Hard Times Bring Out Best Quotes

'The Goonies' is classic. That's, like, the movie I bring with me if I go out of town for a long time, because it just makes me think of the best times I've seen it with my friends growing up. Dude, everybody knows that movie, everybody watches that film. Best family film ever made. ~ Logan Lerman

People usually make bad choices when they are either angry, scared or stressed. But staying positive in your worst of times will help bring out your very best. ~ Timothy Pina

I was still hoping that it might be a phase, that I'd wake up the next day and be normal. In the best of times, it seemed like such a short leap. I did fantasize about having a girlfriend - never the sex part, but the rest of it I had down. I knew what she'd look like and how she'd hold her long hair back from the flame when bending over a lit candle. I imagined us getting married the summer after I graduated from college, and then I imagined her drowning off the coast of North Carolina during one of my family's vacations. Everyone needed to be there so they could see just how devastated I was. I could actually make myself cry by picturing it: How I'd carry her out of the water, how my feet would sink into the sand owing to the extra weight. I'd try mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and keep trying until someone, my father most often, would pull me back, saying, "It's too late, son. Can't you see she's gone?"

It seemed I wanted to marry just so I could be a widower. So profound would be my grief that I'd never look at another woman again. It was perfect, really. Oh, there were variations. Sometimes she'd die of leukemia, as in the movie Love Story. Occasionally a madman's bullet would fell her during a hostage situation, but always I'd be at her side, trying everything in my power to bring her back.

The fantasy remained active until I was twenty. Funny how unimportant being gay became once I told somebody. All I had to do was open up to my best friend, and w ~ David Sedaris

God is God of history and of nations. Also of nature. Originally Yahweh was probably a volcanic deity. But he periodically enters history, the best example being when he intervened to bring the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt and to the Promised Land.
They were shepherds and accustomed to freedom; it was terrible for them to be making bricks. And the Pharaoh had them gathering the straw as well and still being required to meet their quota of bricks per day. It is an archetypal timeless situation. God bringing men out of slavery and into freedom. Pharaoh represents all tyrants at all times. Her voice was calm and reasonable; Asher felt impressed. ~ Philip K. Dick

Well, [bad] times like that bring out the best in some people and the worst in others. ~ J.K. Rowling

You aren't my type, just the way that I am not yours. But that's why we are good for each other - we are so different, yet we're the same. You told me once that I bring out the worst in you. Well, you bring out the best in me. I know you feel it, too, Tessa. And yes, I didn't date, until you. You make me want to date, you make me want to be better. I want you to think I am worthy of you; I want you to want me the way I do you. I want to fight with you, even scream at each other until one of us admits we are wrong. I want to make you laugh, and listen to you ramble about classic novels. I just . . . I need you. I know I am cruel at times . . . well, all the time, but that's only because I don't know how else to be." His voice becomes a half whisper, his eyes wild. "This has been me for so long, I have never wanted to be any other way. Until now, until you." - Hardin ~ Anna Todd

When it's too easy to get money, then you get a lot of noise mixed in with the real innovation and entrepreneurship. Tough times bring out the best parts of Silicon Valley. ~ Sergey Brin

Are You Listening Attentively? There's so much power in listening! I challenge you to listen more. Really pay attention to what people are saying. What are they REALLY talking about? Many times we overlook and/or make excuses for people's conversations. Don't allow people to dump garbage in your spirit. What we listen to can have a negative effect on what, and how, we think. Be choosy about the relationships you entertain. Surround yourself with people that bring out the best in you. People that are positive, inspiring, and genuine. Remember: Value your time! Don't waste it on dead-end and/or fake relationships. ~ Stephanie Lahart

Sometimes incidents and events in our lives bring out the best in us, or the worst. Sometimes we recover from these events and sometimes we don't - but they always impact us. At other times how we act and react, or deal with a particular situation, reveals our "true" nature and tells us who we really are. ~ Syd Field

When I stopped wanting my New Year's Eve to be perfect, to bring in the New Year right, is when it started working out right. When I was young, I was always looking for the best party to be at, to ring in the New Year, and I always ended up in the car going, "Happy New Year." ~ Hilary Swank

