Being A Square Quotes

As a child, I was a brat, and my parents didn't know how to control me. So they told me ghost stories, which stayed with me. I am still petrified of darkness and being alone. ~ Bipasha Basu

The only way to know how much you love a thing is to see it in peril of being lost. ~ Louise Dickinson Rich

Anyone who tells you her life is like a book has either been reading some bad books or is not being straight with you or herself about her life. ~ M.J. Andersen

Well, being a perfectionist seems okay from the outside, but a perfectionist never enjoys anything, no matter how well it goes, because nothing is ever perfect. ~ Jane Smiley

Being loved is the problem, because love is a demand - when you're loved, someone wants more of you. ~ Stephen Grosz

The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. in moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing w ~ Frederick Douglass

Now, she felt that she was being singled out for something for which she was not in any way prepared, and this, despite the fear it carried with it, gave her a feeling, or more a set of feelings, she thought she might experience in the days before her wedding, days in which everyone looked at her in the rush of arrangements with light in their eyes, days in which she herself was fizzy with excitement but careful not to think too precisely about what the next few weeks would be like in case she lost her nerve. ~ Colm Toibin

I kind of like that romantic image of being in a rocker with my family gathered around, all these generations in one room, listening intently to my stories. ~ Charlie Sheen

I have been told that when a baby bird is ready to hatch, if you break the egg for the bird, it will die. The bird must peck its own way out of the egg into the world. This aggressive "workout" strengthens the bird, allowing it to function in the outside world. Robbed of this responsibility, it will die. This is also the way God has made us. If he "hatches" us, does our work for us, invades our boundaries, we will die. We must not shrink back passively. Our boundaries can only be created by our being active and aggressive, by our knocking, seeking, and asking ~ Henry Cloud

Herein lay the rub. The Americans, like all Western armies, defined "winning" as killing the enemy and securing control over the battlefield. Their opponents in previous conflicts had generally accepted the same definition. Not so the Moros. What was important to them was the struggle and how one conducted oneself, personally and as a people, not necessarily a measurable outcome. They knew from the beginning they were no match for American firepower. It was a one-sided contest, what today is termed "asymmetric warfare," but so what? Their measure was how well one did against the odds, the more overwhelmingly they were against one, the greater the glory. And being that life is transitory anyway, what mattered most was how much courage was shown and how well did one die. The Americans and the Moros were using different score cards for the same game. To the Moros, it was they who had "won. ~ Robert A. Fulton

Being a great father is like shaving. No matter how good you shaved today, you have to do it again tomorrow. ~ Reed B Markham

Survival is not about being fearless. It's about making a decision, getting on and doing it, because I want to see my kids again, or whatever the reason might be. ~ Bear Grylls

A lot of characters now on TV have moved into being anti-heroes, but I wanted to be the hero. ~ Kieran Bew

Please write and tell me about London, I live for the day when I step off the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St.Paul's where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on when she refused to enter the Tower, and like that. A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he said:
Then it's there. ~ Helene Hanff

Life was not a choice. Life was a gift and she would treasure it, no matter what challenges were being thrown her way. ~ Andrea Barbosa

Almost all of the time and energy in Half Moon Bay was being directed toward consulting to paying clients. Those clients in turn became the sales engine for the firm, and even when we did an occasional cold call, it was the references from clients that shortened the sales cycle considerably. I'm not even sure I'd call it a sales cycle at all. ~ Patrick Lencioni

What did she love Shelley for? His reckless spontaneity
like this. His helpless generous nature
like this. His treatment of her as a reasonable human being and not a trembling little rose
and so on. If she loved him for these things, could she hate him for them? Could she? ~ Jude Morgan

Paleoclimatic records show clearly that the past 10,000 years, the Holocene, is a remarkably stable period in which we went from being a few hunters and gatherers to become more sedentary agriculture-based civilizations, which then moved us to the current populated modern era. ~ Johan Rockstrom

I don't think I want to transition into being a recording artist for the rest of my life or anything like that, but it's something I'd like to try. ~ Laura Osnes

