Earned Quotes

Fuck you. You can't hurt us anymore. Oblivion is too good for you. Enjoy the fire. You've earned it. Your daughter ~ R.K. Lilley

When should a college athlete turn pro? Not until he has earned all he can in college as an amateur. ~ Will Rogers

Aldus Barnes, a structural engineer by training and member of the Advanced Geometry Unit (AGU) at Arup, has formed many successful collaborations and earned a prominent place for himself in architecture by adopting the language and skills of architects. "Talk in terms of texture and density, instead of torsion and shear. That way they don't think you are just another nerd," Barnes advises the young members of his team. ~ Yanni Alexander Loukissas

Regardless if a person likes my book I've earned the title: An American Writer. ~ Jonathan Heatt

Also, Moss liked to rescue whatever animal or plant needed it. She believed they had earned it. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

and he became a communist. He was court-martialed but allowed to resign from the army. In the revolutions of 1848 he fought to overthrow his king and, failing, fled to America. There he became first a carpenter and then the editor of a German-language newspaper in Cincinnati with a slant so leftist he earned the nickname "Reddest of the Red." When the Civil War came, Willich recruited fifteen hundred Cincinnati Germans within a matter of hours and helped organize the Ninth Ohio-now marching with the XIV Corps. ~ Steven E. Woodworth

We were the only truth that mattered in any of this. We earned this. I won't lose that. I won't lose you. ~ Aly Martinez

Grace can neither be bought, earned, or won by the creature. If it could be, it would cease to be grace. ~ Arthur W. Pink

This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then - it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

And soon afterwards this manuscript will appear, my final book ... There will be outrage and disgust and people will turn on me at the last, they will hate me, my reputation will for ever be destroyed, my punishment earned, self-inflicted like this gunshot wound, and the world will finally know that I was the greatest feather man of them all. ~ John Boyne

So I take it you and Gansey get along, then?" Maura's expression was annoyingly knowing.
"Mom."
"Orla told me about his muscle car," Maura continued. Her voice was still angry and artificially bright. The fact that Blue was well aware that she'd earned it made the sting of it even worse. "You aren't planning on kissing him, are you?"
"Mom, that will never happen," Blue assured her. "You did meet him, didn't you?"
"I wasn't sure if driving an old, loud Camaro was the male equivalent of shredding your T-shirts and gluing cardboard trees to your bedroom walls."
"Trust me," Blue said. "Gansey and I are nothing like each other. And they aren't cardboard. They're repurposed canvas."
"The environment breathes a sigh of relief." Maura attempted another sip of her drink; wrinkling her nose, she shot a glare at Persephone. Persephone looked martyred. After a pause, Maura noted, in a slightly softer voice, "I'm not entirely happy about you're getting in a car without air bags."
"Our car doesn't have air bags," Blue pointed out.
Maura picked a long strand of Persephone's hair from the rim of her glass. "Yes, but you always take your bike."
Blue stood up. She suspected that the green fuzz of the sofa was now adhered to the back of her leggings. "Can I go now? Am I in trouble?"
"You are in trouble. I told you to stay away from him and you didn't," Maura said. "I just haven't decided what to do about it yet. My feelings are hurt. I've consul ~ Maggie Stiefvater

In reality, those who cheat are indeed the ones who get cheated. Those who are cheated will gain experience and develop (spiritually) in the process. Only money earned dishonestly will be taken away (by nature) from one; rightfully earned money will be put to good use! ~ Dada Bhagwan