I used to think that loving somebody meant sacrificing anything for them. I thought it meant writing them a blank cheque. I thought it meant that you would die without each other. But it turns out that death and a broken heart are not he same.
These days, I think that love is not so dramatic as all that. Maybe loving somebody means simply they bring out the best in you, and you bring out the best in them - so that together, you are always the best possible versions of yourselves. ~ Leila Sales

Love is a lot of things. It's a hard place to fall and a soft place to land. It's give and take, push and pull. Love can bring out the absolute best or worst in us. But, when you find a love worth fightin' for, that's true love. And no matter the struggle or compromise, you can't walk away from that. Now ask yourself, is he worth fightin' for? ~ K. Langston

It's not about you. It's about your customer. It's about your client. Use your strengths, yes, but remember, you're here to serve- not to self-actualize.
Of course you matter. But the most important successful people improve their own lives by improving others' lives. They help their customer solve its problem, They give their client something it doesn't know it was missing. That's where they focus their energy, talent, and brainpower.
The most valuable people in any job bring out the best in others. They make their boss look good. They help their teammates succeed. ~ Daniel H. Pink

Gandalf answered angrily: "I brought him, and I don't bring things that are of no use. Either you help me to look for him, or I go and leave you here to get out of the mess as best you can yourselves. If we can only find him again, you will thank me before all is over. Whatever did you want to go and drop him for, ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

You can lose yourself a million times over, but your heart will always know who you are. In every wound and place of emptiness, love provides a light that guides you through the darkness. It relentlessly seeks you out and stops at nothing to find you. Love always finds you. And when it does, it will bring you home. ~ Christine Brae

She'd been desperate, more times than she cared to remember, and knew that it took a certain level of real oppression to bring out violence from desperation. ~ Evan Currie

Like families, competitors can bring out the worst as well as the best in each other. Like romance, competition has many faces, some of them ugly. In addition to showing me my grace and graciousness, the mirror of sports has reflected back to me my jealousy, pettiness, and arrogance. ~ Mariah Nelson

Always seek people who will add value to your life and bring out the best in you. And of course, be that person for others. ~ Hal Elrod

As Christians, we celebrate many holidays and memorials throughout the year. Some we decide to celebrate by referencing events in the Bible. Others are related to events in our personal lives. Still more are pushed upon by this World.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with celebrating events that bring us joy or keep important parts of our lives in focus.
As a Christian, it is important for me to follow Christ's words and teachings. I do not obey man's intepretations of God's word. I read it and follow it. Its that simple. I dont need an interpreter. Christ is my intermediary. Ive been blessed to have been given the gift of language and... in the Bible, when you read it in Aramaic, there is only ONE event, one memorial that Jesus asks us to remember and thus honor our Savior. And its not His birthday. We are upon that annual event this weekend. For Jesus "blessed and he broke and he said, "Take eat; this is my body, which is broken for your persons; thus you shall do for my Memorial."
[1 Cor 11:24]

Holidays can be fun times for families to get together and to celebrate life. This weekend lets not lose focus. For this is the one and ONLY holiday that our Christ commands us to memorialize. Its in his words. Its in the Bible. It was important enough for Him to spell it out. It should be important enough for us to listen. Above all other events in our lives, isn't Christ Jesus's sacrifice truly the most magnificent one? Lets remember our Savior and not a ~ Jose N Harris

Trust me, she knew who she was dancing with the entire time. She just chose to see good in everybody. I personally don't think she should change that about herself. It's possible her energy could even bring out the best in the devil. ~ Unknown

I … There is no one I want more; there is nothing I want more than to be overwhelmed by you."
"But you don't want to kiss me?"
He inhaled slowly, trying to bring order to his thoughts. This was all wrong. "In Fjerda - " he began. "We're not in Fjerda." He needed to make her understand. "In Fjerda," he persisted, "I would have asked your parents for permission to walk out with you."
"I haven't seen my parents since I was a child."
"We would have been chaperoned. I would have dined with your family at least three times before we were ever left alone together."
"We're alone together now, Matthias."
"I would have brought you gifts."
Nina tipped her head to one side. "Go on."
"Winter roses if I could afford them, a silver comb for your hair."
"I don't need those things."
"Apple cakes with sweet cream."
"I thought drüskelle didn't eat sweets."
"They'd all be for you," he said.
"You have my attention."
"Our first kiss would be in a sunlit wood or under a starry sky after a village dance, not in a tomb or some dank basement with guards at the door. ~ Leigh Bardugo

