Beating The Odds Quotes

Any artist that is even surviving right now is a dark horse because things change pretty fast. You're a superstar one day and wake up the next day and you're anonymous. To be successful in any way is beating the odds right now, I think. ~ Chad Kroeger

Are you scared?"
"Of what?"
"Dying." Jemma was nothing, if she was not blunt.
"I'm not expecting to die, Jemma. I'm expecting to have treatment, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, whatever it takes, but I'm expecting to come through this. ~ Calvin Wade

When your dreams are big enough the odds just don't matter. ~ JohnA Passaro

Anything is possible."
"You really believe that?"
"It's what the great love stories are about, right?Beating the odds. ~ Richard Castle

Women share their sadness, thought Edith. Their joy they like to show off to one another. Victory, triumph over the odds, calls for an audience. And that air of bustle and exigence sometimes affected by the sexually loquacious - that is for the benefit of other women. No solidarity then. ~ Anita Brookner

My real life work was done at Atlanta for thirteen years, from my twenty-ninth to my forty-second birthday. They were years of great spiritual upturning, of the making and unmaking of ideals, of hard work and hard play. Here I found myself. I lost most of my mannerisms. I grew more broadly human, made my closest and most holy friendships, and studied human beings. I became widely-acquainted with the real condition of my people. I realized the terrific odds which faced them. At Wilberforce I was their captious critic. In Philadelphia I was their cold and scientific investigator, with microscope and probe. It took but a few years of Atlanta to bring me to hot and indignant defense. I saw the race-hatred of the whites as I had never dreamed of it before, - naked and unashamed! The faint discrimination of my hopes and intangible dislikes paled into nothing before this great, red monster of cruel oppression. I held back with more difficulty each day my mounting indignation against injustice and misrepresentation. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Ten years have passed and every day that I walk throughout the city, I feel honored to be a part of it - and atom in the blood of a beating heart belonging to the most wonderfully diverse, smart, creative, passionate being. ~ Melisa Singh

I cannot go through all my thoughts, so as to make them clear to you, nor have I ever dwelt on things, to shape a story of them. I know not where the beginning was, nor where the middle ought to be, nor even how at the present time I feel, or think, or ought to think. If I look for help to those around me, who should tell me right and wrong (being older and much wiser), I meet sometimes with laughter, and at other times with anger...
...I think; and nothing ever comes of it. Nothing, I mean, which I can grasp, and have with any surety; nothing but faint images, and wonderment, and wandering...
...Often too I wonder at the odds of fortune, which made me (helpless as I am, and fond of peace, and reading), the heiress of this mad domain...
...You must be tired of this story, and the time I take to think, and the weariness of my telling; but my life from day to day shows so little variance. Among the riders there is none whose safe return I watch for- I mean none more than any other- and indeed there seems no risk... ~ R.D. Blackmore

The second beating seemed to me a just and reasonable punishment. To get one beating, and then to get another and far fiercer one on top of it, for being so unwise as to show that the first had not hurt - that was quite natural. The gods are jealous, and when you have good fortune you should conceal it. The other is that I accepted the broken riding crop as my own crime. I can still recall my feeling as I saw the handle lying on the carpet - the feeling of having done an ill-bred clumsy thing, and ruined an expensive object. I had broken it: so Sim told me, and so I believed. This acceptance of guilt lay unnoticed in my memory for twenty or thirty years. ~ George Orwell

Move only when you have an advantage. It's very basic. You have to understand the odds and have the discipline to bet only when the odds are in your favor. ~ Charlie Munger

When you are in a combat situation, you mustn't let your mind be polluted by emotions like fear and anger. Simply accept the situation and react, even if you are facing impossible odds. Keep your head clear and you will be one step ahead of your attackers. ~ Aaron B. Powell

And when we used to play and fight in the streets in Brooklyn and I would get hurt or something, my mother would always come out and save me. So that sort of postponed the inevitable about getting a good beating, without having somebody to come and save you. ~ Sanford I. Weill

He looked at her, but he was only a shadow now. Livia gave him a warning look. He shook his head sadly and in total defeat. Standing in the house of a man who'd brought him food, with his daughter holding his hand, seemed to break some sort of honor code for Blake.
Livia felt her heart beating in her ears. "Don't give up on me. Please," she said softly. ~ Debra Anastasia

