Quotes about doing

page 99

“Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person's silence.”

“I cry to you, my Lord, my rock! Do not be deaf to me, for if you are silent, I shall go down to the pit like the rest. Hear my voice raised in petition as I cry to you for help, as I raise my hands, my Lord, toward your holy of holies.”

“My mother moves so fast I do not even see it coming. But she slaps my face hard enough to make my head snap backward. She leaves a print that stains me long after it’s faded. Just so you know: shame is five-fingered.”

“Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.”

“you can't escape the world, and you're not responsible for how you look, if you look beauticious or butt ugly. you're not responsible for how you feel or what you say or how you act or anything you do. it's all out of your hands.”

“Freedom isn't just about voting and marrying and kissing on the street, although all of these things are important. Freedom is also about what you will allow yourself to do.”

“The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is.”

“Teacher: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Marji: I'll be a prophet.”

“But hardly anybody ever finds out that their actions really, actually, hurt other people! People don’t get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don’t stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.”

“Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.”

“Now what state do you live in?'
'Denial.”

“What makes people so impatient is what I can't figure; all the guy had to do was wait.”

“the rest of the girls pretended not to notice. That's just what best friends do.”

“I lost you once, I think I can do it again.”

“She surprised him by agreeing. "Yes, I was simply curious, and no, I would never criticize you in front of your followers. Do you have the patience to endure one more question, husband?"

"What is it?"

"When do you suppose you'll leave me behind?”

“I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.”

“Mrs. Jennings was a widow, with an ample jointure. She had only two daughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and she had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world.”

“Resolved, always to do that, which I shall wish I had done when I see others do it.”

“Nico was wrong. The Book of Fate isn't already written. It's written every day.

Some scars never heal.
Then again, some do.”

“You think you want to know something, and then once you do, all you can think about is erasing it from your mind.”

“I don't know how much longer I can keep going without a friend. I used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what having a friend was like.”

“In our relationships, how much can we allow them to become new, and how much do we cling to what they used to be yesterday?”

“Men all do about the same thing when they wake up.”

“Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.”

“do it from the heart or not at all.”

“Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.”

“So?" Bob said. "Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved."
"Bob," I said. "You can't just go around killing people."
"I know. That's why you should do it."
"No, no. I can't go around killing people, either.”

“The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret… but you wont find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled.”

“I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think everyone is special in their own way. I really do.”

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.”

“If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection.”

“Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.”

“… how do you run and play when you feel like there are bricks of the heaviest sadness weighing down every part of your body? How do you laugh and talk when there are no laughs left inside of you?”

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.”

“As far as I can tell, dumping soda on people is the equivalent of ‘Hi, it’s nice to meet you’ in this part of the world. Frankly, I think standard greetings work better, but what do I know?”

“When you were the son of evil, there was little you couldn't do, own, or kill, and yet her mortal self was an elusive trophy he could touch, but not put on his shelf.

This made her rare. This made her precious.

This made him… love her.”

“I'm all about doing the impossible.”

“I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.”

“… It's hard to make changes. Things get so comfortable and you don't want to move. Maybe it would do you good to be a little uncomfortable for a while, and do something different…”

“Oh God. Why, oh why, did I have to be the one to deliver this news? Why couldn’t I be locked away in my room or the library doing something enjoyable, like homework?”

“The great courageous act that we must all do, is to have the courage to step out of our history and past so that we can live our dreams.”

“Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.”

“How rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at sea, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us.”

“But you’re everything I want. Remember that. I love you, Lia. Not a title. And not because a piece of paper says I should. Because I do.”

“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”

“Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.”

“Don't lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don't do it again. Ever”

“Ah," said the jailer, "do not always brood over what is impossible, or you will be mad in a fortnight.”

“If we do something over and over, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over, it becomes normal.”

“I just do the best I can under the circumstances.”

“Whoa!" she says as I plow into her. " What are you DOING? Get off me!" I hang on tight. "Can't a girl just hug her big sister?" She stops fighting me. "Are you dying? Am I dying? Did Grandma die? I laugh. "No one died." "Then get off!”

“I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.”

“The world is full of good people who do bad things!”

“bad things, like good things don't happen any more often than they ought to by chance. the universe has no mind, no feelings, and no personality, so it doesn't do things in order to either hurt or please you. bad things happen because things happen.”

“The strange thing was, he wanted to like everyone. He just couldn't find a way to do it.”