Did you get me that movie about Genghis Khan?
'It's in the Netflix queue, but that's not the surprise. You don't need to worry, it'll be something good. I just don't want you to feel depressed about going home.'
Oh, I won't. But it would be cool to have a stream like this in the backyard. Can you make one?
'Ummm... no.'
I figured. Can't blame a hound for trying.
Oberon was indeed surprised when we got back home to Tempe. Hal had made the arrangements for me and Oberon perked up as soon as we were dropped off by the shuttle from the car rental company.
'Hey, smells like someone's in my territory,' he said.
'Nobody could be here without my permission, you know that.'
'Flidais did it.'
'That isn't Flidais you smell, believe me.'
I opened the front door, and Oberon immediately ran to the kitchen window that gazed upon the backyard. He barked joyously when he saw what was waiting for him there.
'French poodles! All black and curly with poofy little tails!'
'And every one of them in heat.'
'Oh, WOW! Thanks Atticus! I can't wait to sniff their asses!'
He bounded over to the door and pawed at it because the doggie door was closed to prevent the poodles from entering.
'You earned it, buddy. Hold on, get down off the door so I can open it for you, and be careful, don't hurt any of them.'
I opened the door, expecting him to bolt through it and dive into his own personal canine harem, but instead he took one ~ Kevin Hearne

If trust must be earned, hasn't God unequivocally earned our trust with the bark on the raw wounds, the thorns pressed into the brow, your name on the cracked lips. ~ Ann Voskamp

If you earned money listening to music, I'd be a millionaire. ~ Michael Kiwanuka

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: "Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all." Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate. ~ Anonymous

What had passed between them had been real and true and lived. Not like the silly infatuation she had felt for [him] when she was 16, or the foolish attraction she'd felt. Theirs had been a true love. Forged and built and earned. ~ David Liss

Square cuts which ordinarily would have flashed to the boundary earned only two, and I believe that those two innings would have been worth 150 apiece in a county match. ~ Frank Woolley

Nobody roots for people who presume success. You have to earn success, and success is earned by making a movie that audiences like and want to see more of. ~ Nina Jacobson

ran - at separate times - a boutique investment banking firm and a small mortgage company. He served as the Treasurer for the multinational vitamin manufacturer USANA Health Sciences years before becoming CFO for MonaVie. Devin squeezed in two brief stints in government, including two years working for Jake Garn on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee Staff and another year working for an independent state agency called USTAR, where he helped foster technology entrepreneurship during Governor Jon Huntsman's administration. Devin is proud to be a Ute, having graduated from the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business, which recognized him as a Distinguished Alum in 2006. He also earned an MBA at Cornell University where he ran the student newspaper, Cornell Business. ~ Devin D. Thorpe

If you're ranked number one in the world it's because you've earned it, and I think the only way to really get there is to have that ability and to have it nurtured in a very competitive environment at an early age. ~ Andre Agassi

This is your success and this is the magic hour, the golden time before the time. Just be in it. You earned it. Don't spread it and don't pull on it and don't push it and don't share it and don't examine it. This is it. ~ Caroline Kepnes

HBO is really famous for hiring good people and staying out of their way until they ask for help, or need it. And that reputation is earned. ~ Richard Russo

A billion saved is a billion earned. ~ Norman Ralph Augustine

Yakov spent the whole day playing his fiddle; when it got completely dark, he took the notebook in which he recorded his losses daily, and out of boredom began adding up the yearly total. It came to over a thousand roubles. This astounded him so much that he flung the abacus to the floor and stamped his feet. Then he picked up the abacus, again clicked away for a long time, and sighed deeply and tensely. His face was purple and wet with sweat. He thought that if he could have put that lost thousand roubles in the bank, he would have earned at least forty roubles a year in interest. And therefore those forty roubles were a loss. In short, wherever you turned, there was nothing but losses everywhere.
- Rothchild's Fiddle ~ Anton Chekhov

Indeed, the zeal of Boston's rank-and-file marathoners rivaled, and in some ways echoed, the religious passion of Nathaniel Howe and his congregation. The runners indulged in orgies of self-denial-running 100 miles a week, working junk )ohs in order to have time to train, paying their own way to races, banding together in ascetic cells, forgoing the temptations of an idolatrous world in order to attain grace and salvation out on the road. As in Puritan New England, grace was not blithely attained. A believer-a runner-earned it by losing toenails and training down to bone and muscle, just as the Puritans formed calluses on their knees from
praying. No one made a cent from their strenuous efforts. The running life, like the spiritual life, was its own reward. ~ John Brant