I think I'm his biggest fan. Like, I'm really sorry everybody out there but you have a tough time beating me. I'm like the number one Chris Colfer fan club. ~ Lea Michele

Loving her is so damn easy. It's as natural as breathing or the beating of a heart. ~ Adriana Locke

And when my heart is beating
too rapidly in the dark,
I will go downstairs in a robe,
open it up to a blank page,
and try to settle on the blue lines
whatever it is that seems to be the matter. ~ Billy Collins

Those soldiers belonging to the victorious side whose blood has oozed into the ground and whose hearts have ceased beating, have they partaken in the triumph as well as those who are unscarred and busy draining cups of sake to each other's glorious deeds? I rather think they belong instead to the defeated."
...
"You mean that those who are killed all belong to the defeated, regardless of which side they were on? ~ Erik Christian Haugaard

I glanced across the room at Thaddeus seated at a long table within a group of shop keepers, and I contemplated him strongly. My heart leaped in my chest at the mere sight of him. I felt myself overcome. The acts of kindness and sweet attention and gratifying moments of passion afforded me by this man since the day of our marriage were purely pleasing. To be loved was a desirous affair! It was the aim of every beating heart! I nearly cast aside my concerns and allowed myself to be consumed by these agreeable sentiments except for one thing: I could not forget how stripped of power and dignity I had felt that very morning. Thaddeus had essentially commanded me to sit and stay like a dog. And I had heeded my master without so much as a growl!

This was not me. No one stayed me.

I watched those at the table grow more intensely involved in the details of a trade agreement I cared nothing about. Such business bartering was always selfishly motivated. When it appeared that my husband's attention was engrossed on a point of aggressive negotiation, I excused myself from the weaving party and slipped out the back door. I turned down the alleyway and hurried to a crumbling chimney flue that was easy enough to climb. Almost immediately, a fit of anxiety gripped at my chest, and I felt as if a war was being waged in my gut - a battle between my desire to protect what harmony existed in my marriage and the selfish want to reclaim an ounce of the independence I had lo ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little as the flowers and trees were swaying, her spirit voice singing loudly, though her lips were still, and every pulse in her body beating its hammer strokes in time to the song. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

Ever notice the word 'rough' in through? There is truth to that, though the way may be rough, we are still able to get through it. ~ Anthony Liccione

The usual goal in the typing monkeys thought experiment is the production of the complete works of Shakespeare. Having a spell checker and a grammar checker in the loop would drastically increase the odds. The analog of a type checker would go even further by making sure that, once Romeo is declared a human being, he doesn't sprout leaves or trap photons in his powerful gravitational field. ~ Bartosz Milewski

There was no protection, no quota system when it came to luck. It was like that moment in math when a child learns that the odds of heads or tails is always one-in-two, no matter how many times one has flipped the coin and gotten heads. Every flip, the odds are the same. Every day, you could be unlucky all over again. ~ Laura Lippman

We've always been here and we'll always be here. We are a specific arrangement of particles and this instant is infinite. Did we luck out, or didn't we? The odds against this sentence having ever being typed, much less the odds against you reading it were inconceivable. Smile, because the fact that you're able to is almost impossible to comprehend. ~ Jeffrey Rowland

the air veined with balancings
in the rootless spaces where endless
worlds are formed and dissolve

snow duvet dancing in the night
beating in the heart's ear
of a language so close to being here -

memory of snow on the skin
melted flakes of past images
edgeless night on the edge of memory

clouds assemble and dilate
the straw thrown into the light
bright plovers turning under the wind

I listen again to what ear throat
fingers and brain extract in a moment
from the endless flowing stream of things

a water that transports friable words
which we pass from hand to hand
from mouth to ear, bits of mourning and clarity -

low voices and the footsteps become clear
the embers of a life roll on without brakes
red of a morning, of another sunset

in the gorges, on the broken stonefields
someone within me listens relentlessly
to the inaudible beating in things.

from " Nuits ~ Lorand Gaspar

The more decisions you make, the better, statistically, your odds of success are. And what I also learned was, it doesn't matter: anything can be fixed. When you're directing, you can agonize, but you can't indulge. Stuff has to happen. ~ Tony Goldwyn

Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time! ~ Anne Rice

Courage is not beating up the bully or letting the bully beat you up, it is standing strong before the bully and seeing him for what he truly is: a child of God in need of an attitude adjustment. ~ Toni Sorenson

