Bad Things Come In Threes Quotes

Say bad things come in threes, but I don't think that's true. I think bad things keep right on coming. ~ Hugh Howey

they say bad things come in threes, so we got our quota for a while ain't we. ~ Tom Franklin

Bad things come in threes - but then they stop. And start all over again. ~ Hugh Howey

There is a kind of despair involved in creation which I am sure any artist knows all about. In art, as in morality, great things go by the board because at the crucial moment we blink our eyes. When is the crucial moment? Greatness is to recognize it and be able to hold it and to extend it. But for most of us the space between 'dreaming on things to come' and 'it is too late, it is all over' is too tiny to enter. And so we let each thing go, thinking vaguely that it will always be given to us to try again. Thus works of art, and thus whole lives of men, are spoilt by blinking and moving quickly on. I often found that I had ideas for stories, but by the time I had thought them out in detail they seemed to me hardly worth writing, as if I had already 'done' them: not because they were bad, but because they already belonged to the past and I had lost interest. My thoughts were soon stale to me. Some things I ruined by starting them too soon. Others by thinking them so intensely in my head that they were over before they began. Projects would change in a second from hazy uncommitted dreams into unsalvageable ancient history. Whole novels existed only in their titles. ~ Iris Murdoch

What we have been told is how we men can be drawn into Christ-can become part of that wonderful present which the young Prince of the universe wants to offer to His Father-that present which is Himself and therefore us in Him. It is the only thing we were made for. And there are strange, exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in Nature will begin to come right. The bad dream will be over: it will be morning. ~ C.S. Lewis

Think about it. Politics is just a name for the way we get things done ... without fighting. We dicker and compromise and everybody thinks he has received a raw deal, but somehow after a tedious amount of talk we come up with some jury-rigged way to do it without getting anybody's head bashed in. That's politics. The only other way to settle a dispute is by bashing a few heads in ... and that is what happens when one or both sides is no longer willing to dicker. That's why I say politics is good even when it is bad
because the only alternative is force-and somebody gets hurt. -- Senator Tom Fries ~ Robert A. Heinlein

You see, mzungus make these programmes because in their countries they know that everything will work correctly. And when they come to Uganda they still make their programmes but they forget that things don't work here like they do when they are at home. And then when something goes wrong, like there's no petrol, or the road has been flooded, or the battery doesn't work, they can't do all the things in their programme. Sometimes, even when they are at home, the programme doesn't work. At these times, when the programme goes bad, it makes them very unhappy. Very unhappy. ~ Luke F.D. Marsden

People are surprised by how upset they get in this theater of distress. And then they get upset that they are upset. They often try to reassure themselves, saying things like, "Chill, chill, it's only a toy!" They are experiencing something new: you can feel bad about yourself for how you behave with a computer program. Adults come to the upside-down test knowing two things: the Furby is a machine and they are not torturers. By the end, with a whimpering Furby in tow, they are on new ethical terrain. ~ Sherry Turkle

I'll come some day," he said. "But women, my boy, they're the pivot everything turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And it's all through women. Tell me frankly now," he pursued, picking up a cigar and keeping one hand on his glass; "give me your advice. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The days passed. Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good. But, reconciled by his success he yet refused to forgo the privilege of criticizing this order. For the act of criticizing heightened his sense of importance, made him feel larger. Moreover, he did genuinely believe that there were things to criticize. (At the same time, he genuinely liked being a success and having all the girls he wanted.) Before those who now, for the sake of the Savage, paid their court to him, Bernard would parade a carping unorthodoxy. He was politely listened to. But behind his back people shook their heads. 'That young man will come to a bad end,' they said, prophesying the more confidently in that they themselves would in due course personally see to it that the end was bad. 'He won't find another Savage to help him out a second time,' they said. Meanwhile, however, there was the first Savage; they were polite. And because they were polite, Bernard felt positively gigantic - gigantic and at the same time light with elation, lighter than air. ~ Aldous Huxley

