Best Qualities Quotes

The kingdom of heaven promised us certain things: it promised us happiness and a sense of purpose and a sense of having a place in the universe, of having a role and a destiny that were noble and splendid; and so we were connected to things. We were not alienated. But now that, for me anyway, the King is dead, I find that I still need these things that heaven promised, and I'm not willing to live without them. I don't think I will continue to live after I'm dead, so if I am to achieve these things I must try to bring them about – and encourage other people to bring them about – on earth, in a republic in which we are all free and equal – and responsible – citizens.

Now, what does this involve? It involves all the best qualities of things. We mustn't shut anything out. If the Church has told us, for example, that forgiving our enemies is good, and if that seems to be a good thing to do, we must do it. If, on the other hand, those who struggled against the Church have shown us that free enquiry and unfettered scientific exploration is good – and I believe that they have – then we must hold this up as a good as well.

Whatever we can find that we feel to be good – and not just feel but can see with the accumulated wisdom that we have as we grow up, and read about history and learn from our own experiences and so on – wherever they come from, and whoever taught them in the first place, let's use them and do whatever we can do to make the world a little bit ~ Philip Pullman

Most people's natural inclination is to judge themselves according to their best qualities while they measure others by their worst. As a result, they point to areas where their teammates need to grow. But the truth is that every person is responsible for his own growth first. ~ John C. Maxwell

A decorator, no matter how talented, can't always get the desired results because sometimes there is resistance or maybe a lack of understanding on the part of the client. I think it is the decorator's job to work as a guide, to bring out the best qualities and the best attitudes. ~ Albert Hadley

It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity, two of the best qualities that heaven gives them, and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments. ~ Charles Dickens

When we're in nature, we move toward what elicits our best qualities. When we need a boost of confidence, joy, courage, or love, we're attracted to those flowers that evoke those qualities within us. After spending time around trees and flowers, we actually feel different; we can feel all kinds of positive qualities rising up within us. Those qualities are already within us, but it's being in nature that wakes up those feelings inside us and remind us - with a visceral experience - of who we are. ~ Katie Hess

It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favored in climate that seem to me the happiest, but those in which a long struggle of adaptation between man and his environment has brought out the best qualities of both. ~ T. S. Eliot

Fire and hope are connected, just so you know.
The way the Greek told it, Zeus put Prometheus and Epimetheus in charge of creating life on earth. Epimetheus made the animals, giving out bonuses like swiftness and strenght and fur and wings.
By the time Prometheus made man, all the best qualities had been given out. He settled for making them walk upright, and he gave them fire.
Zeus, pissed off, took it away. But prometheus saw his pride and joy shivering and unable to cook. He lit a torch from the sun and brought it to man again.
To punish Prometheus, Zeus had him chained to a rock, where an eagle fed on his liver. To punish man, Zeus created the first woman-Pandora-and gave her a gift, a box she was forbidden to open.
Pandora's curiosity got the best of her, and one day she opened that box. Out came plagues and misery and mischief. She managed to shut the lid tight before hope escaped.
It's the only weapon we have left to fight the others. ~ Jodi Picoult

But history will judge you, and as the years pass, you will ultimately judge yourself, in the extent to which you have used your gifts and talents to lighten and enrich the lives of your fellow men. In your hands lies the future of your world and the fulfillment of the best qualities of your own spirit. ~ Robert Kennedy

I turned a lot of people off over the past few years, but I know I can still turn out good music and turn everything all around, i've lost some of my best qualities. For that, I am sorry. ~ Justin Bieber

The party had all the best qualities of a riot and a night on the barricades. ~ John Steinbeck

The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. ~ Martin Seligman

A woman's best qualities are harmful if undiluted with prudence. ~ Victor Hugo

He is a principled man, and compassionate, someone who will remind himself of your best qualities while struggling to forgive your worst. In short, he is a friend. ~ Tracy Guzeman

Running and meditation are very personal activities. Therefore they are lonely. This loneliness is one of their best qualities because it strengthens our incentive to motivate ourselves. ~ Sakyong Mipham

There are so many people with great work ethics that I've been around. I try and take the best qualities from the people I admire and apply it to my own self. ~ Big Sean

The theory of Reincarnation, which originated in India, has been welcomed in other countries. Without doubt, it is one of the most sensible and satisfying of all religions that mankind has conceived. This, like the others, comes from the best qualities of human nature, even if in this, as in the others, its adherents sometimes fail to carry out the principles in their lives. ~ Luther Burbank