Champions are made and not born. Champion's feat are acquired and not inherited, earned and not transferred, attained and not deposited ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

Respect is not ever assigned; it's earned. ~ Linda Tripp

We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don't know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don't know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they're worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of exper­tise. What we don't have are leaders. What we don't have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army - a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision. ~ William Deresiewicz

And above all, above all, honest work must be rewarded by a fair and just tax system. The tax system today does not reward hard work: it penalizes it. Inherited or invested wealth frequently multiplies itself while paying no taxes at all. But wages on the assembly line or in farming the land, these hard-earned dollars are taxed to the very last penny. ~ George McGovern

Go to war, come home as a sickened veteran, and be denied your earned disability payments to live a life of extreme poverty and hardship. ~ Steven Magee

I earned my first steady paycheck watering rose bushes at a nursery for a dollar an hour. ~ John Grisham

Poor Williams was left holding the civic bag; he had taken a gutsy stand, his image was all moxie . . . and on Monday night, when the Angels were finally gone, he had earned the leisure that enabled him to go out to the lakefront and gaze off in a proud wistful way, like Gatsby, at the green neon lights of the tavern across the water, where the others were counting their money. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

The Highland way says it's who you say you love and who you serve, which is of worth. Not some title that is passed down upon you by tradition. That's the English way, and the Lowland way
but who can be born a nobleman? Nobility is earned ... 'Tis our choices that make us. ~ Susan Fletcher

Love was earned and hard-fought and cherished. It was Marco's face and his rough palm on her cheek. It wasn't something a family got for being a family. ~ Hugh Howey

This reasoning is based on the wishful thinking that genius can only be earned through education and hard work. It denies the time-proven truth that genius can strike like a random bolt of lightning, at any time in any place, even in a humble glover's home in a small town in Elizabethan England. ~ Andrea Mays

Who has earned the right to hear my story?" If we have one or two people in our lives who can sit with us and hold space for our shame stories, and love us for our strengths and struggles, we are incredibly lucky. If we have a friend, or a small group of friends, or family who embraces our imperfections, vulnerabilities, and power, and fills us with a sense of belonging, we are incredible lucky. ~ Brene Brown

A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it bestowed on her but having passer her tests. She has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power. ~ Marianne Williamson

The willingness of America's veterans to sacrifice for our country has earned them our lasting gratitude. ~ Jeff Miller

Nobody can return to you something that was never yours, to begin with. Let's trace back to the history of your race: the humans were made for slavery and were found faulty for that purpose. They showed immense energy and willpower only when confronted against tremendous obstacles with no weapons in their hands. With those bare hands, and the wits that exceeded even those of their creators and equalled the ones of mighty gods, they could break mountains. Once the humans earned at least a bit of benevolence from their creators, though, they'd immediately turn into lazy drunkards feasting upon the luxuries of life. They were quite haughty creatures, at that – one could never make them work without posing a certain purpose before their eyes. They should be given an aim they approved of, or else, they'd move no finger! Yet, if such necessities were met, they'd begin to loaf around. Forbidding them to taste those luxuries? Nay, they obeyed not! Hence, their creators cast them down on Earth – a planet inhabited by many other faulty experiments of different alien species, so that their lives would end. Yet even here, the humans defied their creators – instead of dying out, they adapted to the environment they were cast in, due to their boundless wits and the unexplainable willpower that no other species could ever possess. They mated the local species whom they could more or less find a common language with, killed off the obstacles, and conquered the planet as their own. The conque ~ Tamuna Tsertsvadze

Courage was not given; it was acquired, earned. You had to take the difficult paths. ~ Cornelia Funke