I wrote many things for and with John. I know this is one assignment he'd rather I didn't have to take on. Although I had a close – head to head, arm to arm working relationship with John, that proximity never affected the fact that from the moment I met him, through all work, I remain his number one fan. He was a brilliant performer, writer, tactician, business strategist and most importantly, he was the only man that I could dance with. He was a great – a world class – emissary of American humor. John was a patriot, a resident of the most wide open, liberal society on earth, and he took full advantage of it. In come cases, real greatness gives license for real indulgence; whether it's as a reward, as therapy or as sanctuary. For as hard as John worked, there had to be an additional illicit thrill to make the effort all worthwhile. John was a nighthawk, true. But he was not an immoral individual. He was a good man, a kind man, a warm man, a hot man. What we are talking about here is a good man – and a bad boy. Johnny – you can be sure that I'll have my antennae out for the paranatural and the spiritual, and believe me, if there's any contact with him, I'll let you know. ~ Dan Aykroyd

You know what is the problem with trust??
It really stops the conversation, because you take the things for granted,
Things value less to you because you know that, that thing is going to be there for you, no matter what,
You stop talking about love because you believe that you've got the saturation point in your relationship,
And you've got her completely,
And that is the problem. You don't own her,
Because sometimes love is not enough,
And bad is strong to iterate itself with you,
It is much stronger to come back. ~ Nishikant

Mom" I say "Oh honey" she says "The doctor wants to see you to make sure you don't have the same thing that killed your brother. "
She turns to Ms.Logan who looks scandalized by the whole encounter. "These things can run in famalies" she confides.
"Your afraid I'm going to come down with a bad case of getting two in the chest?" I say "cause you might be right about that running in families. ~ Holly Black

Things happen in this life. Sometimes they're good things, and sometimes they're bad things. You have to come to terms with the bad things, especially when you can't change them. ~ Chuck Wendig

My only wish is that we leave room for hope. There is good and bad in all things. We find what we expect to find. We see what we expect to see. I have learned that if I tilt my head just right and squint, the world outside is beautiful. The future is bright. There are good things to come. ~ Hugh Howey

I buy an ice-cream sandwich at the Stop-N-Go on my way home. The taste takes me back to childhood. Back when life was dreaming about things to come and believing that if you really wanted something bad enough, it could and would be yours. I remember praying for a bike for Christmas, and there it was. We prayed for Minnie's gerbil to live and it did. Later, in high school, I asked God for guidance about where to go to college, and that very day, like a kite floating straight from heaven, the acceptance letter came from UNC-Charlotte. ~ Alice J. Wisler

How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do? And how many of those times have ended with you feeling bitter, resenting them for making you feel like your pain doesn't have any substance after all?

Like when you've split up with someone, and you try to communicate the way you feel, because you need to say the words, need to feel that somebody understands just how pissed off and frightened you feel. The problem is, they never do. "Plenty more fish in the sea," they'll say, or "You're better off without them," or "Do you want some of these potato chips?" They never really understand, because they haven't been there, every day, every hour. They don't know the way things have been, the way that it's made you, the way it has structured your world. They'll never realise that someone who makes you feel bad may be the person you need most in the world. They don't understand the history, the background, don't know the pillars of memory that hold you up. Ultimately, they don't know you well enough, and they never can. Everyone's alone in their world, because everybody's life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live.

Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down. ~ Michael Marshall Smith

Come on," Alec said, already stomping down the ramp. "Let's find us a squirrel." He swept the weapon back and forth as he walked, looking for any interlopers. "Or better yet, one of the crazies who might've strayed over here. Too bad these things have to be charged or we could get rid of this virus problem in a jiffy. Sweep these old neighborhoods nice and clean."
Mark joined him on the ground below the Berg, wary that someone might be watching from the ruined homes surrounding them or from the burnt woods beyond those. "Your value of human life brings tears to my eyes," he muttered. ~ James Dashner

If you live in the midst of bad people, bad books, and bad things, you lose your power of detecting bad thoughts when they come teeming about you like microbes. But if every day you spend an hour on God's mountains or upon the broad sea of the Bible, and get some of God's accurate senses into you, you will be able to detect things which are wrong that other people, even Christians, pass without seeing as wrong. ~ F.B. Meyer

I once met a woman who'd been in therapy ... and it seemed like the big thing she'd learned was to ignore everything she thought in the first hour of the day. That's when the negative stuff will try to bring you down, she said, and she was right about that but not much else. You come back from the night with your head and your soul empty, and bad things try to fill you up. There's a lot to get exercised about, if you let it. But if you've got a task, something to fill your head and move your limbs, by the time you've finished it the day has begun ands you're onto the next thing. You're over the hump, like I said. ~ Michael Marshall Smith

Love and appreciation are identical vibrations. Appreciation is the vibration of alignment with who-you-are. Appreciation is the absence of everything that feels bad and the presence of everything that feels good. When you focus upon what you want - ;when you tell the story of how you want your life to be - you will come closer and closer to the vicinity of appreciation, and when you reach it, it will pull you toward all things that you consider to be good in a very powerful way. ~ Esther Hicks

Why hadn't he told me? Because I'd called him a liar and untrustworthy, and had made it plain I wasn't going to change my opinion, no matter what. Then why hadn't he told my brother, who did trust him?
That I couldn't answer. And in a sense it didn't matter. What did matter was that I had been wrong about Shevraeth. I had been so wrong I had nearly gotten a lot of people killed for no reason.
Just thinking it made me grit my teeth, and in a way it felt almost as bad as cleaning the fester from my wounded foot. Which was right, because I had to clean out from my mind the fester caused by anger and hatred. I remembered suddenly that horrible day in Galdran's dungeon when the Marquis had come to me himself and offered me a choice between death and surrender. "It might buy you time," he'd said.
At that moment I'd seen surrender as dishonor, and it had taken courage to refuse. He'd seen that and had acknowledged it in many different ways, including his words two days before about my being a heroine. Generous words, meant to brace me up. What I saw now was the grim courage it had taken to act his part in Galdran's Court, all the time planning to change things with the least amount of damage to innocent people. And when Branaric and I had come crashing into his plans, he'd included us as much as he could in his net of safety. My subsequent brushes with death were, I saw miserably now, my own fault.
I had to respect what he'd done. He'd come to respect us for our ~ Sherwood Smith

It wasn't school that I dreaded at all. School was not half bad. In many ways, this year had been downright fun. No, what I hated most about school was the fact that I had to come here all by myself. Simon and Peter went to their classes and did their own things, and I had to do my own thing. The thing I loved about summer was that I shared it with my brothers. Sure, my brothers and I often fought, but the best times in my life came when I was with them. School was a time when I had to go and do something without a brother at my side. ~ Matthew Buckley

Modern evangelicals like to compare holy things to soft drinks, designer clothes, [and other products in] our modern consumerist culture. The problem with this is not ... the comparison to a created thing. The problem is that it is ... bad poetry. The Bible compares God to very mundane things, but does so with poetic wonder. God shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. ~ Douglas Wilson

Moreover, in fits of anger, in fears, in the disturbances that come over souls in bad fortune and the release from such things that comes with good fortune, in the
experiences brought by diseases and wars and poverty, and the experiences brought upon human beings by the opposite circumstances - in all such situations what is noble and what is ignoble in each case must be taught and defined. ~ Plato

You have to wait for good things to happen - wait and wait and work so hard - but bad things occur out of the blue, like fire alarms triggered in the dead of night, blaring randomly, a shock of sound, a chatter of current from which there is no turning back.
There's only the day that starts like any other, and when it ends, it leaves you shaken, wobbly, unsure of where you stand, the patch of ground that holds your feet dissolving, disintegrating from under you. Often there's a sign, a harbinger of what's to come. Sometimes there are many signs, like black crows scattered in the road, but they blend into the scenery on the path ahead. You can only spot them when you look back. ~ Gennifer Choldenko

