Already Quotes

The incremental approach to change is effective when what you want is more of what you've already got. ~ Richard Pascale

He kissed her a little more deeply and was happy to hear her gasp of pleasure. The sound brought his erection back to life, and he brushed his fingertips over her collarbone.
"How 'bout you hop on up here with me?"
"I don't think you're quite ready for that yet."
"Wanna bet?" He took her hand and put it under the hospital sheets.
The throathy laugh as she gripped him gently was yet another marvel. Just like her constant presence in his room, her fierce protection of him, her love, her strength.
She was everything to him. His whole world. He'd gone from being blasé about his death to being desperate to live. For her. For them. For their future.
"What do you say we give it another day?" she said.
"An hour."
"Until you can sit up on your own."
"Deal."
Thank God he was a fast healer.
(..............)
Wrath struggled on the bed, trying to force himself upright so that he bore the weight of his upper body on his hips.
Beth watched him the whole time, refusing to help.
When he was steady, he rubbed his hands together in anticipation. He could feel her skin already.
"Wrath," she said with warning as he beamed at her.
"Come up here, leelan, A deal's a deal. ~ J.R. Ward

In short, we would discover, as we should already, that logic is in the eye of the logician. (For instance, here's an idea for theorists and logicians: if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? I leave further improvisation up to you.) ~ Gloria Steinem

...if the United States never intended to help, it shouldn't have built up the expectation. The false promise of help was cruel and inexcusable and it would only get worse over time. If a man is drowning and a boat drives past in the distance, the man accepts his death and goes down quietly. If a man is drowning and a boat pulls up beside him, dangles a life jacket, tells the world he wants to help, but then doesn't throw the life jacket, the drowning man dies crying and his family might take a blood oath to take revenge on the boat's crew. This type of anger was already starting to build in Syria and al-Qaeda would capitalize on it. ~ Richard Engel

At the most embryonic state, the tendency toward the fullness of actualization is already latent. ~ Francois Jullien

Business is merely a form of warfare in which each combatant strives to get the business away from his competitors and at the same time keep them from getting what he already has. ~ David McCullough

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. ~ Marge Piercy

The estate tax punishes years of hard work and robs families of part of their heritage by imposing a huge penalty on inheritance after death - a tax on money that has already been taxed. ~ Mike Fitzpatrick

The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter of spirits in which it was difficult to determine whether pleasure or pain bore the greatest share. The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister's match which she had feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness too great to be probable and at the same time dreaded to be just from the pain of obligation were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true He had followed them purposely to town he had taken on himself all the trouble and mortification attendant on such a research in which supplication had been necessary to a woman whom he must abominate and despise and where he was reduced to meet frequently meet reason with persuade and finally bribe the man whom he always most wished to avoid and whose very name it was punishment to him to pronounce. He had done all this for a girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her. But it was a hope shortly checked by other considerations and she soon felt that even her vanity was insufficient when required to depend on his affection for her - for a woman who had already refused him - as able to overcome a sentiment so natural as abhorrence against relationship with Wickham. Brother-in-law of Wickham Every kind of pride must revolt from the connection. He had to be sure done much. She was ashamed to think how much. But he had given a reason for ~ Jane Austen

Other means) claiming to Hobie that I'd already sold the ~ Donna Tartt

I missed you even when I was with you. That's been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

MiSSS SScott
points to the numbers
along the wall.
I count up to twenty.
The class claps
on its own.
I'm furious,
unable to explain
I already learned
fractions and how to purify water.
So this is what dumb feels like. I hate, hate,
hate it. ~ Thanhha Lai

Girls and women, in their new, particular unfolding, will only in passing imitate men's behavior and misbehavior and follow in male professions. Once the uncertainty of such transitions is over it will emerge that women have only passed through the spectrum and the variety of those (often laughable) disguises in order to purify their truest natures from the distorting influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life abides and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more trustingly, are bound to have ripened more thoroughly, become more human human beings, than a man, who is all too light and has not been pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of a bodily fruit and who, in his arrogance and impatience, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity which inhabits woman, brought to term in pain and humiliation, will, once she has shrugged off the conventions of mere femininity through the transformations of her outward status, come clearly to light, and men, who today do not yet feel it approaching, will be taken by surprise and struck down by it. One day (there are already reliable signs which speak for it and which begin to spread their light, especially in the northern countries), one day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer just signify the opposite of the male but something in their own right, something which does not make one think of any supplement or limit but only of life and existence: the female human being.

This ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Duny," said Geralt seriously, "Calanthe, Pavetta. And you, righteous knight Tuirseach, future king of Cintra. In order to become a witcher, you have to be born in the shadow of destiny, and very few are born like that. That's why there are so few of us. We're growing old, dying, without anyone to pass our knowledge, our gifts, on to. We lack successors. And this world is full of Evil which waits for the day none of us are left." "Geralt," whispered Calanthe. "Yes, you're not wrong, queen. Duny! You will give me that which you already have but do not know. I'll return to Cintra in six years to see if destiny has been kind to me. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

I opened the Woodstock Festival even though I was supposed to be fifth. I said, 'What am I doing here? No, no, not me, not first!' I had to go on stage because there was no one else to go on first - the concert was already two-and-a-half hours late. ~ Richie Havens

The fact that you are attending church does not mean you are already serving the Lord ~ Sunday Adelaja

All four of the boys were frozen, mesmerized, the weirdest chill washing over their skin while they watched this miraculous growing animal devouring the earth in every direction, every direction where there was grass and not bothering them at all on the pavement. The fire came as high as their waists, their chests, gorgeous beyond anything they'd seen, the rippling orange sheets hanging in the air like a desert mirage, like something that was there and not there. Black smoke curled above the flames, announcing to the neighborhood this very private thing that Albie had made. Fire! Fire! they'd be calling in the industrial park, even though it was already starting to die out around the edges. The fire needed so much. The boys could see it looking for more grass, anything to keep itself alive. It would have happily burned them up if it meant going for another minute. ~ Ann Patchett

I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam, or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits. When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded! In fact, of course, He knows all about this. One of the very things Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits. God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam, or putting Him in your debt.

Then comes another discovery. Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like.

It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction. When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. ~ C.S. Lewis

We know from Philo there was already a Jewish tradition of a preexistent being named Jesus who was the Form of God (Element 40). It cannot be claimed Philo came up with this notion on his own, since that would entail a wildly improbable coincidence. So we surely are looking at a derivation from an earlier Divine Logos doctrine. Then we're told this Jesus did not try to seize power from God in heaven (as by some accounts Satan had once done, resulting in his fall to the lower realms), but instead divested himself of all his power and higher being, enslaving himself (either to God's plan or the world of flesh) by 'being made' [genomenos] in the 'likeness' of men (not literally becoming a man, but assuming a human body, and thus wearing human 'flesh'). ~ Richard C. Carrier

It's tough for parents to talk to children about heavy-weight topics such as peer pressure, drugs and morality if they don't already have a closeness. A parent can't just all of a sudden pick out an hour and talk to a son about being morally clean if the parent and child haven't spent much time together for three or four years. I think closeness is developed more quickly by having fun together. ~ David A. Bednar

You can't break what's broken already. ~ LeAnn Rimes

I went through very emotional things this year, like being in the French Open finals already feeling like you got it and kind of losing it. ~ Martina Hingis

The function of mindfulness is, first, to recognize the suffering and then to take care of the suffering. The work of mindfulness is first to recognize the suffering and second to embrace it. A mother taking care of a crying baby naturally will take the child into her arms without suppressing, judging it, or ignoring the crying. Mindfulness is like that mother, recognizing and embracing suffering without judgement.
So the practice is not to fight or suppress the feeling, but rather to cradle it with a lot of tenderness. When a mother embraces her child, that energy of tenderness begins to penetrate into the body of the child. Even if the mother doesn't understand at first why the child is suffering and she needs some time to find out what the difficulty is, just her acto f taking the child into her arms with tenderness can alreadby bring relief. If we can recognize and cradle the suffering while we breathe mindfully, there is relief already. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Your two selves: Most people are not aware of the fact that they have two different selves. You have a mind and a spirit (consciousness), and though they seem like one thing, they are separate. The way to realize that this is true is to realize that something has to be listening to the thoughts created by your mind.

What is it that hears your thoughts?

There is the part of you that thinks and the part that hears the thoughts. The thinking part is your mind; the part that hears the thoughts is your spiritual-self. You do not actually hear thoughts through your ears, because your mind is already inside your head. The point is, your spiritual-self receives the things the mind creates in a similar way to hearing them.