That such lowly beginnings would soon become one of the world's strongest dictatorships is beyond fantastic. Lenin was essentially a pamphleteer. In 1918 he was identified as "Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and journalist," and earned more money from publication honoraria (15,000 rubles) than from his salary (10,000 rubles).17 Trotsky was a writer as well, and a grandiloquent orator, but similarly without experience or training in statecraft. Sverdlov was something of an amateur forger, thanks to his father's engraving craft, and a crack political organizer but hardly an experienced policy maker. Stalin was also an organizer, a rabble-rouser, and, briefly, a bandit, but primarily a periodicals editor - commissar of nationalities was effectively his first regular employment since his brief stint as a teenage Tiflis weatherman. Now, ~ Stephen Kotkin

I believe that the levels of taxation advocated by liberals render those taxes a veiled form of theft. 'Give me more than half of your honestly earned money or you will be arrested' is legalized thievery. ~ Dennis Prager

Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched - just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance - so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life in happiness. Those who lack such a thing must set about acquiring it: unintelligence must be earned. ~ Albert Camus

That isn't trust; that's foolishness! If a man has asked for your trust, it's a sure sign you should not give it. Trust should be earned inherently, without any verbal demands. Trust is knowing a man's character, knowing truth, and relying on that character and truth even when the odds seem against you. That is trust, my dear, not this leap in the dark ... (King Fidel) ~ Anne Elisabeth Stengl

I'm not cocky at all. You ask anybody, I'm one of the nicest guys. I try to be as humble as I can, but if you work hard, sometimes you know that you earned more respect. ~ Shabazz Muhammad

We shouldn't let our envy of distinguished masters of the arts distract us from the wonder of how each of us gets new ideas. Perhaps we hold on to our superstitions about creativity in order to make our own deficiencies seem more excusable. For when we tell ourselves that masterful abilities are simply unexplainable, we're also comforting ourselves by saying that those superheroes come endowed with all the qualities we don't possess. Our failures are therefore no fault of our own, nor are those heroes' virtues to their credit, either. If it isn't learned, it isn't earned.

When we actually meet the heroes whom our culture views as great, we don't find any singular propensities––only combinations of ingredients quite common in themselves. Most of these heroes are intensely motivated, but so are many other people. They're usually very proficient in some field--but in itself we simply call this craftmanship or expertise. They often have enough self-confidence to stand up to the scorn of peers--but in itself, we might just call that stubbornness. They surely think of things in some novel ways, but so does everyone from time to time. And as for what we call "intelligence", my view is that each person who can speak coherently already has the better part of what our heroes have. Then what makes genius appear to stand apart, if we each have most of what it takes?

I suspect that genius needs one thing more: in order to accumulate outstanding qualities, one needs u ~ Marvin Minsky

On the day Princess Diana died, a group of students had gathered before a lecture, talking about what they had heard on the radio that morning, repeating "paparazzi" over and over, all sounding knowing and cocksure, until, in a lull, Okoli Okafor quietly asked, "But who exactly are the paparazzi? Are they motorcyclists?" and instantly earned himself the nickname Okoli Paparazzi ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Some answers are learned. But the important ones are earned. ~ Jay Kristoff

Old age takes away from us what we have inherited and gives us what we have earned. ~ Gerald Brenan

You've earned an honorable death, creature." He meets my gaze; his eyes begin to glow, as if filled with stars. I can't look away. "This will not hurt for long."

There is no sympathy in Death's starry eyes, nothing but resolve as he secures my wrists, pinning them with one gloved hand. He raises the other to his mouth, using his teeth to tug off the gauntlet.

To touch me.

- I'm coming for you, Empress. -

I woke, shooting upright. Death was in my dreams and in my mind. It was as if I could sense his presence in my head, a heavy feeling. Like being possessed. ~ Kresley Cole

success is not always measured in terms of dollars earned or turnover. It is measured in terms of the difference you have made to the people around you. ~ Ravi Subramanian

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. ~ Henry David Thoreau

But what if it were you? What if you were stuffed in a human body and let loose on this planet only to find yourself lost among your own kind? What if you were such a good person that you tried to save the life that you'd taken that you almost died trying to get her back to her family? What if you then found yourself surrounded by violent aliens who hated you and tried to hurt you and tried to murder you over and over again? What if you just kept doing whatever you could to save and heal people despite that? Wouldn't you deserve a life too? Wouldn't you have earned that much? ~ Stephenie Meyer