It's never the differences between people that suprise us. It's the things that, against all odds, we have in common. ~ Jodi Picoult

You could roll the same side over and over again, the laws of the universe intact and unchanging with each turn. It's only when you consider the past that the odds change. That things become less and less likely." -Lane- ~ Robyn Schneider

Back of the beating hammer By which the steel is wrought, Back of the workshop's clamor The seeker may find the thought. ~ Berton Braley

Calmly, deliberately, he moved his hands down to her breasts and molded his fingers over them. Jay inhaled sharply, and he said, "Easy, easy," as he stroked the soft mounds.
"Steve, no." But her eyes were closing as warm pleasure built in her, her blood beating slowly and powerfully through her veins. His thumbs rubbed over her nipples and she quivered, her breasts beginning to tighten.
"You're so soft." His voice roughened even more. "God, how I've wanted to touch you. Come here, sweetheart. ~ Linda Howard

The odds are never in our favour. ~ Suzanne Collins

It's okay. Don't feel bad. Stop beating yourself up. Nothing lasts forever. People come and people go. We cross paths, sometimes even travel together for a bit- to learn from each other. Stop trying to hold onto what is no longer meant to be. Yes, sometimes we need to stay even when it doesn't feel good because we still have something to learn, something to do there. But our souls will die if they stay in places they don't belong. You know the difference. Listen to your heart. If you stay when you've been told to go, you'll stop growing! Go! Give yourself permission to outgrow people and places.
It's okay. ~ Brooke Hampton

But what was tragic about the girl was that she had not been born ugly. She might even have been a pretty child, and the grace proper to her age was still at odds with the repulsive premature aging induced by loose living and poverty. A trace of beauty still lingered in the sixteen-year-old face, like pale sunlight fading beneath the massed clouds of a winter's dawn. ~ Victor Hugo

There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where the ladder was. It was the king descending. I could see that he was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the other. He came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a slender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious; she was dying of smallpox. Here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility, its utmost summit; this was challenging death in the open field unarmed, with all the odds against the challenger, no reward set upon the contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold to gaze and applaud; and yet the king's bearing was as serenely brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where knight meets knight in equal fight and clothed in protecting steel. He was great now; sublimely great. The rude statues of his ancestors in his palace should have an addition - I would see to that; and it would not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon, like the rest, it would be a king in commoner's garb bearing death in his arms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child and be comforted. ~ Mark Twain

Focus on something that has high value to someone else, be really rigorous in making that assessment, because natural human tendency is wishful thinking, so the challenge to entrepreneurs is telling what's the difference between really believing in your ideals and sticking to them as opposed to pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn't actually have merit, be very rigorous in your self analysis, certainly being extremely tenacious, and just work like hell. Put in 80-100 hours every week. All these things improves the odds of success ~ Elon Musk

You fight like a street thug," Mauvin commented.

"Because that's what he is," Royce assured them as he approached from the direction of the keep, "a big, dumb street thug. I once saw an old woman batter him senseless with a butter churn." He shifted his attention to Hadrian. "Now what have you gotten yourself into? Looks like this kid will hand you a beating."

Mauvin stiffened and glared at Royce. "I would remind you that I'm a count's son, and as such, you will refer to me as lord, or at least master, but not kid."

"Better watch out, Royce, or he'll be after you next, ~ Michael J. Sullivan

Summer in Pittsburgh had a way of hating you, had a way of beating you down, getting into your bones and thoughts. Only the strongest survived the humidity of Pittsburgh summers, until winter came on and brought with it a test of a different sort, to see who was strong enough to make it to summer. All weather in Pittsburgh had an attitude, forced you to submit to it. Dared you to survive. ~ Doug Rice

In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. and all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver--love it, love it and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet t ~ Toni Morrison

I look at you and know what a miracle you are. The feel of your skin, soft and inviting, the way you move, like water flowing, the brush of your hair like silk, the feel of your body surrounding mine, completing me, giving me the strength I need to continue a task that seems so hopeless, but so necessary. I look at the way you are made, so beautiful, your body so perfect, made for mine."
Raven stirred restlessly, but his hands held her captive, tilting her chin so that she had no choice but to meet his black eyes. "But it is not your body that holds me, Raven, not your flawless skin or the perfection of the combination of our bodies when we come together. It is when I merge with you and see who you really are that I realize what a miracle really is. I can tell you who you are. You are compassion. You are gentleness. You are a woman who is so courageous you are willing to risk your life for complete strangers. You are a woman willing to use a gift that causes you great pain for the benefit of others. There is no hesitation in your giving, it is who you are. There is such a light in you, it shines through your eyes and radiates through your skin, so that anyone seeing you can easily see your goodness."
Raven could only stare at him helplessly, lost in his mesmerizing eyes. Mikhail took her hand, pressed a kiss in the exact center of her palm, slipped her hand beneath his shirt, and held it over his steadily beating heart. "Look beyond my skin, Raven. Look into my hear ~ Christine Feehan