Check it out: Just ask yourself, what is it that is hearing the thoughts you are thinking right now?

It is your spiritual-self, the same thing that receives all life. ~ Michael Smith

I wept for relationships not possible due to denial and dreams locked in the back of people's minds, all of the bits of life that lay dormant until the babblings of televisions and nursing homes sweep them away. It makes me wonder how many of the dreams we had originally have already been forgotten. ~ Christopher Hawke

Maintain the name you build. It is easier to make a good brand than to maintain a good brand already made. Wining a trophy is not as difficult as defending it. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

It makes no since to fight a war that is already won. ~ Angela Brown

Third, for people who aren't doing it already, take classes - they're worthwhile. Workshops or classes - a workshop is where you do actually get feedback on your work, not just something where you go and sit for a day. ~ Octavia Butler

A true calling is aimed at the genius qualities already set within each person ... ~ Michael Meade

Ultimately, nobody can get more out of things, including books, than he already knows. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Perhaps no two events ever united so intimately and forceably to combat and expel prejudice, as the Revolution of America, and the Alliance with France. Their effects are felt, and their influence already extends as well to the old world as the new. Our style and manner of thinking have undergone a revolution, more extraordinary than the political revolution of the country. We see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used. ~ Thomas Paine

At some point, most of us reach a place where we're afraid to fail, where we instinctively avoid failure and stick only to what is placed in front of us or only what we're already good at.This confines us and stifles us. We can be truly successful only at something we're willing to fail at. If we're unwilling to fail, then we're unwilling to succeed. ~ Mark Manson

When you play the old songs, it's awesome and I love it, but it's not work because everyone already knows it and it's easy. I have to break the crowd in on a new song and that's what is kind of cool and fun. ~ Shwayze

The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part of who you are. However, start by acknowledging and recognizing abundance without. See the fullness of life all around you. The warmth of the sun on your skin, the display of magnificent flowers outside a florist's shop, biting into a succulent fruit, or getting soaked in an abundance of water falling from the sky. The fullness of life is there at every step. The acknowledgment of that abundance that is all around you awakens the dormant abundance within. Then let it flow out. When you smile at a stranger, there is already a minute outflow of energy. ~ Eckhart Tolle

But I would like to reach the point where I could cut up an illustrated magazine at random and see to it that the parts would each become a painting. I cannot properly explain it right now. Already now I am searching for the most boring and irrelevant photo material that I can find. And I would like to get to the point soon where this determined irrelevance could be retained, in favor of something that would be covered up otherwise by artifice. ~ Gerhard Richter

For some women, a man is their whole meal. For me, life is a full meal and a man is just the hot sauce. If a man wants to be my whole meal, I say, 'That's nice, baby, but right now, I'm already full. ~ Lisa Nicole Carson

He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn't evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil, then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares. ~ Karl Marlantes

Everything that informs us of something useful that we didn't already know is a potential signal. If it matters and deserves a response, its potential is actualized. ~ Stephen Few

We spent a few days up Ben Nevis, which is the biggest mountain in the U.K., and there was one day when we had to make a decision whether we were going to go to the summit or not. It was already getting dark, but we made the call to go and made the summit, but as soon as we got there, this blizzard just hit. ~ Martin Henderson

Oh am I late? No, I already graduated
And you can live through anything if Magic made it
They say I talk with so much emphasis
Ooh they so sensitive ~ Kanye West

When you're playing a character in a book, there's already a lot of pressure because all of the millions of people who have read the series have been able to envision and become very attached to the characters. ~ Nikki Reed

The future doesn't exist. It hasn't happened yet. The past doesn't exist. It has already happened. ~ John Daido Loori

Sometimes you can play against type, or you can just repeat what they've already done. It can be an obstacle; it's a very fine line. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

If it hadn't been for this chance hospital encounter, accidental in all senses, Victor might never have courted a girl. He already felt well on his way to middle age, and his social life was still limited to the chess club. Victor didn't really feel the need for another person in his life, in fact he found the concept of "sharing" a life bizarre. He had mathematics, which filled up his time almost completely, so he wasn't entirely sure what he wanted with a wife. Women seemed to him to be in possession of all kinds of undesirable properties, chiefly madness, but also a multiplicity of physical drawbacks - blood, sex, children - which were unsettling and other. ~ Kate Atkinson

