do the work of evangelism and your life is stuffed with believers, you’ll find yourself out of work pretty quickly. What’s the point of saving the “already saved”?”

“I pray you, do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine.”

“I tried.
Can't do it.
Brain's empty.”

“Seek to learn constantly while you live; do not wait in the faith that old age by itself will bring wisdom.”

“Gentlemen, why do you not laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die.”

“If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loudly. Do not compound mispronunciation with inaudibility”

“Okay, well, let's do a little reenactment. I'm the gay-looking DiCaprio and you're Rose. You have to keep your eyes open and on my face, or you'll have to let me go and I'll turn into a huge gay Popsicle.”

“Whut's the plan, Rob?" said one of them.
"Okay, lads, this is what we'll do. As soon as we see somethin', we'll attack it. Right?"
This caused a cheer.
"Ach, 'tis a good plan," said Daft Wullie.”

“Sometimes, all you had to do was exist in order to be someone's saviour.”

“Reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average "reality" perceived by the communal eye.”

“If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."”

“Life (as you call it) is an opportunity for you to know experientially what you already know conceptually. You need learn nothing to do this. You need merely remember what you already know, and act on it.”

“I started adding up all the things I couldn't do.”

“JAQUES: Rosalind is your love's name?

ORLANDO: Yes, just.

JAQUES: I do not like her name.

ORLANDO: There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.”

“Every day in the United States, seventeen children are killed by gunfire. That’s about 6,000 children each year who are killed by guns, as compared, for example, with about 3,000 a year who died at the height of the polio epidemic of the 1950s. We rose up as a society to fight against polio. Why do we not act more forcefully to halt today’s even greater scourge?”

“Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself?”

“Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning, and we cannot do or say anything without its acquiring a name in history.”

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

“mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am.”

“Ian Malcolm, how do you do? I do maths.”

“Every now and then I like to do as I'm told, just to confuse people.”

“It is much easier to put existing resources to better use, than to develop resources where they do not exist.”

“This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.”

“Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.”

“Everything you do, if not in a relaxed state will be done at a lesser level than you are proficient. Thus the tensed expert marksman will aim at a level less than his/her student.”

“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. Be honest, but hate no one; overturn a man's wrongdoing, but do not overturn him unless it must be done in overturning the wrong. Stand with a man while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

“Do you know what happens when you always look before you leap?"

She reached out and touched his hand before hurrying toward the door.

"You hardly ever make the jump.”

“I don't know. It's been terribly hard for me. How do I know you won't do it again?'
'Nobody is ever quite sure of what they will do. You aren't sure what you might do.”

“You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity.”

“I waited for my thighs and butt to uncramp. Of course, they didn't know the loosening rule. They were screaming things like *Are you crazy? Do you know we're thirty-five years old? Sit down and feed us a Twinkie!”

“Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Having made themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what it will, to-day's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.”

“Without the fear of God, men do not even observe justice and charity among themselves.”

“Now I am silent, hate
Up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.”

“Have strength in yourself always. think and remember not just what you should do, but also what you want to do. (Ageha, Basara, Vol. 13)”

“When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.”

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”

“A loser doesn’t know what he’ll do if he loses but talks about what he’ll do if he wins and a winner doesn’t talk about what he’ll do if he wins but knows what he’ll do if he loses.”

“Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.”

“How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?”

“I don't do regrets. Regrets are pointless. It's too late for regrets. You've already done it, haven't you? You've lived your life. No point wishing you could change it.”

“I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to "I hate to read new books," and I hollered "Comrade!" to whoever owned it before me.”

“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”

“It is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people… Think of things in themselves.”

“Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things.”

“In truth, how much time do any of us really have?”

“I do believe in the power of story. I believe that stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, that they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners.”

“Love is not liking somebody. Anyone can do that. Love is loving things that sometimes you don't like.”

“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.”

“If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.”

“Take a note: it usually works better if you wait until I do something stupid before getting mad at me.”

“All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.”

“You see, Doctor, God didn't kill that little girl. Fate didn't butcher her and destiny didn't feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew… God doesn't make the world this way. We do.”

“Sustaining faith is what sets you through those dark nights of the soul when you don’t know where to go or what to do, and it seems that you can’t last another day…but because of your faith in God, you do.”

“But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living?”

“There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I'd like to know. I wish someone could tell me.”

“The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.”

“Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams — they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do — they all contain truths”

“Always believe in yourself. Do this and no matter where you are, you will have nothing to fear.”

“Do you think there’s anything to eat in this forest?”
“Yes,” said the wizard bitterly, “us.”

“So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don't sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late. - Lee Iacocca”

“If you must err, do so on the side of audacity.”

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”

“I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.”

“The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.”

“Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.”