Happiness earned, not given. ~ Toba Beta

young and impressive sergeant mentioned that he was hoping to go back north with us because he had earned ~ Patrick Hennessey

I cheated when I gifted Tier. And this makes me smile, because it was so easy and simple. And it was something my father never understood.
Love is earned, not mandated.
So I loved Tier back.
Fiercely. ~ J.A. Huss

He was fantastic eye candy, and I earned the right to have a few cavities. ~ Lani Woodland

All our contemporary philosophers perhaps without knowing it are looking through eyeglasses that Baruch Spinoza polished. Spinoza was a philosopher who earned his livelihood by grinding lenses. ~ Heinrich Heine

Their time of talking and belittling us this way has expired. They tried, but they failed to realize we are strong and we will never give up.
Their time of thinking they can touch us inappropriately and we will keep quiet has expired. No! We will rise up and bring the world to its feet. Trust me… We will be seen and heard!
Their time of trying to break us down has expired. No! We can move mountains!
Their time of pointing their fingers at us and putting F.E.A.R (False Evidence Appearing Real) into our minds by making us believe it is our fault has expired. No! It is not our fault. It never was!
Their time of nasty insults has expired. They fail to realize we catch every nasty word and throw back the insult to show we can give as good as we get.
Their time of preying off vulnerable women who have to "make a deal" to get a higher position they earned has expired. No! Your "man"ipulation has no effect. We, as women, have full ownership of our minds, bodies, and souls. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

After my dad started making duck calls, he'd leave town for a few days, driving all over Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas trying to sell them. He left me in charge of the fishing operation. I was only a teenager, but it was my responsibility to check almost eighty hoop nets three times a week. Looking back now, it was pretty dangerous work for a teenager on the river, especially since I'd never done it alone. If you fell out of the boat and into the river, chances were you might drown if something went wrong and you were alone. But I was determined to prove to my father that I could do it, so I left the house one morning and spent all day on the river. I checked every one of our hoop nets and brought a mound of fish back to Kay to take to market. I was so proud of myself for pulling it off without anyone's help!
When Dad came home a couple of days later, Mom told him about the fish I'd caught and how much money we'd made. I could see the smile on his face. But then he went outside to check his boat and noticed that a paddle was missing. Instead of saying, "Good job, son," he yelled at me for losing a paddle! I couldn't believe he was scolding me over a stupid oar! I'd worked from daylight to dusk and earned enough money for my family to buy a dozen paddles! Where was the gratitude?
I was so mad that I jumped in the boat and headed to the nets to see if I could find the missing paddle. After checking about seventy nets, I was resigned to the fact that it w ~ Jase Robertson

Years ago, there was a variety theatre in every British town, and people paid to go down and see it. Comedy was the main part of the theatre, and comedians earned a living by being funny. Now you have comedy in television instead. Comedians now have to be funny within a play. ~ Norman Wisdom

Self-esteem is earned! When you dare to dream, dare to follow that dream, dare to suffer through the pain, sacrifice, self-doubts, and friction from the world
when you show such courage and tenacity
you will genuinely impress yourself. And most important, you will treat yourself accordingly and not settle for less from others
at least, not for long. ~ Laura C. Schlessinger

Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Hard-earned achievement brings a sense of self-worth. Work builds and refines character, creates beauty, and is the instrument of our service to one another and to God. A consecrated life is filled with work, sometimes repetitive, sometimes menial, sometimes unappreciated but always work that improves, orders, sustains, lifts, ministers, aspires. ~ D. Todd Christofferson

You earned him fair and square. He's not mine to take back." He rose to get himself a drink. The peaty odour of scotch flickered up and stung my nose. "I'd like one of those." He looked at me, surprised. "You'll have to go for water." I shook my head. "All right," he said. "I guess you've earned that, too." He handed me the rounded heavy glass, and we sat in silence as the sun retreated. I'd had wine and champagne, but this was different. It made me feel older. ~ Paula McLain