Bad things happen to everyone. No one by their behavior can store up any immunity from disaster or tragedy. All any of us can control is how we respond when tough times come. This does not diminish God or his sovereignty in my mind. ~ Janice Cantore

His longterm aspirations were not a subject upon which he allowed himself to dwell. Not because they were in any way bad or bizarre, but because he had come to realize he didn't have any. Nothing specific anyway. He'd never pictured himself as anything in particular. Just a situation where he made enough money doing something... anything... enough to have whatever he wanted. A nice new Dodge pickup. A boat or maybe a little house someplace. The kind of things people wanted. ~ G.M. Ford

The greatest lesson I've learned in life is "Who knows what's good or bad?" Things come along that you really want, and they turn out to be the worst thing in the world. And some of the worst tragedies that you can conceive turn out to be the best things, the exact medicine you need in that moment. ~ Denzel Washington

So!" Jack said, clapping his hands and grinning at me. "We ready to go? What's the transportation plan?"
"I guess I'll go with Reth, and - "
Lend shouted, "No, you're not going anywhere alone with Reth."
"Fine, I'll go with Jack, and - "
"That doesn't work for me either."
I laughed drily. "Okay then, I'll click my heels together three times and say, 'There's no place like the Center, there's no place like the Center,' and then magically appear there!"
He was quiet for a few seconds. "You'll probably be safer with Reth." It sounded like he was speaking through clenched teeth. "And I can keep a better eye on Jack."
"Well, I for one am thrilled to spend more time with Lend. That's the top of my Fun Things to Do list. We should come up with a secret handshake!" Jack said, pushing me to the side and throwing the door open, which resulted in Lend falling to the floor immediately unconscious. "Oh, whoops." Jack smiled, his eyes gleaming. "Too bad, I like him so much when he's talking."
"Very funny. Keep him safe, okay? I don't Raquel's in the Iron Wing - she would have heard me shouting. Look anywhere you can think of. They might have her in a random room somewhere. We'll meet in Raquel's old office in two hours, whether we've found anything or not."
He nodded, not looking at me as he poked Lend repeatedly with his foot.
"And, Jack? That threat Reth made about your hands? I'm going to apply it to Lend, too. Keep him safe. Or else. ~ Kiersten White

Other people's houses are right on top of this one," he said. "I think they could take one step and be in our living room."
"You haven't seen the courtyard yet, Gregori. The house opens up to a courtyard in the back, and it's immense and in quite good shape." Savannah began heading up the stairs, ignoring his grousing.
"I hate to think what you would call bad shape," he muttered as he followed her upstairs.
"I wonder why everything is so dusty," Savannah said. "I had the real estate people come in and clean and get things ready for our arrival."
"Do not touch anything," Gregori hissed softly, and very gently caught her shoulders to put her behind him.
"What is it?" Instinctively she lowered her voice and looked around, trying to see if there was some danger she had been unable to sense.
"If people came and made up the bed and prepared the house for your arrival, then they would have removed the dust too."
"Maybe they're incredibly incompetent," she suggested hopefully.
Gregori glanced at her and found the hard edge of his mouth softening. She was making him want to smile all the time, even in the most serious of situations. "I am certain any company would work overtime trying to make you happy, ma petite. I know I do."
She blushed at the memory of how he did so. "So why all the dust?" she asked, deliberately distracting him.
"I think Julian left us a message. You have remained with humans so long, you see only with your eyes." ~ Christine Feehan