In truth, philosophy is the mode of thought shaped by the most radical form of prejudice: the passion of being-in-the-world. With the sole exception of specialists in the field, virtually everyone senses that anything which offers less than this passion play remains philosophically trivial. Cultural anthropologists suggest the appealing term 'deep play' for the comprehensively absorbing preoccupations of human beings. From the perspective of a theory of the practising life we would add: the deep plays are those which are moved by the heights. ~ Peter Sloterdijk

Asking yourself deeper questions opens up new ways of being in the world. It brings in a breath of fresh air. It makes life more joyful. The real trick to life is not to be in the know, but to be in the mystery. ~ Fred Alan Wolf

If her case was pitiable, his was hopeless. His imprudence had made her miserable for a while; but it seemed to have deprived himself of all chance of ever being otherwise. ~ Jane Austen

Being in a band is just like being married. The children are the songs and the sex is playing live onstage. ~ Jen Sincero

I have a horror of tags and labels. I don't understand, for instance, how people can talk about Bergman's "symbolism". Far from being symbolic, be seems to me, through and almost biological naturalism, to arrive at the spiritual truth about human life that is important to him. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

Hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are. Being one place and wanting to be somewhere else ... Wanting life to be different from what it is. That's also called leaving without leaving. Dying before you die. It's as if there is a part of you that so rails against being shattered by love that you shatter yourself first. (p. 44) ~ Geneen Roth

This was all an excuse, I think. I was doing fine. I had a 93 average and I was holding my head above water. I had good friends and a loving family. And because I needed to be the center of attention, because I needed something more, I ended up here, wallowing in myself, trying to convince everybody around me that I have some kind of ... disease. I don't have any disease. I keep pacing. Depression isn't a disease. It's a pretext for being a prima donna. Everybody knows that. My friends know it; my principal knows it. The sweating has started again. I can feel the Cycling roaring up in my brain. I haven't done anything right. What have I done, made a bunch of little pictures? That doesn't count as anything. I'm finished. My principal just called me and I hung up on him and didn't call back. I'm finished. I'm expelled. I'm finished. ~ Ned Vizzini

Nigeria, with the oil sector, had the reputation of being corrupt and not managing its own public finances well. So what did we try to do? We introduced a fiscal rule that de-linked our budget from the oil price. ~ Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

She felt sweat bead on her forehead, and dug a fingernail into her thumb to stop herself from weeping. She thought about her husband, John, and her two girls. She cursed herself for agreeing to visit the hospital and for not heeding the advice of the deputy director and Tom Dupree. But she still had the presence of mind to know that that wouldn't help her now, so she did her best to concentrate on counting her breaths.
Two minutes later, she decided to survive by whatever means and fought to focus on something more positive to assuage her escalating fear. She told herself that her people would be looking for her, that roadblocks had been set up. They could follow her, after all, at US Air Force bases, via drones, or whatever else they had that even she didn't know about.
Then she did her best to remember what Tom had told her about how to respond if she were ever kidnapped. Do not resist them, she thought. Act upon all reasonable instructions without complaint. Refrain from making retaliatory threats or unrealistic promises. Attempt to build up a rapport, but slowly to avoid it being considered contrived.
But then she began to waver again. For now she was in the hands of men with no humanity, who had snuffed out life as most people sprayed mosquitoes or swatted bugs.
She knew her see-saw emotions were reasonable in the circumstances. But she had to survive. For John. For her girls.
Oh, God, hear my prayer. Help me. ~ Gary Haynes

The real importance of automatism lay in the fact that it led to a different relation between the artist and the creative act. Where the artist had traditionally been seen as someone who invents a personal world, bringing into being something unique to his own 'genius', the surrealists conceived themselves as explorers and researchers rather than 'artist' in the traditional sense and it was discovery rather than invention that became crucial for them. ~ Michael Richardson

You know what's kind of funny? Well, not funny, but ironic, maybe? She's been here nine months now, and it takes nine months to create life. It's like she's been reborn. And the fact that tomorrow you turn eighteen is just another piece of it. It feels like right now is the start of something, like we're at the beginning and not the finish line."
Dominic started to walk away but paused after a few steps, his brow furrowed. "Actually, I don't think that's what irony is. Haven would probably correct me again and say I was being symbolic. ~ J.M. Darhower