Authoritarian managers use power, often in the form of fear, to get people to do something their way. Leaders depend for the most part on influence rather than power, and influence derives from respect rather than fear. Respect, in turn, is based on qualities such as integrity, ability, fairness, truthfulness - in short, on character. Leaders are part of the team, and although they are given organizational authority, their real authority isn't delegated top-down but earned bottom-up. From the outside, a managed team and a led team can look the same, but from the inside they feel very different. ~ Jim Highsmith

Stanford University's psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues have discovered that what you believe about intellectual ability - whether you think it's a fixed gift, or an earned ability that can be developed - makes a difference to your behavior, persistence, and performance. Students who see ability as fixed - as a gift - are more vulnerable to setbacks and difficulties. And stereotypes, as Dweck rightly points out, "are stories about gifts - who has them and who doesn't." Dweck and her colleagues are shown that when students are encouraged to see math ability as something that grows with effort - pointing out, for example, that the brain forges new connections and develops better ability every time they practice a task - grades improve and gender gaps diminish (relative to groups given control interventions). ~ Cordelia Fine

One of the things I learned from my father, and it did not serve me well at all, was that he was a successful writer, he earned a living. And it was a shock for me to find out that it was actually hard to make a living as a writer. ~ Michael Tolkin

So what should we say when children complete a task - say, math problems - quickly and perfectly? Should we deny them the praise they have earned? Yes. When this happens, I say, Whoops. I guess that was too easy. I apologize for wasting your time. Let's do something you can really learn from! ~ Carol S. Dweck

Perhaps most surprising of all, the deposed and imprisoned King Henry was not murdered. This had been the fate of the two Plantagenet kings who had lost their crowns before him: Edward II died while in custody at Berkeley Castle in 1327, while Richard II was killed at Pontefract in 1400, the year following his deposition. Ironically, Henry's survival was perhaps a mark of his uniquely pitiful and ineffectual approach to kingship - for it was much harder to justify killing a man who had done nothing evil or tyrannical, but had earned his fate thanks to his dewy-eyed simplicity. Permitting Henry to remain alive was a bold decision that Edward IV would come to regret. But in 1465 it must have struck the king as a brave and magnanimous act. ~ Dan Jones

There is a contract between the reader and the writer. The readers give me their hard-earned cash, and I have to entertain them. ~ Jasper Fforde

In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it. ~ Rose Tremain

By the fulfillment of my legal and moral duty I think I have earned punishment just as little as the tens of thousands of dutiful German officials who have now been imprisoned only because they carried out their duties. ~ Wilhelm Frick

Quick, somebody call the caretaker!' Gemma's stage voice rang out loud and clear. 'There's some trash here that needs to be taken out.' She earned a chorus of laughs as she walked towards us, then came to a standstill right beside me. 'Christ, it reeks, too,' she said, pinching her nose. 'What did you do, Malice? Douse yourself in the whole bottle? Oh, never mind. I don't expect you to have heard of the adage "less is more". ~ Aurelia B. Rowl

Walter Moody was much experienced in the art of confidences. He knew that by confessing, one earned the subtle right to become confessor to the other, in his turn. A secret deserves a secret, and a tale deserves a tale; the gentle expectation of a response in kind was a pressure he knew how to apply. ~ Eleanor Catton

I earned a black belt when I was in high school. And I did a lot of boxing and full contact karate in college. ~ Dean Norris

At 20 everyone has the face that God gave them, at 40 the face that life gave them, and at 60 the face they earned. ~ Albert Schweitzer

In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live. ~ Ethel Waters

Brilliant, hard-earned and honest. The erasures and reappearances of figure and ground-that hard drama-have rarely been so movingly undertaken. A heartbreakingly beautiful work. ~ Jorie Graham