You'll be going back to Tokyo before much longer," Midorikawa quietly stated. "And you'll return to real life. You need to live life to the fullest. No matter how shallow and dull things might get, this life is worth living. I guarantee it. And I'm not being either ironic or paradoxical. It's just that, for me, what's worthwhile in life has become a burden, something I can't shoulder anymore. Maybe I'm just not cut out for it. So, like a dying cat, I've crawled into a quiet, dark place, silently waiting for my time to come. It's not so bad. But you're different. You should be able to handle what life sends your way. You need to use the thread of logic, as best as you can, to skillfully sew onto yourself everything that's worth living for. ~ Haruki Murakami

I wished Adam weren't jumping in for his turn.
Because watching Adam wakeboard was not relaxing. He wasn't careful when wakeboarding. Or in general. He was the opposite of careful. His life was one big episode of Jackass. He would do anything on a dare, so the older boys dared him a lot. My role in this game was to run and tell their mom. If I'd been able to run faster when we were kids, I might have saved Adam from a broken arm, several cracked ribs, and a couple of snake bites.
Knowing this, it might not make a lot of sense that Mr. Vader let us wakeboard for the marina. But we'd come to wakeboarding only gradually. When we first started out, it was more like, Look at the very young children on water skis! How adorable. One time the local newspaper ran a photo of me and Adam waterskiing double, each of us holding up an American flag. It's okay for you to gag now. I can take it.
But Mr. Vader was no fool. He understood things changed. After the second time Adam broke his collarbone, Mr. Vader put us under strict orders not to get hurt, because it was bad for business. Customers might not be so eager to buy a wakeboard and all the equipment if they witnessed our watery death. To enforce this rule, the punishment for bleeding in the boat was that we had to clean the boat. Adam cleaned the boat a lot last summer. ~ Jennifer Echols

There was nothing worse, Veppers thought, than a loser who'd made it. It was just part of the way things worked – part of the complexity of life, he supposed – that sometimes somebody who absolutely deserved nothing more than to be one of the down-trodden, the oppressed, the dregs of society, lucked out into a position of wealth, power and admiration.
At least people who were natural winners knew how to carry themselves in their pomp, whether their ascendancy had come through the luck of being born rich and powerful or the luck of being born ambitious and capable. Losers who'd made it always let the side down. Veppers was all for arrogance – he possessed the quality in full measure himself, as he'd often been informed – but it had to be deserved, you had to have worked for it. Or at the very least, an ancestor had to have worked for it.
Arrogance without cause, arrogance without achievement – or that mistook sheer luck for true achievement – was an abomination. Losers made everybody look bad. Worse, they made the whole thing – the great game that was life – appear arbitrary, almost meaningless. Their only use, Veppers had long since decided, was as examples to be held up to those who complained about their lack of status or money or control over their lives: look, if this idiot can achieve something, so can anybody, so can you. So stop whining about being exploited and work harder.
Still, at least individual losers were quite obviously statistical freaks. Yo ~ Iain Banks

At this point, I can no longer avoid setting out, in an initial, provisional statement, my own hypothesis about the origin of "bad conscience." It is not easy to get people to attend to it, and it requires them to consider it at length, to guard it, and to sleep on it. I consider bad conscience the profound illness which human beings had to come down with, under the pressure of the most fundamental of all the changes which they experienced - that change when they finally found themselves locked within the confines of society and peace. Just like the things water animals must have gone though when they were forced either to become land animals or to die off, so events must have played themselves out with this half-beast so happily adapted to the wilderness, war, wandering around, adventure - suddenly all its instincts were devalued and "disengaged."

From this point on, these animals were to go on foot and "carry themselves"; whereas previously they had been supported by the water. A terrible heaviness weighed them down. In performing the simplest things they felt ungainly. In dealing with this new unknown world, they no longer had their old leader, the ruling unconscious drives which guided them safely. These unfortunate creatures were reduced to thinking, inferring, calculating, bringing together cause and effect, reduced to their "consciousness," their most impoverished and error-prone organ! I believe that on earth there has never been such a feeling of misery, s ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I suppose when the things that give you bad dreams live inside you, there's no point in trying to stop them. They're going to come out whenever they decide it is their time. Better just to close your eyes and hold on tight, the faster to get the things you fear to go back to sleep themselves. ~ Cameron Dokey

A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded - such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mischief, his miracles and suffering, etc. When he had finished an Indian orator stood up to thank him.