I don't think I came to music. I think music came to me - or was already embedded when I came into this sphere, this realm, this Earth. ~ June Millington

President Bush's emergency declaration for the State of Texas is great news for the people and communities that have experienced the devastating wildfires firsthand. Already, communities have rallied to help neighbors in need. ~ Randy Neugebauer

When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won't intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel. ~ Anton Chekhov

Mom was bossy. Even in print I could hear her tone, smugly congratulating me on already earning the prince's affections and telling me firmly to keep up whatever I was doing.
Yeah, Mom, I'll just keep telling the prince that he has absolutely no shot with me and offend him as often as I can. Great plan. ~ Kiera Cass

And if I die sometime – I'm going to die very soon – I know I'll die as I am,
without accepting this world, perceiving it close up and far away, inside and out,
perceiving but not accepting it. I'll die and He will ask me: "Was it good there for
you? Was it bad there for you?" I will be silent, with lowered eyes. I'll be silent
that muteness familiar to everyone who knows the outcome of days of hard
boozing. For isn't the life of man a momentary boozing of the soul? And an eclipse
of the soul as well? We are all as if drunk, only everybody in his own way: one
person has drunk more, the next less. And it works differently on each: the one
laughs in the face of this world, while the next cries on its bosom. One has already
thrown up and feels better, while the next is only starting of feel like throwing up.
But me, what am I? I've partaken of much, but nothing works on me. I haven't
really laughed properly, even once, and I've never thrown up, even once. I, who
have partaken of so much in this world that I've lost count and the sequence of it
all, I am soberer than anyone else in this world; ~ Venedikt Erofeev

I am speechless: what can I answer?
I put hand on my mouth.
I have said too much already;
now I will speak no more. ~ Stephen Mitchell

Instead, the room, which had seen her grow to maturity, would see her dry up and fade. The gilt mirror in the corner would bear its dispassionate testimony. All the ornaments and furnishings would be her companions through the years to come. And she realized that she would come to hate them, if she didn't already hate them, as one hates the witnesses of one's humiliation and futility. ~ Winston Graham

I make music to generate atmospheres, not to complement already existing ones. ~ Tom Jenkinson

We live in the information age and the sheer volume of it being available everywhere, creates a need for information that has value. Yes, we can look anything up on Google but who has the time? Can we trust that the information comes from a trustworthy source? Your experience has given you a deep knowing of your subject matter. You have insights and ideas that others may not figure out on their own. You are holding a roadmap that has great value to someone. What has been stopping you from sharing your knowledge? Perhaps you have been afraid to put yourself out there because of a fear of rejection? Let me get straight to the point. Get over it right now! Ponder the following quote for a moment and then move on with the decision to write rather than not to write, because not to write is not "to be". You deny yourself and your audience. You have had an incredible journey to get to where you are and have amassed experience and knowledge. Now combine that with your unique voice and be heard. You are already an expert. Accept it. ~ Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

You should read Wodehouse when you're well and when you're poorly;when you're travelling, and when you're not;when you're feeling clever, and when you're feeling utterly dim. Wodehouse always lifts your spirits,no matter how high they happen to be already. ~ Lynne Truss

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about.

They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three.

There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another ~ Cormac McCarthy

No need to fix what God already put his paint brush on ~ J. Cole

We already have an annual wealth tax on homes, the major asset of the middle class. It's called the property tax. Why not a small annual tax on the value of stocks and bonds, the major assets of the wealthy? ~ Robert Reich

It could have been anyone," I said.
"All the women who look at you when we go out.
Ms. Bisette at school. God, even Hiyam. Why me?"
He stared at the coffee table,
the reflection of snow like confectioner's sugar sifting down.
"It couldn't have been anyone," he said softly.
"For a long time before I met you, I felt my life was this kind of test.
I was in deep, cold water, swimming for shore,
and my arms were getting tired,my skin numb.
On the shore was everything I thought I wanted: a better job, a house, a family."
He swallowed, his throat cording with tension.
"But I could barely keep my head above water.
Eventually I stopped seeing the shore. Only cold dark blue, in all directions.
I know it's cliché, but when I met you, my eyes opened.
I looked around, and realized I could stand up whenever I wanted.
There was firm ground under my feet.
That shore in the distance was an illusion.
I was already somewhere beautiful. ~ Leah Raeder

