Unwilling Quotes - Page 2

• We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.

  Jane Austen

  Rooms, Speak, Disposition

  Jane Austen (1853). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.81

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• Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Dream, Mean, Creating

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• Practice can be stated very simply. It is moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others. That seems so simple-except when we substitute for real practice some idea that we should be different or better than we are, or that our lives should be different from the way they are. When we substitute our ideas about what should be (such notions as "I should not be angry or confused or unwilling") for our life as it truly is, then we're off base and our practice is barren.

  Joko Beck

  Hurt, Confused, Real

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• I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions.

  Edward Hopper

  Believe, Records, Emotion

  Edward Hopper, Adam D. Weinberg, Richard R. Brettell, Whitney Museum of American Art (1993). “Hopper in Paris: June 23-September 19, 1993, collection in context”

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• At the door, there was one of those moment when two people realize that they like each other more than they know each other. This is nicer than the opposite situation, but more awkward. You try to remember the protocol for touching. You hate to gush, or presume to much, yet you are unwilling to let the moment pass without without some gesture

  Emma Donoghue

  Hate, Doors, Opposites

  Emma Donoghue (1995). “Hood”

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• Aid can work where there is good governance, and usually fails where governments are unable or unwilling to commit aid to improve the lives of their people.

  Lee H. Hamilton

  Government, People, Failing

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• Each aspect within us needs understanding and compassion. If we are unwilling to give it to ourselves how can we expect the world to give it to us?

  Debbie Ford

  Compassion, Giving, Understanding

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• It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was.

  Charles Dickens

  Writing, Hands, Would Be

  Charles Dickens (2006). “David Copperfield”, p.400, Penguin

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• Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling. And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.

  William Blake

  Shadow, Desire, Degrees

  William Blake, “The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell”

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• Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.

  Mason Cooley

  Looks, Literature, Illness

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• There are many talented people who haven't fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith.

  James Cameron

  Dream, People, Leap Of Faith

  James Cameron, Brent Dunham (2012). “James Cameron: Interviews”, p.113, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• How could I get up there and say, 'People, we've got to do better,' when I was the poster child for everything that was wrong? I've always believed leaders don't ask others to do what they're unwilling to do.

  Mike Huckabee

  Children, People, Leader

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• Let each person do his or her part. If one citizen is unwilling to participate, all of us are going to suffer. For the American idea, though it is shared by all of us, is realized in each one of us.

  Barbara Jordan

  Ideas, Suffering, Citizens

  1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 12 July 1976, New York, NY

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• Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings. "Things as they are" are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become "things as perceived by your wishes.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Divorce, Reality

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.791, Hamilton Books

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• I am now convinced that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards her. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this.

  Jane Austen

  Girl, Hate, Passion

  Jane Austen (2015). “The Jane Austen MEGAPACK TM: All Her Classic Works”, p.475, Wildside Press LLC

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• Exchange the words 'have to' with 'get to.' Exchange the word 'can't' with 'unwilling.

  Jamie Lee Curtis

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• Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?" "I give." "You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.

  David Foster Wallace

  Dog, Night, Giving

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• If anyone is unwilling to descend into himself, because this is too painful, he will remain superficial in his writing. . . If I perform to myself, then it’s this that the style expresses. And then the style cannot be my own. If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Writing, Style, Deceit

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• She felt a cage coming down around her; too late she realized that he had her trapped by the heart. And like any unwilling animal that was well and truly caught, she could escape only by leaving a piece of herself behind.

  Jodi Picoult

  Heart, Animal, Leaving

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• When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.

  Leif Enger

  Miracle, Earth, Persons

  Leif Enger (2001). “Peace Like a River”, p.3, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• Industrial tourism is a threat to the national parks. But the chief victims of the system are the motorized tourists. They are being robbed and robbing themselves. So long as they are unwilling to crawl out of their cars they will not discover the treasures of the national parks and will never escape the stress and turmoil of the urban-suburban complexes which they had hoped, presumably, to leave behind for a while.

  Edward Abbey

  Stress, Long, Car

  Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.49, University of Arizona Press

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• Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It's true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave - now there's a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of the earth.

  Leif Enger

  Pain, Real, Climbing Up

  Leif Enger (2007). “Peace Like a River”, p.8, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

  Robert Frost

  Rain, Eye, Night

  "Acquainted with the Night" l. 1 (1928)

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• Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

  Blaise Pascal

  Evil, Add, Investing

  Blaise Pascal, W. F. Trotter, T. S. Eliot (2003). “Pensees”, p.31, Courier Corporation

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• I am thing that thinks: that is, a things that doubts,affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions.

  Rene Descartes

  Life, Thinking, Perception

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