Some may belittle politics, but we know - who are engaged in it - that it is where people stand tall. And, although I know it has its many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. And if it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes. ~ Tony Blair

We are meant to be heroes. We are meant to fight witches and monsters and evil spirits, even if it appears that we will not survive the encounter. In short, we are meant to hope and to believe in the impossible. The meaning comes from the fight itself, from fighting against such great odds and such great powers, regardless of whether there is a great victory at the end, or not. Our victory is in the trying. ~ Francisco X Stork

As she placed her stil-beating heart in the hole she'd dug, there on it's surface another golden fleck swirled into existence. It was then that she knew she was doing the right thing. Keeping her own heart when she'd already decided who it belonged to felt wrong, as if she was holding stolen possessions. No. Her heart was no longer hers, couldn't be Vincent's, and sadly, was never to be Jim's. ~ Carrie Hope Fletcher

Love's a game where the odds are permanently fixed. The house always wins, and anyone stupid enough to sit at the table is lucky if they walk away with their soul intact. ~ Kathleen Peacock

I saw on the pad not an operator's number from my home town, but one which seemed to interrupt the beating of my heart. ~ John Knowles

Make a point never go clear, it is great odds that a man whose habits and the bent of whose mind lie a contrary way, shall be unable to comprehend it. So weak a thing is reason in competition with inclination. ~ George Berkeley

All his days, no matter what the odds, he had never run from a fight. But the club of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a more fundamental and primitive code. Civilized, he could have died for a moral consideration, say the defence of Judge Miller's riding-whip; but the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability to flee from the defence of a moral consideration and so save his hide. He did not steal for joy of it, but because of the clamor of his stomach. He did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of respect for club and fang. In short, the things he did were done because it was easier to do them than not to do them. ~ Jack London

I'm wondering what it would be like to be kissed by you."
"Let's not go there," he said. "I don't want to mess up our friendship."
"It wouldn't," she said, grinning suddenly. "I'd like to know how it feels. I mean, as an experiment."
"Put the wrong chemicals together, and they explode."
She frowned. "Are you saying you don't think I'd like it? Or that I would?"
"It doesn't matter, because I'm not going to kiss you."
She looked up at him shyly, from beneath lowered lashes, and gave him a cajoling smile. "Just one teeny, weeny little kiss?"
He laughed at her antics. Inside his stomach, about a million butterflies had taken flight. "Don't play games with me, Summer." He said it with a smile, but it was a warning.
One she ignored.
She crooked her finger and wiggled it, gesturing him toward her. "Come here, and give me a little kiss."
She was doing something sultry with her eyes, something she'd never done before. She'd turned on some kind of feminine heat, because he was burning up just looking at her. "Stop this," he said in a guttural voice.
She canted her hip and put her hand on it, drawing his attention in that direction, then slid her tongue along the seam of her lips to wet them. "I'm ready, bad boy. What are you waiting for?"
His heart was beating a hundred miles a minute. He was hot and hard and ready. And if he touched her, he was going to ruin everything.
"I'm not going to kiss you, Summer."
He saw th ~ Joan Johnston

When a politician bends the truth or a CEO breaks a promise, trust takes a beating. ~ Gary Hamel

My heart started beating faster, and I felt my face flush with anticipation. He pulled away, just enough to look me in the eyes. I stared back into his, allowing him access to my soul, hoping he could see how desperately I needed him. I didn't hold back at all.
Before I could even react his lips were on mine. The heat that I had felt when he kissed my cheek, was like a lit match compared to the forest fire I felt now. Every inch of my body was deliciously ignited. ~ Theresa M. Jones

This life journey has led me to love mystery and not feel the need to change it or make it un-mysterious. This has put me at odds with many other believers I know who seem to need explanations for everything. ~ Richard Rohr