The earliest intelligence of the travellers' safe arrival at Antigua, after a favourable voyage, was received; though not before Mrs. Norris had been indulging in very dreadful fears, and trying to make Edmund participate them whenever she could get him alone; and as she depended on being the first person made acquainted with any fatal catastrophe, she had already arranged the manner of breaking it to all the others, when Sir Thomas's assurances of their both being alive and well made it necessary to lay by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches for a while. ~ Jane Austen

Gregory smiled a little, holding up an empty syringe. "I'm afraid you don't have all that much choice in the matter. I added a little something to your IV line. We'll see you in a few hours."
"What - ?" My eyes widened. "You bastard."
"My parents were married."
"You could have ... could have asked me ... " My voice was already slowing down. I didn't know whether it was psychosomatic or just very well timed, but either way, I was pissed. ~ Mira Grant

A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. In a different connection, we have already spoken of the tendency there was to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But in robbing the present of its reality there lay a certain danger. It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities ~ Viktor E. Frankl

If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all. ~ Judith Butler

As a nation, we are on a path of rapid and deep systemic change to our health system, and it's going to unfold for some time to come. It is already transforming the fundamental nature of the U.S. medical care delivery system. ~ John E. McDonough

Ordinary philosophy is like a hound hunting his own tail. The more he hunts the farther he has to go, and his nose never catches up with his heels, because it is forever ahead of them. So the present is already a foregone conclusion, and I am ever too late to understand it...The truth is that we travel on a journey that was accomplished before we set out; and the real end of philosophy is accomplished, not when we arrive at, but when we remain in, our destination (being already there) - which may occur vicariously in this life when we cease our intellectual questioning ~ Benjamin Paul Blood

Life is a temporary condition, Henry. And it's uncertain. That's why you have to seize chances when you find them. Pursue what you want. Take risks. Live, love...all of it. Every last one of us is going to die, but if we don't live as we truly want, if we're not with the one we want to be with, we're dead already. ~ Martha Brockenbrough

One of the odder services the Villa Candessa provided for its long-term guests was its "likeness cakes" - little frosted simulacra fashioned after the guests by the inn's Camorr-trained pastry sculptor. On a silver tray beside the looking glass, a little sweetbread Locke (with raisin eyes and almond-butter blond hair) sat beside a rounder Jean with dark chocolate hair and beard. The baked Jean's legs were already missing. A few moments later, Jean was brushing the last buttery crumbs from the front of his coat. "Alas, poor Locke and Jean." "They died of consumption," said Locke. ~ Scott Lynch

Then she wound up the clock. Witches didn't have much use for clocks, but she kept it for the tick ... well, mainly for the tick. It made a place seem lived in. It had belonged to her mother, who'd wound it up every day. It hadn't come as a surprise to her when her mother died, firstly because Esme Weatherwax was a witch and witches have an insight into the future and secondly because she was already pretty experienced in medicine and knew the signs. So she'd had a chance to prepare herself, and hadn't cried at all until the day afterward, when the clock stopped right in the middle of the funeral lunch. She'd dropped a tray of ham rolls and then had to go and sit by herself in the privy for a while, so that no one would see. ~ Terry Pratchett

Last night you dreamt of a room -
a room full of fish,
and a swimming pool
where you waded knee-deep
and hauled them all in

except for one, already dead,
a large bluefish wedged
into a corner, its back stiff.

You remember it later: its eye
like a button,
a button on another person's coat. ~ Talvikki Ansel

China is not only formidable, it is also aggressively building its own economic infrastructure. Just a few years from now, China will rival the U.S. and the European Union in global market power. It already has surpassed us in population. ~ Jo Ann Emerson

Who knows what will happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning. ~ Mary Oliver

The virtue you would like to have, assume it is already yours, appropriate it, enter into the part and live the character just as the great actor is absorbed in ... the part he plays. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If I go into a season and I say, 'For f***'s sake, if we don't win anything, they will all leave,' I have already lost. The problem of the media is always to imagine the worst. The problem of the manager is always to imagine the best. ~ Arsene Wenger

Perhaps that is the real surprise of love; it exists, but one may not attribute causes and effects to it. The existence may appear to be a mere fallacy to the minds of some, and by the time they realise what hit them, they would already be down and dead. ~ Faraaz Kazi

What do you say to your best friend when you stand at the gates of the gates of hell? Nothing. If it's your best friend, she already knows. ~ Eliza Crewe