Love was more than just a fleeting desire, or a brief glimpse into a fairy tale, or a flash of playful flirtation in her beautiful hazel eyes. It was more than infatuation with a person's best qualities, or reluctant acceptance of their less appealing traits. Real love meant loving the whole person, in every form, in every state, in every way. It was what transformed the ordinary monotony of everyday life into extraordinary moments of warmth and compassion and joy. ~ Jacqueline E. Smith

It's a characteristic of human nature that the best qualities, called up quickly in a crisis, are very often the hardest to find in a prosperous calm. The contours of all our virtues are shaped by adversity. ~ Gregory David Roberts

I should probably give up pretending I'm going to be somebody someday, he said, but a rich fantasy life is one of my best qualities.
- Fantasy Life ~ Brian Andreas

A long time ago Ian had told her he was half in love with her, yet now that they were betrothed he'd never spoken a word of it, had not even pretended. She wasn't certain of his motives or his feelings; she wasn't certain of her own, either. All she really knew was that the sight of his hard, handsome face with its chiseled features, and hold amber eyes never failed to make her entire being feel tense and alive. She knew he liked to kis her, and that she very much liked being kissed by him. Added to his other attractions was something else that drew her inexorably to him: From their very first meeting, Elizabeth had sensed that beneath his bland sophistication and rugged virility Ian Thornton had a depth that most people lacked. "It's so hard to know," she whispered, "how I ought to feel or what I ought to think. And I have the worst feeling it's not going to matter what I know or what I think," she added almost sadly, "because I am going to love him." She opened her eyes and looked at Alex. "It's happening, and I cannot stop it. It was happening two years ago, and I couldn't stop it then, either. So you see," she added with a sad little smile, "it would be so much nicer for me if you could love him just a little, too."
Alex reached across the table and took Elizabeth's hands in hers. "If you love him, then he must be the very best of men. I shall henceforth make it a point to see all his best qualities!" Alex hesitated, and then she hazarded the question: "Elizabeth, do ~ Judith McNaught

A traumatic event doesn't doom us to suffer indefinitely. Instead, we can use it as a springboard to unleash our best qualities and lead happier lives. ~ Jane McGonigal

My wife used to tell me one of my best qualities was that my feet don't smell, but I remember my brother's did when we were kids. ~ Jack Prelutsky

Your job as a producer is to make suggestions without putting your ego in front of everything else. Also, I think you want to focus on that artist's best qualities and really highlight them. ~ Adam Schlesinger

For me coaching was all about being involved, and taking the best qualities from the coaches I had as a player and moulding them into my own personality. ~ Warren Gatland

The thing about childhood noise is that if you let it take over, it can obliterate your true nature. The best qualities in you have always been there, but when you get stuck in the past and make your pain your identity, then that's what you become… To have a future, you have to let the past be past. ~ Bethenny Frankel

By trusting on God's understanding and knowledge, we learn to keep the company of good people who bring out the best qualities of love, hope and faith within ourselves. ~ Tasha Hoggatt

Now, it felt like they were transferring their best qualities to each other, so Ethan felt strong and smart. Carter tapped the steering wheel as he drove, so Ethan tapped his knee, as if he could take away some of Carter's twiches, even though Ethan loved them as part of Carter. But, if they caused Carter pain, then Ethan would wish them away. ~ Ryan Loveless

Your mission in life is to have a "why" to live for, to use your best qualities in the service of the kind of world in which you would like to live. That is your purpose. This is what life expects of you. And when you live according to your purpose, setting goals that support it, you may find the pieces of your life drawn together into a strong internal whole. Then, no matter how difficult life's experiences may prove to be, you can be able to endure and even prevail. ~ John Templeton

Be a shining role model of the best qualities humane eating embodies: caring, compassion, and empathy. ~ Michael Greger

Eli Ernest, you're exasperating me." He grinned. "I've been told that's one of my best qualities." "You mean worst." "That too. ~ Jody Hedlund

Writers have always liked my stuff, pretty much. That's what I wanted - I think my goal wasn't to get rich and famous, necessarily, though I cared about that. I always thought, "Oh, this could be a hit," or "that will sell records." But the first thing I wanted was that people who knew a lot about music, or had taste-making qualities, they would like my stuff. Writers, people like that. ~ Randy Newman

