Quality Quotes - Page 34

• I will smile at friend and foe alike and make every effort to find, in him or her, a quality to praise, now that I realize the deepest yearning of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

  Og Mandino

  Inspirational, Effort, Realizing

  Og Mandino (1988). “The Greatest Salesman in the World: Featuring the Ten Vows of Success. The end of the story”, Bantam Dell Publishing Group

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• Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life

  Norman Cousins

  Attitude, Responsibility, Assuming

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• Decades ago, our ancestors realized that it is not just political ideology, religious belief, race, or nationalism that is to blame for a warring world. Rather, they determined that it was the fault of human personality - of humankind's inclination towards evil, in whatever form that is. They divided into factions that sought to eradicate those qualities they believed responsible for the world's disarray.

  Veronica Roth

  Religious, Race, Evil

  Veronica Roth (2013). “Divergent (Divergent Trilogy, Book 1)”, p.29, HarperCollins UK

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• You're easily distracted by the pattern of the cloth and can't see the quality of the threads.

  Maria V. Snyder

  Patterns, Thread, Distracted

  Maria V. Snyder (2012). “Fire Study”, p.34, Harlequin

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• Generosity is another quality which, like patience, letting go, non-judging, and trust, provides a solid foundation for mindfulness practice.

  Jon Kabat-Zinn

  Letting Go, Practice, Generosity

  Jon Kabat-Zinn (2005). “Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life”, Hyperion

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• A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will-o'-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairy lands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Real, Love Is, Flames

  Theodore Dreiser (2016). “Sister Carrie”, p.230, Simon and Schuster

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• The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. ----- "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986

  Anthony Burgess

  Art, Orange, Giving

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• I think the highest forgiveness is to accept that creation is thoroughly tangled, with every possible quality given outlet for expression. People need to accept once and for all that there is only one life and each of us is free to shape it through the choices we make. Seeking can’t get anyone out of the tangle because everything is tangled up…it’s much easier to keep up the fight between good and evil, holy and profane, us and them. But as awareness grows, these opposites begin to calm down in their clashes, and something else emerges- a world you feel at home in.

  Deepak Chopra

  Home, Fighting, Thinking

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• If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves?

  Alain de Botton

  Falling In Love, Lying, Believe

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.15, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Doubt, World, Lead In

  William Makepeace Thackeray (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray (Illustrated)”, p.899, Delphi Classics

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• Be thankful for quality competitors who push you to your limit.

  Michael Josephson

  Being Thankful, Competition, Limits

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• The women we really love are the women who complete us, who have the qualities we can borrow and so become something nearer to whole men. Just as we complete them, of course; it’s not a one-way thing. Leola and I, when romance was stripped away, were too much alike; our strengths and weaknesses were too nearly the same. Together we would have doubled our gains and our losses, but that isn’t what love is.

  Robertson Davies

  Loss, Love Is, Men

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• "Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information." "I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand." "Good Heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?" "I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person."

  Oscar Wilde

  Believe, Wine, Heaven

  "The Importance of Being Earnest".

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• Neighbourliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  People, Claims

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2012). “The Cost of Discipleship”, p.78, Simon and Schuster

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• Nobody wants to worship you if you have the same problems, the same bad breath and messy hair and hangnails, as a regular person. You have to be everything regular people aren’t. Where they fail, you have to go all the way. Be what people are too afraid to be. Become whom they admire. People shopping for a messiah want quality. Nobody is going to follow a loser. When it comes to choosing a savior, they won't settle for just a human being.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Hair, Shopping, Worship You

  Chuck Palahniuk (1999). “Survivor: A Novel”, Anchor

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• What a quality of innocence people have when they don't expect to be harmed.

  Hanif Kureishi

  People, Innocence

  Hanif Kureishi (2010). “Intimacy”, p.9, Faber & Faber

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• Old age deprives the intelligent man only of qualities useless to wisdom.

  Joseph Joubert

  Intelligent, Men, Age

  "Pensees and Letters of Joseph Joubert". Book by Joseph Joubert, 1928.

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• Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

  Rene Descartes

  Men, Thinking, Desire

  Rene Descartes (2008). “Discourse on the Method and the Meditations”, p.11, Cosimo, Inc.

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• She sat down at the table and spent a good hour talking about her husband. She told Judith how they'd met, how he relentlessly pursued her, and finished by mentioning just a hundred or two of his special qualities. The only thing the man wasn't capable of was walking on water… yet. Judith made that comment when her friend paused for breath.

  Julie Garwood

  Husband, Men, Talking

  Julie Garwood (2011). “The Secret”, p.88, Penguin

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• Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't.

  William S. Burroughs

  Cute, Cat, Self

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• The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.

  C. S. Lewis

  Hurt, Kindness, Real

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• Don’t worry, though, because Prince Hubert is very handsome and kind. That’s all you wanted in a boyfriend, wasn’t it?” “No,” I said. She raised an eyebrow. “It must be. If you had admired any other qualities you would have developed them in yourself, wouldn’t you?” Which was really too much. I put my hands on my hips. “Aren’t fairy godmothers supposed to be nice and make you feel better about yourself?” She rolled her eyes. “No, you’re confusing fairy god- mothers with sales clerks.

  Janette Rallison

  Mother, Nice, Eye

  Janette Rallison (2010). “My Fair Godmother”, p.88, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• But I have had enough melodrama in this life, and would willingly give my five senses if they could ensure us our present peace and security. Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind. Of course we have our moments of depression; but there are other moments too, when time, unmeasured by the clock, runs on into eternity and, catching his smile, I know we are together, we march in unison, no flash of thought or opinion makes a barrier between us.

  Daphne du Maurier

  Running, Giving, Mind

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• Each one of us was harmed by being brought into existence. That harm is not negligible, because the quality of even the best lives is very bad—and considerably worse than most people recognize it to be. Although it is obviously too late to prevent our own existence, it is not too late to prevent the existence of future possible people.

  David Benatar

  People, Too Late, Life Is

  David Benatar (2008). “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence”, p.7, Oxford University Press

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• There is a wealth of information built into us ... tucked away in the genetic material in every one of our cells ... without some means of access, there is no way even to begin to guess at the extent and quality of what is there. The psychedelic drugs allow exploration of this interior world, and insights into its nature.

  Alexander Shulgin

  Mean, Cells, Drug

  Alexander Shulgin, Ann Shulgin (1995). “Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story”

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