On 'Think Like a Man,' they got the best out of me because they allowed me to bring my own cadences and opinions to the character that I was playing. I think we got the best of that particular character. ~ Kevin Hart

I know that I can do this without you. I've learned that this past year. But I just miss you right now. I just want you near me. You bring out the best in me. And I could use the best of me right now. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Gust have to go for the long haul. Curiosity's like a fun friend you can't really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own - with whatever guts you can muster ~ Haruki Murakami

My first day at MGM they decided to bring this lion out, male, and it was not the best time for him to see me. All of a sudden he thought I was in heat and this lion went into the dressing room, which was just a trailer on the sound stage, and went crazy. ~ Kim Novak

Why did it take tragedy to bring out the best in us? And why was that state of grace so fleeting? ~ Ethel Rohan

If we're going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement. ~ Joel Osteen

I think of myself as a producer who tries to bring the best out of everyone, whether that be an artist, songwriter or a publicist. ~ L.A. Reid

I rooted through my pocketbook and did a fast paraphernalia inventory. I was carrying defense spray, which was a big no-no in a crowded mall. And I carried a stun gun, which on close examination turned out to need a new battery. My two pairs of cuffs were in working order, and I had an almost full can of hair spray. Okay, probably I wasn't the world's best-equipped bounty hunter. But then what did I really need to bring in an old guy with a nose that looked like a penis and a loser hot dog vendor? ~ Janet Evanovich

In the life of Moses, in Hebrew folklore, there is a remarkable passage. Moses finds a shepherd in the desert. He spends the day with the shepherd and helps him milk his ewes, and at the end of the day he sees that the shepherd puts the best milk he has in a wooden bowl, which he places on a flat stone some distance away. So Moses asks him what it is for, and the shepherd replies 'This is God's milk.' Moses is puzzled and asks him what he means. The shepherd says 'I always take the best milk I possess, and I bring it as on offering to God.' Moses, who is far more sophisticated than the shepherd with his naive faith, asks, 'And does God drink it?' 'Yes,' replies the shepherd, 'He does.' Then Moses feels compelled to enlighten the poor shepherd and he explains that God, being pure spirit, does not drink milk. Yet the shepherd is sure that He does, and so they have a short argument, which ends with Moses telling the shepherd to hide behind the bushes to find out whether in fact God does come to drink the milk. Moses then goes out to pray in the desert. The shepherd hides, the night comes, and in the moonlight the shepherd sees a little fox that comes trotting from the desert, looks right, looks left and heads straight towards the milk, which he laps up, and disappears into the desert again. The next morning Moses finds the shepherd quite depressed and downcast. 'What's the matter?' he asks. The shepherd says 'You were right, God is pure spirit, and He doesn't want my milk.' Mose ~ Anthony Bloom

The first job of a leader - at work or at home - is to inspire trust. It's to bring out the best in people by entrusting them with meaningful stewardships, and to create an environment in which high-trust interaction inspires creativity and possibility. ~ Stephen M.R. Covey

In the ashes on the hearth Saigyo traced and retraced the word, "pity." He had yet to learn to accept life with all its good and evils, to love life in all its manifestations by becoming one with nature. And for this he had abandoned home, wife, and child in that city of conflict. He had fled to save his own life, not for any grandiose dream of redeeming mankind; neither had he taken vows with the thoughts of chanting sutras to Buddha; nor did he aspire to brocaded ranks of the high prelates. Only by surrendering to nature could he best cherish his own life, learn how man should live, and therein find peace. And if any priest accused him of taking the vows out of self-love, not to purify the world and bring salvation to men, Saigyo was ready to admit that these charges were true and that he deserved to be reviled and spat upon as a false priest. Yet, if driven to answer for himself, he was prepared to declare that he who had not learned to love his own life could not love mankind, and that what he sought now was to love that life which was his. Gifts he had none to preach salvation or the precepts of Buddha; all that he asked was to be left to exist as humbly as the butterflies and the birds. ~ Eiji Yoshikawa