She glowed, not from the firelight, but as if lit from within. I wondered if she were already a ghost. ~ Julie Berry

When you're pregnant, people feel like they can come up and give you unsolicited advice. When I was nine months pregnant, this one woman came up and she said, I have one word for you: epidural. And I was like, Oh my God, thanks. But we already picked a name. ~ Bonnie McFarlane

If you wish to be popular in society consent to be taught many things you already know. ~ Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

Look at these cliffs! Some are abrupt and unpredictable. Some other are soft and with smooth slopes. Yet, they all have the same purpose: either to lure you and bring you down or to teach you how to stand up, firmly, on their rims while contemplating the horizon. Here, you have the perfect vision of the abyss beneath. the majesty of the skies above, or the endlessness of the horizon in front; but you can't see what's behind, and that's how it should be! What's the point in contemplating something that you already know and lived? Haven't your coming here made you know the paths on which you walked? That's why, what belongs to the past should remain there. The past gives us the lessons. We do not need a heavier luggage than this! ~ Irina Serban

The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past I find already sovered with scribbles, such as Plato, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as narrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulant as humanity. ~ G.K. Chesterton

You've dated a shoplifter. A drug addict. A girl who claimed that her roommate kept her locked in a dumpster. She was admitted to Mulberry not too long ago, if I recall, right? They diagnosed her with schizophrenia." Reece nodded reluctantly. "For the record, I only dated her for two months. And also for the record, she's doing a lot better." "Hmm," Camden replied. "There's the one who put salt on all her food then complained incessantly of bloating problems. Oh yeah! And the one who wanted you to tie her up and beat the shit out of her every night." "All right already!" Reece snapped. "I get it. I haven't had the best of luck with normal women. ~ S. Walden

Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him. ~ Joseph Heller

Philosophy has become the shadow of itself over the years. Nine parts history and one part reflection on history. It has been ages since anything original came forth in the field. All the good thinking has already been done. Nowadays, philosophers are mostly institutionalized academics - like me - focused more on the politics of tenure than on philosophizing. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

I wanted this to be easy. I wanted to know for sure who I loved and why. I wanted to be in love without a hint of doubt.
But I realised that I could want as hard as I liked; the reality was already messier than I liked. I was in over my head ... and I had a panicked feeling that I wasn't going to be able to manoeuvre this without screwing up big time. ~ Liz Reinhardt

But what are facts, really, except things we've already proven? There could be lots of almost-facts out there, still waiting for proof. ~ Kathryn Reiss

I'm not technical. When I listen to music, I gravitate more toward the sonic aspect of it. The technical stuff of it, I get bored with it. These long solos? OK, already. You know your scales, big deal. I know it, too, but I don't want to do that. ~ Joey Santiago

Vague expression permits the hearer to imagine whatever suits him and what he already thinks in any case. ~ Theodor Adorno

You cannot hide from danger. Death floats on the air, creeps through the window, comes with the handshake of a stranger. If we stop living because we fear death, then we have already died.
-Raistlin Majere ~ Margaret Weis

He sometimes felt that life was something that had already risen, and all of this, the Jackson Pollack of spring, summer, and fall, the vague refrigeration and tinfoiled sky of wintertime, was just a falling, really, originward, in a kind of correction, as if by spritual gravity, towards the wiser consciousness
or consciousnessless, maybe; could gravity trick itself like that?
of death. It was a kind of movement both very slow and very fast; there was both too much and not enough time to think. ~ Tao Lin

«"I meant, tell me all about this steampunk thing!" Gavin broke in. "How does that concept work out for you people, here in Brazil?"
"You don't know about steampunk?" shouted Xavier, dubiously.
"Well, I don't read many novels! Because I'm kinda fully-booked already! But, obviously, you're a science fiction writer at a Futurist conference! And I can see that you're all dressed up like some fancy guy from the past, from the 19th century! So what gives with that? What is all that about?"» ~ Bruce Sterling

PERIODIC MOOD-CHANGES We have already spoken of the affective concomitants of common migraines - elated and irritable prodromal states, states of dread and depression associated with the main phase of the attack, and states of euphoric rebound. Any or all of these may be abstracted as isolated periodic symptoms of relatively short duration - some hours, or at most two or three days, and as such may present themselves as primary emotional disorders. The most acute of these mood-changes, generally no more than an hour in duration, usually represents concomitants or equivalents of migraine aura. We may confine our attention at this stage to attacks of depression, or truncated manic-depressive cycles, occurring at intervals in patients who have previously suffered from attacks of undoubted (classical, common, abdominal, etc.) migraine. ~ Oliver Sacks