The Absolute. Reality. You can't say what it is; you can only say what it isn't. It's inexpressible. It's nowhere and everywhere. All things imply and depend upon it. It's not a person, it's not a thing, it's not a cause. It has no qualities. It transcends permanence and change; whole and part, finite and infinite. It is eternal because its completeness and perfection are unrelated to time. It is truth and freedom. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don't feel very much. ~ Franny Billingsley

The term "leadership" connotes critical experience rather than routine practice. This is suggested in the following comment by Barnard: The overvaluation of the apparatus of communication and administration is opposed to leadership and the development of leaders. It opposes leadership whose function is to promote appropriate adjustment of ends and means to new environmental conditions, because it opposes change either of status in general or of established procedures and habitual routine. This overvaluation also discourages the development of leaders by retarding the progress of the abler men and by putting an excessive premium on routine qualities.[6] {37} ~ Philip Selznick

The Prince of Calcutta. Two of his special qualities are his intelligence and articulation, both of which have helped him immensely in the world of contemporary cricket. ~ Geoffrey Boycott

The 1980s: feminism, postmodernism, sexual/textual politics

While it might be tempting to generalise that Woolf 's writing was being discussed almost in two separate camps during the 1980s, formalists on the one hand, and feminists on the other, this would be to simplify things too far.
Many critics were attempting to make sense of and connect her feminist politics with her modernist practices. Such investigations coincided with the explosion of theory in literary studies, and once again the work of Virginia
Woolf was central to the framing of many of the major theoretical developments in literary critical engagements with feminism, postmodernism, deconstruction and psychoanalysis. In the context of the rise of 'high theory'
and the questioning of old-school Marxist, materialist, humanist and historicist literary theories, Woolf studies wrestled with the locating of her radical feminist politics in the avant-garde qualities of the text itself, and its endlessly transgressive play of signifiers, with the Woolfian inscription of radically deconstructed models of the self and of sexuality and jouissance. ~ Jane Goldman

If you can only do one thing today, choose to help someone in need. There are many who are less fortunate. Take some time to lend a helping hand. You will be surprised by how much you will uplift their spirit. ~ Amaka Imani Nkosazana

In honoring the Wright Brothers, it is customary and proper to recognize their contribution to scientific progress. But I believe it is equally important to emphasize the qualities in their pioneering life and the character in man that such a life produced. The Wright Brothers balanced success with modesty, science with simplicity. At Kitty Hawk their intellects and senses worked in mutual support. They represented man in balance, and from that balance came wings to lift a world. ~ Charles A. Lindbergh

I see a generation comprised of all ages, inclusive of men and women, awakening to the extraordinary qualities hidden within. The power to accomplish remarkable feats and live an exceptional life is not defined by an individual's family, education, or occupation; it's a disposition of the heart. Unless it's suppressed, there is an innate desire to rise above the norm. I encourage you to step into the unknown, embrace the divine empowerment, and live your extraordinary life. ~ John Bevere

Sanctification means the impartation of the Holy qualities of Jesus Christ. It is His patience, His love, His holiness, His faith, His purity, His godliness, that is manifested in and through every sanctified soul. Sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy; it is drawing from Jesus the holiness that was manifested in Him, and He manifests it in me. ~ Oswald Chambers

Hardy would never be the easiest man to have a relationship with. He was complex and strong-willed and rough-edged. But I loved those qualities about him. I was more than willing to take him exactly as he was. And it didn't hurt that he seemed equally game to take me on my own terms. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated. ~ John Ralston Saul

I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I'd be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few became qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced, and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to one - to who I am. And that's who I am. ~ Nicolas Cage

The snow is lovely because it has only one colour, the sea is lovely because it appears to be a completely flat surface, but both sea and snow are deep and know their own qualities. ~ Paulo Coelho

It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons too shy or too awkward to take a due part in the bustling world regard the real actors in life's stirring scenes; so genuine, in fact, that the former are usually fain to make it palatable to their self-love, by assuming that these active and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which they chose to deem higher and more important. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

There are many qualities that make a great leader. But having strong beliefs, being able to stick with them through popular and unpopular times, is the most important characteristic of a great leader. ~ Rudy Giuliani

I have never looked at foreign countries or gone there but with the purpose of getting to know the general human qualities that are spread all over the earth in very different forms, and then to find these qualities again in my own country and to recognize and to further them. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