My father, a bookkeeper who never earned more than $11,000 a year in his life, sat there, writing out a $25 check to the NAACP. When I asked him why, he said discrimination against anyone is discrimination against us all. And I never forgot that. Indeed, his philanthropy was a gift, not just to that organization, but to me. ~ Michael Bloomberg

My first life fled without a fight and left nothing behind, so I doubt it was a loss worth mourning. A man I don't remember mixed genes with a woman I can't recall, and I was called to the stage. I stumbled through the curtain, squinting into the blinding light of the birth canal, and after a brief and banal performance, I died.
This is the arc of the average life - unexamined, unremarked, unremarkable - and it should have ended there. In simpler times, life was a one-act play, and when it was over we took our bows and caught our roses and enjoyed any applause we earned, then the spotlight faded and we shuffled backstage to nibble crackers in the greenroom of eternity. ~ Isaac Marion

There are millions receiving government payments who have come to consider them as an earned right, who of course find them inadequate, and who are outraged at the slightest suggestion of a critical re-examination of the subject. The political pressure for constant extension and increase of these benefits is almost irresistible. ~ Henry Hazlitt

And this is the potency a first kiss should have: it should be earned. The moments leading up to it should be as tense as a crossbow drawn back. The reader should want it as badly as the hero and heroine, and feel as satisfied and transported and transformed as the hero and heroine in the wake of it. There are different ways to use kisses in a romance, but that first kiss is so meaningful, a pinnacle, and can be more intimate than sex. ~ Julie Anne Long

Look. Every partisan in every party has to learn one thing: Sometimes your people are wrong. To paraphrase an old retort, saying "My party, right or wrong" is like saying "My Kennedy, drunk or sober." Credibility is earned, and standing up and saying "Fie!" now and then reinforces your truthfulness. ~ James Lileks

W. P. Kinsella, who was born on a farm near Edmunton, Alberta, has earned wide recognition for his wild imagination and rash humor as a writer. ~ Gerald Vizenor

For most people, their wealth accrues slowly, and at any given point they say, 'Okay, I should kick up my standard of living because now I've earned slightly more wealth.' I went from the dorm room to having a billion dollars. ~ Dustin Moskovitz

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. ~ Ayn Rand

No doctor can write a prescription for friendship and love: These are complex and hard-earned capacities. You don't need a history of trauma to feel self-conscious and even panicked at a party with strangers - but trauma can turn the whole world into a gathering of aliens. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

The WPA was one of the most productive elements of FDR's alphabet soup of agencies because it put people to work building roads, bridges, and other projects ... It gave men and women a chance to make some money along with the satisfaction of knowing they earned it. ~ Ronald Reagan

Be vigilant about your hard-earned money, as risk in investment in this changing world is never ending ~ R.K. Mohapatra

Getting bad reviews or doing something that's not great is also really good for you as an actor. It also makes me feel as an actor that I've earned my stripes a bit. ~ Greta Gerwig

He earned every precious beautiful moment life gave back to him. ~ Brendan Gleeson

A dollar saved is a dollar earned but seldom vice versa. ~ Evan Esar

Greatness is earned, not given. ~ J. J. Watt

I raised you for fifteen years. I fed you and clothed you. I loved you and still do. I love you because you have been with me for fifteen years. I am your mother because we have been together your whole childhood. I have earned you as my son. ~ Joseph Fink

This is why, if I may be forgiven a digression, I believe it is time for the black race to forget about rhetoric and instead show what we are capable of doing. The testing will surely go on for the next generation and the next, but each time we meet the test, we'll climb another rung of the ladder until finally we arrive at parity, having earned our place rather than pleading or demanding that it be given to us. ~ Yvonne S. Thornton

Under Donald Trump, our deals will be smarter, our soldiers will have what they need, and our veterans will have what they earned. We will secure our borders, protect our nation. In all this, we will be more serious. And when we do, this nation will start winning again. ~ Mike Pence

I joined Genesis when I was 19. I've earned the right to actually do nothing. I don't want to be a shadow of what I was, so I've kind of just quite willingly stood back. ~ Phil Collins