The haters just don't get it...
They're never going to catch up.
Because while they're talking about how "lucky" you are,
you're working.
While they're talking about what they're going to do, you're already doing it.
While they're making resolutions, you're setting behaviors. ~ Steve Maraboli

As long as you remain in your private vacuum, you can pretend you are in harmony with the One. But the moment you pick up the clay, electronic or otherwise, you become a demiurge, and he who embarks on the creation of worlds is already tainted with corruption and evil. ~ Umberto Eco

When an archer is shooting for nothing, he has all his skill. If he shoots for a brass buckle, he is already nervous. If he shoots for a prize of gold, he goes blind or sees two targets - He is out of his mind! His skill has not changed. But the prize divides him. He cares. He thinks more of winning than of shooting- And the need to win drains him of power. ~ Zhuangzi

The silence lengthened, becoming strained and awkward until it was broken by the goose's imperious honk.
Swift glanced at the massive bird. "You have a companion, I see."
When Daisy explained what the two boys had been doing with the goose, Swift grinned. "Clever lads."
The remark did not strike Daisy as being especially compassionate.
"I want to help him," she said. "But when I tried to get near, he pecked me. I expected a domestic breed would have been a bit more receptive to my approach."
"Greylags are not known for their mild temperaments," Swift informed her. "Particularly males. He was probably trying to show you who was boss."
"He proved his point," Daisy said, rubbing her arm.
Swift frowned as he saw the growing bruise on her arm. "Is that where he pecked you? Let me see."
"No, it's all right - " she began, but he had already come forward.
His long fingers encircled her wrist, the thumb of his other hand passing gently near the dark purple mark. "You bruise easily," he murmured, his dark head bent over her arm.
Daisy's heart dispensed a series of hard thumps before settling into a fast rhythm. He smelled like the outdoors - sun, water, grassy-sweet. And deeper in the fragrance lingered the tantalizing incense of warm, sweaty male. She fought the instinct to move into his arms, against his body…to pull his hand to her breast. The mute craving shocked her.
Glancing up at his downturned face, Daisy found h ~ Lisa Kleypas

I am not going to become crazy in the ring, because I am already crazy. And I am not going to die in the ring. I am going to die in bed as an old man. ~ Roberto Duran

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing. ~ R.D. Laing

When the invocation descends into the heart, if there is darkness within, it illuminates it; and if there is already light, the invocation increases the light and intensifies it. ~ Ibn Ata Allah

I worry I am coming perilously close to violating both of those promises. But still. It is our third wedding anniversary and I am alone in our apartment, my face all mask-tight from tears because, well, because: Just this afternoon, I get a voice mail from Nick, and I already know it's going to be bad, I know ~ Gillian Flynn

Anybody who tunes into Rush Limabaugh already knows what he's going to say and is already inclined to agree. So it winds up creating tribes. ~ George A. Romero

Neil felt a half-second from losing his mind, but then Andrew said his name and Neil's thoughts ground to a startled halt. He was belatedly aware of his hand at his ear and his fingers clenched tight around his phone. He didn't remember pulling it from his pocket or making the decision to dial out. He lowered it and tapped a button, thinking maybe he'd imagined things, but Andrew's name was on his display and the timer put the call at almost a minute already. Neil put the phone back to his ear, but he couldn't find the words for the wretched feeling that was tearing away at him. In three months championships would be over. In four months he'd be dead. In five months the Foxes would be right back here for summer practices with six new faces. Neil could count his life on one hand now. On the other hand was the future he couldn't have: vice-captain, captain, Court. Neil had no right to mourn these missed chances. He'd gotten more than he deserved this year; it was selfish to ask for more. He should be grateful for what he had, and gladder still that his death would mean something. He was going to drag his father and the Moriyamas down with him when he went, and they'd never recover from the things he said. It was justice when he'd never thought he'd get any and revenge for his mother's death. He thought he'd come to terms with it but that hollow ache was back in his chest where it had no right to be. Neil felt like he was drowning. Neil found his voice at last, but the best he h ~ Nora Sakavic