One of the most terrible losses man endures in his lifetime is not even noticed by most people, much less mourned. Which is astonishing, because what we lose is in many ways one of the essential qualities that sets us apart from other creatures. I'm talking about the loss of the sense of wonder that is such an integral part of our world when we are children. However, as we grow older, that sense of wonder shrinks from cosmic to microscopic by the time we are adults. Kids say "Wow!" all the time. Opening their mouths fully, their eyes light up with genuine awe and glee. The word emanates not so much from a voice box as from an astonished soul that has once again been shown that the world is full of amazing unexpected things.
When was the last time you let fly a loud, truly heartfelt "WOW?"
NOt recently I bet. Because generally speaking wonder belongs to kids, with the rare exception of falling madly in love with another person, which invariably leads to a rebirth of wonder. As adults, we are not supposed to say or feel Wow, or wonder, or even true surprise because those things make us sound goofy, ingenuous, and childlike. How can you run the world if you are in constant awe of it?...
The human heart has a long memory though and remembers what it was like to live through days where it was constantly surprised and delighted by the world around it. ~ Jonathan Carroll

The great benefit of science is that it can contribute tremendously to the alleviation of suffering at the physical level, but it is only through the cultivation of the qualities of the human heart and the transformation of our attitudes that we can begin to address and overcome our mental suffering ~ Dalai Lama

There is no comparison between us. What Kao keeps in view is the spiritual mechanism. In making sure of the essential, he forgets the homely details; intent on the inward qualities, he loses sight of the external. He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not be looked at. So clever a judge of horses is Kao, that he has it in him to judge something better than horses. ~ J.D. Salinger

With all dear Emma's little faults, she is an excellent creature. Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend? No, no; she has qualities which may be trusted; she will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred times. ~ Jane Austen

A lot of reality TV is repellent, but that doesn't diminish the qualities of some of the people who take part. There are decent people in there who have no alternatives. ~ Val McDermid

I definitely have some stereotypical qualities of being a Latina. I talk with my hands, which means I knock stuff over all the time. ~ Bitsie Tulloch

Maybe one of the qualities of being a great coach is being [a jerk]. There are quite a few of them around. ~ Larry Robinson

When you start searching for 'pure elements' in literature you will find that literature has been created by the following classes of persons:

Inventors. Men who found a new process, or whose extant work gives us the first known example of a process.

The masters. Men who combined a number of such processes, and who used them as well as or better than the inventors.

The diluters. Men who came after the first two kinds of writer, and couldn't do the job quite as well.

Good writers without salient qualities. Men who are fortunate enough to be born when the literature of a given country is in good working order, or when some particular branch of writing is 'healthy'. For example, men who wrote sonnets in Dante's time, men who wrote short lyrics in Shakespeare's time or for several decades thereafter, or who wrote French novels and stories after Flaubert had shown them how.

Writers of belles-lettres. That is, men who didn't really invent anything, but who specialized in some particular part of writing, who couldn't be considered as 'great men' or as authors who were trying to give a complete presentation of life, or of their epoch.

The starters of crazes.
Until the reader knows the first two categories he will never be able 'to see the wood for the trees'. He may know what he 'likes'. He may be a 'compleat book-lover', with a large library of beautifully printed books, bound in the most luxurious bindings, ~ Ezra Pound

And please, whatever you do, don't tell us that what we do, either in love or lust, is unnatural. For one thing if what you mean by that is that animals don't do it, then you are quite simply in factual error.
There are plenty of activities or qualities we could list that are most certainly unnatural if you are so mad as to think that humans are not part of nature, or so dull-witted as to believe that 'natural' means 'all natures but human nature': mercy, for example, is un¬natural, an altruistic, non-selfish care and love for other species is unnatural; charity is unnatural, justice is unnatural, virtue is unnatural, indeed - and this surely is the point - the idea of virtue is unnatural, within such a foolish, useless meaning of the word 'natural'. Animals, poor things, eat in order to survive: we, lucky things, do that too, but we also have Abbey Crunch biscuits, Armagnac, selle d'agneau, tortilla chips, sauce béarnaise, Vimto, hot buttered crumpets, Chateau Margaux, ginger-snaps, risotto nero and peanut-butter sandwiches - these things have nothing to do with survival and everything to do with pleasure, connoisseurship and plain old greed. Animals, poor things, copulate in order to reproduce: we, lucky things, do that too, but we also have kinky boots, wank-mags, leather thongs, peep-shows, statuettes by Degas, bedshows, Tom of Finland, escort agencies and the Journals of Anaïs Nin - these things have nothing to do with reproduction and everything to do with ~ Stephen Fry