'What you have told us,' says he, 'is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far to tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours.

'In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on, and if their hunting was unsuccessful they were starving. Two of our young hunters, having killed a deer, made a fire in the woods to boil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains.

'They said to each other, "It is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiling venison and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her." They presented her with the tongue; she was pleased with the taste of it and said: "Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you will find something that will be of great benefit i ~ Benjamin Franklin

The importance of friends and family in times of need By Renée Sargent
When people feel sad, what they need is attention. Not the kind of attention where they have to be told how amazing they all the time. Just kind of attention where they know that should they need you, you are there. I would like that kind of attention. I don't care about the other kind, even though everyone thinks I do.
When something horrible happens to someone the worst thing anyone can do is tell them off, or accuse them of being mean, or make them feel guilty about stuff they did that they are sorry about, because you can do bad things and be really sorry. They should just listen to them, and talk about things, because when you don't talk about things everything builds up inside you like boiling pan with a lid on. All the water dribbles out the sides but the lid won't come off. It's like that. Life just feels like little dribbles down the side of a pan.
I think friends and families are the ones who can lift the lid off in a good way. ~ Dawn O'Porter

It was a good thing, we told ourselves; the eyes grow weary with looking at new things; sleeping late, we said, has its genuine therapeutic value; we would be better for it, would be able to work more effectively. We have little doubt that all this was true, but we wish we could build as good a rationalization every time we are lazy. For in some beastly way this fine laziness has got itself a bad name. It is easy to see how it might have come into disrepute, if the result of laziness were hunger. But it rarely is. Hunger makes laziness impossible. It has even become sinful to be lazy. We wonder why. One could argue, particularly if one had a gift for laziness, that it is relaxation pregnant of activity, a sense of rest from which directed effort may arise, whereas most busy-ness is merely a kind of nervous tic.
...
How can such a process have become a shame and a sin? Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness. ~ John Steinbeck

Oh, Gray, she said. Oh, gray, indeed. As in, oh Gray what the holy hell has come over you and what the devil do you intend to do about it?
He took the coward's way out. He looked away.
"I thought you were painting a portrait. Of me."
She turned her head, following his gaze to her easel. A vast seascape overflowed the small canvas. Towering thunderclouds and a violent, frothy sea. And slightly off center, a tiny ship cresting a massive wave.
"I am painting you."
"What, am I on the little boat, then?" It was a relief to joke.
The relief was short-lived.
"No," she said softly, turning back to look at him. "I'm on the little boat. You're the storm. And the ocean. You're…Gray, you're everything."
And that was when things went from "very bad" to "worse."
"I can't take credit for the composition. It's inspired by a painting I once saw, in a gallery on Queen Anne Street. By a Mr. Turner."
"Turner. Yes, I know his work. No relation, I suppose?"
"No." She looked back at the canvas. "When I saw it that day, so brash and wild…I could feel the tempest churning in my blood. I just knew then and there, that I had something inside me-a passion too bold, too grand to keep squeezed inside a drawing room. First I tried to deny it, and then I tried to run from it…and then I met you, and I saw you have it, too. Don't deny it, Gray. Don't run from it and leave me alone."
She sat up, still rubbing his cheek with her thumb. Grasping his oth ~ Tessa Dare

There is a place deep, deep inside every person that is hidden and hard to find. If things get bad enough and life gets too hard, though, some people will go to that place and never come back from it. Certainly, all outward appearances will suggest otherwise. They will look as they always did. They may even act somewhat like their old selves, but the trut is, the real truth is that they are hiding in this place deep inside where no one can touch or hurt them anymore. ~ Victoria Forester