The rules are strict but simple: Poker asks, nay, commands all its adherents to cut the bullshit and embrace reality. It will toy with the deluded - those who have everything figured out - with the playful cruelty of a cat toying with a mouse. Bring all of your convictions and credentials, your anger and insecurities to the poker table and the Poker Gods will tease you and mock you and fill you with false hopes and send you to the ATM a few times before releasing you, broke and steaming, at 5am. ~ Katya G. Cohen

The idea that competition is pointless is really something that speaks to me, especially in America where competition is really prominent and very overwhelming, and it doesn't bring the best out in you because what's going to push you is to bring others down. ~ Michel Gondry

Don't listen to Hassan i Sabbah," they will tell you. "He wants to take your body and all pleasures of the body away from you. Listen to us. We are serving The Garden of Delights Immortality Cosmic Consciousness The Best Ever In Drug Kicks. And love love love in slop buckets. How does that sound to you boys? Better than Hassan i Sabbah and his cold windy bodiless rock? Right?"

At the immediate risk of finding myself the most unpopular character of all fiction - and history is fiction - I must say this:

"Bring together state of news - Inquire onward from state to doer - Who monopolized Immortality? Who monopolized Cosmic Consciousness? Who monopolized Love Sex and Dream? Who monopolized Life Time and Fortune? Who took from you what is yours? Now they will give it all back? Did they ever give anything away for nothing? Did they ever give any more than they had to give? Did they not always take back what they gave when possible and it always was? Listen: Their Garden Of Delights is a terminal sewer - I have been at some pains to map this area of terminal sewage in the so called pornographic sections of Naked Lunch and Soft Machine - Their Immortality Cosmic Consciousness and Love is second-run grade-B shit - Their drugs are poison designed to beam in Orgasm Death and Nova Ovens - Stay out of the Garden of Delights - It is a man-eating trap that ends in green goo - Throw back their ersatz Immortality - It will fall apart before you can get out of The Big Sto ~ William S. Burroughs

I've lined my throat
with the river bottom's best
silt,

allowed my fingers to shrivel
and be taken for crawfish.

I've laced my eyelashes with algae.

I blink emerald.
I blink sea glass green.

I am whatever gleams
just under the surface.

Scoop at my sparkle. I'll give you nothing
but disturbed reflection.

Bring your ear to the water
and I'll sing you

down into my arms.

Let me show you how

to make your lungs
a home for minnows, how

to let them flicker

like silver

in and out of your mouth
like last words,

like air. ~ Saeed Jones

I think that frequently, many times in the beginning of our path as artists, we do have to deal with our upsets and our negativeness - in regard to, mostly, ourselves. We may be taking it out on our loved ones or people close to us, but really we're just mad at ourselves for not giving ourselves the time to devote to our inner development and doing the soul work through our art work. So there's a certain amount of working through that. You may have to cry, you may have to dance, you may have to get the energy moving in whatever way you can, and if you need to scream as you work that's as much of a prayer as the more refined kinds of artist's prayers. Sometimes it's a more direct kind of thing. You can scream in rage, you can scream your need for God, whatever's there for you. You've got to start where you're at. If you think that you can just start making spiritual art without addressing all the build-up of shadow material that you may be carrying around with you, and it's leaking out at the borders, then I don't think that's any good. You've got to be true. So wherever you're at, that's where you start.
And as far as the artist creating spiritual or visionary art, I think that it's obvious and important that the artist experience the transpersonal states prior to them trying to bring it out in their work, otherwise they're just doing imitative or derivative kind of work. It has to be from some authentic inner experience, and as long as you've had some experience of you ~ Alex Grey

Having a personality of caring about people is important. You can't be a good leader unless you generally like people. That is how you bring out the best in them. ~ Richard Branson