When you reach England, if you come to London, pass through it quickly, for I do not at all like that city. All sorts of men crowd together there from every country under the heavens. Each race brings its own vices and its own customs to the city. No-one lives in it without falling into some sort of crime. Every quarter of it abounds in grave obscenities. The greater a rascal a man is, the better a man he is accounted. I know whom I am instructing. You have a warmth of character beyond your years, and a coolness of memory; and from these contrary qualities arises a temperateness of reasoning. I fear nothing for you, unless you live with evil companions, for manners are formed by association. ~ Richard Of Devizes

Anwar Sadat once said that if you see a good person with admirable qualities, try to adapt those qualities to yourself, and he was such a great man. ~ Harry Hamlin

Here's a 165-year old but still fitting comment on public officials who are so sure they're right that they'll drive over a cliff rather than compromise:
"Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt – are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?" William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair: a Novel without a Hero (1848).

The author's middle name really was "Makepeace." As the quote shows, he disliked those who would not. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

People just automatically say 'If this guy is George and Barbara Bush's son, we don't have any question about those personal qualities that we were fooled on by Clinton.' ~ Robert Teeter

Abraham Maslow became a towering figure in my life. He was the inspiration for me to look at psychology from a 180-degree-turnabout position. Rather than studying what was weak, infirm, or limited in clients and make an assessment based on overcoming ailments, I began looking for the highest qualities of self-actualization and encouraging clients - and ultimately readers and listeners - to seek their own innate greatness and aspire to these pinnacles. I reasoned that if some among us could be self-actualized, then so could I and anyone else who understood that it was possible. This became a major focus of my professional life and the compass I set for myself to live the principles that Maslow delineated in his writing. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

If a man of good natural disposition acquires Intelligence [as a whole], then he excels in conduct, and the disposition which previously only resembled Virtue, will now be Virtue in the true sense. Hence just as with the faculty of forming opinions [the calculative faculty] there are two qualities, Cleverness and Prudence, so also in the moral part of the soul there are two qualities, natural virtue and true Virtue; and true Virtue cannot exist without Prudence. ~ Aristotle.

How do you explain certain physical qualities that somehow sell on screen? You're born with it ... Certain people are just more watchable, and I was more watchable, but I don't think I understood acting or drama very well when I was a kid. ~ Joan Chen

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities - because it is the quality which guarantees all others. ~ Joseph Chamberlain

One of the qualities essential to being good at reading poetry is also one of the qualities essential to being good at life: a capacity for surprise. It's easy to become so mired in our likes or dislikes that we can no longer recall that person who once responded to poems - and to people - without any preconceived notions of what we wanted them to be. ~ Christian Wiman

Aye, aye! good-natured, jolly, full of fun; there are a number of other names for the good qualities the devil leaves his children, as bait to catch gudgeons with. D'ye think folk could be led astray by one who was every way bad? ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Still, there is a basic reticence about his approach that feels refreshing in today's culture of maximum exposure. Brandt did not go to great lengths to turn people into icons, nor did he presume to show their "true nature" in something so transient as a photograph. Instead, he used photography's special qualities to suggest intimate things about his subjects, things that cannot be put into words, and may not even be possible to put into pictures. ~ Sebastian Smee

If any one of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as we know it could not exist ... ~ Stephen Hawking

A man with a weak Masculine is especially prone to despise and fear these qualities and may attempt to suppress the more destructive elements of the Feminine force in his partner. ~ David Deida

Three qualities of greatness stood out in Woodrow Wilson. He was a man of staunch morals. He was more than just an idealist; he was the personification of the heritage of idealism of the American people. He brought spiritual concepts to the peace table. He was a born crusader. ~ Herbert Hoover

A sunrise, a winter squall, birds flying in a perfect V. These were things that were. The truth, visceral and sublime, of the universe, was that it existed whether we witnessed it or not. Majesty and beauty, these were qualities we projected upon it. A storm was just weather. A sunrise was simply a celestial pattern. It's not that he didn't enjoy them. It's that he didn't require anything more from the universe than that it exist, that it behave consistently-- that gravity worked the way it always worked, that lift and drag were constants. ~ Noah Hawley