“It never seemed fair that just when you're old enough to do anything you want, you can't. You have to start working, so there's no time. And if there is time, you're not working, so there's no money.”

“It is a curious truth that many cats enjoy warmer, more convivial, even affectionate relationships with humans than they could ever do with fellow felines.”

“Everything that I decide to do means something, otherwise I don't do them.”

“There’s always a choice. That’s God’s way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There’s no set of leg-irons on you. But… this is what God wants of you.”

“And I don't care what anybody says; I like doing it, and it's what I shall continue to do”

“I scared myself, because once you've thought long and hard enough about doing something that is colossally stupid, you feel like you've actually done it, and then you're never quite sure what your limits are.”

“Oh Alexander," she said, "what do you want from me…"
"Everything!" he whispered fiercely.”

“Do you love me?" he asked.
I fell silent.
"For the rest of it is glitter and noise," he said. "At the heart of it all is love. You make that choice, and you go forward from there.”

“What… what are you doing?"
"I won't know," he said with a grin. He took a step towards me. "But I'm pretty sure you were doing it too.”

“[T]he Christian is unable to sin and not care… They may sin, but they cannot do so comfortably and continually. They are very much aware of their wrong actions, and they are very miserable.”

“The mistakes don't matter. It's what you do when you mess up that does.”

“And what will you do now? You'll collect loves
Like stamps. You've got doubles and no one
Will trade you and you have the damaged ones.”

“My gran had always told me that a woman--any woman worth her salt--could do whatever she had to.”

“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”

“Let them go, I tell myself. Say good-bye and forget them. I do my best, thinking of them one by one, releasing them like birds from the protective cages inside me, locking the doors against their return.”

“I do like men who come out frankly and own that they are not gods.”

“BE QUIET!!… What do you want…? I was in the middle of saying something nice…”

“Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off and they are nearly always doing it.”

“Incredible cosmic powers do not equate with high IQ.”

“I don't know yet what I am capable of doing, but, by God, I have genius -- I know it too well to blush behind it.”

“You need Power,
only when you want
to do something harmful
otherwise
Love is enough to get everything done.”

“Jules: Why are you on the floor?
Emma: I've heard roling out of bed in the morning helps you build up resistance to surprise attacks.
Jules: Oh yeah? What does screaming "holy crap!" do?
Emma: That part's optional.”

“If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, "This sucks. I'm going to do my own thing.”

“The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.”

“ONE THING I AM NEVER GOING TO DO WHEN I GROW UP
Is fall in love, drop out of college, learn to subsist on water and air, have a species named after me, and ruin my life.”

“Because things can get better, and if you give them a chance, they usually do.”

“But let us not put our sights too high. We do not have to be saviours of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time. (163)”

“Do I know what people say? Sure. I shrug it off. what else can you do? Stop people from talking? You might as well try to stop the wind from blowing.”

“It is so easy to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up at the sky to realize it isn't that way at all.”

“Those who really love you don't mean to hurt you and if they do, you can't see it in their eyes but it hurts them too.”

“I could buy that she would murder me in a fit of rage, poison me out of flaming jealousy, or bomb my car out of sheer, stubborn pique. But she would never do it and feel nothing.”

“I wonder what ants do on rainy days?”

“Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.”

“I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond.”

“Healthy striving is about striving for internal goals, and wanting to be our best selves. Perfectionism is not motivated internally. Perfectionism is about what people will think. And you do not see effective leaders in corporations sitting on an email for three hours to make sure it’s worded just perfectly. You don’t. They have work to get done.. You don’t see elite athletes letting themselves be discouraged by a bad workout or a single bad performance. It happens all the time. They’re accustomed to winning, they’re accustomed to losing. Once perfectionism becomes the goal, they’re out of the sport.”

“I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. But it doesn’t last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.”

“I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”

“If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big colour photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer.”

“Curran looked at me. “What the hell was I supposed to do, catch the werebison as he was falling?”

“Tsze-Kung asked, “Is there one word with which to act in accordance throughout a lifetime?” The Master said, “Is not reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”

“Everything you do makes my body scream with loneliness.”

“Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.”

“To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.”

“I suppose we must work on being gracious and grateful until we can do for ourselves. Someday the wheel of fate will put us in a position to be of use to them, and we will remember how much easier it is to give help than it is to accept it.”