Now listen up - you cannot let a fear of failure, or a fear of comparison, or a fear of judgement, stop you from doing what's going to make you great. You cannot succeed without this risk of failure. You cannot have a voice without the risk of criticism. And you cannot love without the risk of loss. You must go out and you must take these risks.
Everything I'm truly proud of in this life has been a terrifying prospect to me - from my first play, to hosting 'Saturday Night Live', to getting married, to being a father, to speaking to you today. None of it comes easy. And people will tell you to do what makes you happy, but a lot of these has been hard work, and I'm not always happy.
And I don't think you should do just what makes you happy. I think you should do what makes you great. Do what's uncomfortable, and scary, and hard but pays off in the long run.
Be willing to fail. Let yourselves fail. Fail in a place, in a way you would want to fail. Fail, pick yourself up, and fail again. Because without this struggle, what is your success anyway? ~ Charlie Day

Now the same mystery which often veils from our eyes the reason for a catastrophe envelops just as frequently, when love is in question, the suddenness of certain happy solutions, such as had been brought to me by Gilberte's letter. Happy, or at least seemingly happy, for there are few that can really be happy when we are dealing with a sentiment of such a kind that any satisfaction we can give it does no more, as a rule, than dislodge some pain. And yet sometimes a respite is granted us, and we have for a little while the illusion of being healed. ~ Marcel Proust

Being able to tolerate negative feelings can be crucial to a wide variety of life situations: delaying gratification, learning from bad experiences, truly hearing what other people have to say, and assessing our own circumstances. ~ Julie K. Norem

It is with great sincerity I join you in acknowledging and admiring the dispensations of Providence in our favor. America has only to be thankful and to persevere. God will finish his work and establish their freedom ... If it had not been for the justice of our cause, and the consequent interposition of Providence,in which we had faith, we must have been ruined. If had ever before been an atheist, I should now have been convinced of the being and government of a Deity! It is He who abases the proud and favors the humble. May we never forget His goodnes to us, and may our future conduct manifest our gratitude ... I believe in one God, Creator of the universe. That He governs it by his providence. That He ought to be worshiped. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Sophie sighed. "You don't have to do this."

"If you're talking about being adorable, I really can't help myself."

He said it with a wink and a smirk-which wasn't playing fair. But she managed to stop her lips from curling into a smile. ~ Shannon Messenger

I think we have a perception of transvestites all being the same, as one block. It's not one mass or tribe. Everybody's got a different story. ~ Sean Bean

Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius Tyaneus represents the latter as informing King Phraotes that the Oneiropolists, or Interpreters of Visions, are wont never to interpret any vision till they have first enquired the time at which it befell; for, if it were early, and of the morning sleep, they then thought that they might make a good interpretation thereof ... in that the soul was then fitted for divination, and disincumbered. But if in the first sleep, or near midnight, while the soul was as yet clouded and drowned in libations, they, being wise, refused to give any interpretation. ~ Anna Kingsford

life is a classroom. we are both student and teacher. each day is a test. and each day we receive a passing or failing grade in one particular subject: grace. grace is compassion, gratitude, surrender, faith, forgiveness, good manners, reverence, and the list goes on. it's something money can't buy and credentials rarely produce. being the smartest, the prettiest, the most talented, the richest, or even the poorest, can't help. being a humble person can and being a helpful person can guide you through your days with grace and gratitude. ~ Gary Hart

We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. ~ Julian Barnes

My moods were a slingshot; after being locked-down and anesthetized for years my heart was zinging and slamming itself around like a bee under a glass, everything bright, sharp, confusing, wrong-but it was a clean pain as opposed to the dull misery that had plagued me for years under the drugs like a rotten tooth, the sick dirty ache of something spoiled. ~ Donna Tartt

Being with the wrong person is lonelier than being on your own. Or it's as lonely, in a different way, ~ Mhairi McFarlane

Quite often 'wishing upon a star' is a response to a dream that I've surrendered to a wish because it was bigger than me, instead of being a dream that has surrender to my wishes because God was bigger than it. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The power of painter or poet to describe what he calls an ideal thing depends upon its being to him not an ideal but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well but either from actual sight or sight of faith. ~ John Ruskin

So you can sense her aura and stuff, right?" Kail asked as he got to his feet. "So anything I say about her not being a unicorn-- ~ Patrick Weekes

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. ~ Friedrich Engels