: Their acts violated our trust. : The secrecy told us we were alone. : The shame swirling through our experience convinced us we didn't deserve the best for ourselves. : Our circumstances twisted our beliefs about what to expect out of life. : Surviving our unpredictable, disempowering childhood left little opportunity to explore our talents or creativity. It's been said, living through childhood sexual abuse is like living in a war zone. Each of us survived by doing the best we could. Now we have the opportunity to celebrate the child we were and all we did to reach this place in life when healing is possible. Now we get to update our information. And this will bring encouraging, empowering, joy-filled changes into our lives. Each time you go back into a memory, you have the opportunity to 'see' what you learned in that moment of trauma. When I was six-years old, playing with my doll with abandon that blocked out all other noise, I found ~ Jeanne McElvaney

For what is in this world but grief and woe?
O God! methinks it were a happy life
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run-
How many makes the hour full complete,
How many hours brings about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the times-
So many hours must I tend my flock;
So many hours must I take my rest;
So many hours must I contemplate;
So many hours must I sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will can;
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:
So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
Pass'd over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy
To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?
O yes, it doth; a thousand-fold it doth.
And to conclude: the shepherd's homely curds,
His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
Is far beyond a prince's delicates-
William Shakespeare

We do not pray to inform God of our needs, because He knows what we need before we ask.

What is prayer like for you?

Is it a religious ritual that you perform out of habit?

Is it a spiritual discipline that you practice because you want to be the best Christian you possibly can be?

Is it a mechanism by which you can bring your "shopping list" to God in order to have your needs met?

Or are you running to meet your Lover, to commune with Him, hungering to find your joy in Him, and to be fulfilled in His presence? ~ Bill Mills

Jesus breaks what we bring to Him. All too often we come to the table with our best manners and a pose of impenetrable self-sufficiency. We're all surface, all role - polished and poised performers in the game of life. But Jesus is after what is within, and He exposes the insides - our inadequacies. At the table we're not permitted to be self-enclosed. We're not permitted to remain self-sufficient. We are taken into the crucifixion. We dramatize it as we eat the common food. The breaking of our pride and self-approval opens us up to new life, to new action. Everything on the table represents some kind of exchange of life, some sacrifice to our Host. If we come crusted over, hardened within ourselves in lies and poses, He breaks through and brings new life. 'A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise' (Psalm 51:17). We discover this breaking first in Jesus. Jesus was broken, His blood poured out. And now we discover it in ourselves. Then Jesus gives back what we brought to Him, who we are. But it is no longer what we brought. Who we are, this self that we offer to Him at the table, is changed into what God gives, what we sing of as Amazing Grace. [Living the Resurrection] ~ Eugene H. Peterson

To all the haters out there I wish you the best. You can't bring me down. I wake up everyday grateful for the opportunity and grateful to the fans. ~ Justin Bieber

Instructions for a Broken Heart
I will find a bare patch of earth, somewhere where the ruins have fallen away, somewhere where I can fit both hands, and I will dig a hole.
And into that hole, I will scream you, I will dump all the shadow places of my heart - the times you didn't call when you said you'd call, the way you only half listened to my poems, your eyes on people coming through the swinging door of the café - not on me - your ears, not really turned toward me. For all those times I started to tell you about the fight with my dad or when my grandma died, and you said something about your car, something about the math test you flunked, as an answer. I will scream into that hole the silence of dark nights after you'd kissed me, how when I asked if something was wrong - and something was obviously so very wrong - how you said "nothing," how you didn't tell me until I had to see it in the dim light of a costume barn - so much wrong. I will scream all of it.
Then I will fill it in with dark earth, leave it here in Italy, so there will be an ocean between the hole and me.
Because then I can bring home a heart full of the light patches. A heart that sees the sunset you saw that night outside of Taco Bell, the way you pointed out that it made the trees seem on fire, a heart that holds the time your little brother fell on his bike at the fairgrounds and you had pockets full of bright colored Band-Aids and you kissed the bare skin of his knees. I will take t ~ Kim Culbertson