Not To Be Underestimated Quotes

If there is a lack of specificity in Grossman's description of the town and the walkers, and if the story perhaps sometimes becomes lost and confusing, then it is because the landscape and its inhabitants are really shadows, creatures of an interior world, whose journey and whose quest are within. Falling Out of Time is short, and clearly a deeply personal book, but its importance and impact ought not to be underestimated. ~ Ian Sansom

One thing that is not to be underestimated is American culture's influence on the rest of the world. ~ Yael Stone

I am not to be underestimated. Overestimated, maybe, but underestimated? No. ~ Saumya Sharman

Safeguard your weaknesses, for your enemy will always use them against you. But more importantly ... " He raised a single bony finger, waving it rhythmically to the cadence of his words. "Safeguard your true strengths. If he knows not what you are capable of, he will always underestimate you." He fixed his unflinching eyes on mine. "And you are not to be underestimated. ~ M.A. George

In a world full of sadness and travail, kindness is not to be underestimated. You have the change to do a great deal of good, my dear, just by showing kindness to those the trail brings your way. Whatever you do, do your work heartily, not as unto men, but as unto God. He will take notice and He will be pleased. ~ Stephanie Grace Whitson

Perfidy and brutal force thwarted opportunities for calling President Wilson's Arbitral Award to life. Nevertheless, its significance is not to be underestimated: through that decision the aspiration of the Armenian people for the lost Motherland had obtained vital and legal force. ~ Serzh Sargsyan

It was impossible not to hate such pathetically ugly people... It was so clear to Anna that no one had anything to be glad about, that this laughter irritated her painfully, and she would have liked to stop her ears so as not to hear it. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I am not well-versed in theory, but in my view, the cow deserves her life. As does the ram. As does the ladybug. As does the elephant. As do the fish, and the dog and the bee; as do other sentient beings. I will always be in favor of veganism as a minimum because I believe that sentient beings have a right not to be used as someone else's property. They ask us to be brave for them, to be clear for them, and I see no other acceptable choice but to advocate veganism. If these statements make me a fundamentalist, then I will sew a scarlet F on my jacket so that all may know I'm fundamentally in favor of nonviolence; may they bury me in it so that all will know where I stood. ~ Vincent J. Guihan

you were the most beautiful thing i'd ever felt till now. and i was convinced you'd remain the most beautiful thing i'd ever feel. do you know how limiting that is. to think at such a ripe young age i'd experienced the most exhilarating person i'd ever meet. how i'd spend the rest of my life just settling. to think i'd tasted the rawest form of honey and everything else would be refined and synthetic. that nothing else would be refined and synthetic. that nothing beyond this point would add up. that all the years beyond me could not combine themselves to be sweeter than you.

- falsehood ~ Rupi Kaur

So what? Why should an a priori proof of the libertarian property theory make any difference? Why not engage in aggression anyway?" Why indeed?! But then, why should the proof that 1+1=2 make any difference? One certainly can still act on the belief that 1+1=3. The obvious answer is "because a propositional justification exists for doing one thing, but not for doing another." But why should we be reasonable, is the next come-back. Again, the answer is obvious. For one, because it would be impossible to argue against it; and further, because the proponent raising this question would already affirm the use of reason in his act of questioning it. This still might not suffice and everyone knows that it would not, for even if the libertarian ethic and argumentative reasoning must be regarded as ultimately justified, this still does not preclude that people will act on the basis of unjustified beliefs either because they don't know, they don't care, or they prefer not to know. I fail to see why this should be surprising or make the proof somehow defective. ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

I'm not bothered by the food Nazis. Customers ought to be able to pick what they want to eat. ~ Greg Brenneman

I have a notion that there's a Star Wars out there waiting to be made, and I'm not sure it's the next Star Wars. I think it's something else that will be fresh and original. ~ Kevin Feige

Solomon breathed a sigh of relief ever so slightly, thankful that the cricket had not been eaten. Not that he was concerned for the cricket being eaten. No, he was simply relieved that the voice in the closet, which could be a monster, had not eaten it. If the voice had eaten the cricket, that meant that he was a monster that eats things in the night, and Solomon too could be eaten. Being eaten by a closet monster was perhaps the scariest thing that could happen to an elephant, not to mention a cricket, as far as Solomon was concerned. ~ Michael Delaware

The goal of the 'liberals' - as it emerges from the record of the past decades - was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot - by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli. ~ Ayn Rand

Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order are those who could do something to alleviate it - say, the surgeons at the military hospital where the photograph was taken - or those who could learn from it. The rest of us are voyeurs, whether or not we mean to be. ~ Sontag, Susan

Every weight loss program, no matter how positively it's packaged, whispers to you that you're not right. You're not good enough. You're unacceptable and you need to be fixed. ~ Kim Brittingham

[L]iberals insist that children should be given the right to remain part of their particular community, but on condition that they are given a choice. But for, say, Amish children to really have a free choice of which way of life to choose, either their parents' life or that of the "English," they would have to be properly informed on all the options, educated in them, and the only way to do what would be to extract them from their embeddedness in the Amish community, in other words, to effectively render them "English." This also clearly demonstrates the limitations of the standard liberal attitude towards Muslim women wearing a veil: it is deemed acceptable if it is their free choice and not an option imposed on them by their husbands or family. However, the moment a woman wears a veil as the result of her free individual choice, the meaning of her act changes completely: it is no longer a sign of her direct substantial belongingness to the Muslim community, but an expression of her idiosyncratic individuality, of her spiritual quest and her protest against the vulgarity of the commodification of sexuality, or else a political gesture of protest against the West. A choice is always a meta-choice, a choice of the modality of choice itself: it is one thing to wear a veil because of one's immediate immersion in a tradition; it is quite another to refuse to wear a veil; and yet another to wear one not out of a sense of belonging, but as an ethico-political choice. This is why, ~ Slavoj Zizek

If," we say readily, "God is holy and omnipotent, He would interfere and stop all this kind of thing"
meaning by "this kind of thing" wars, persecutions, cruelty, Hitlerism, Bolshevism, or whatever large issue happens to be distressing our minds at the time. But let us be quite sure that we have really considered the problem in all its aspects.
"Why doesn't God smite this dictator dead?" is a question a little remote from us. Why, madam, did He not strike you dumb and imbecile before you uttered that baseless and unkind slander the day before yesterday? Or me, before I behaved with such cruel lack of consideration to that well-meaning friend? And why, sir, did He not cause your hand to rot off at the wrist before you signed your name to that dirty little bit of financial trickery? ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

With all my soul I longed to be in a position to join with the people in performing the rites of their faith, but I could not do it. I felt that I would be lying to myself, mocking what was sacred to me, if I were to go through with it. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Mental toughness is the ability to focus on and execute solutions, especially in the face of adversity.

Greatness rarely happens on accident. If you want to achieve excellence, you will have to act like you really want it. How? Quite simply: by dedicating time and energy into consistently doing what needs to be done.

Excuses are the antithesis of accountability.

Important decisions aren't supposed to be easy, but don't let that stop you from making them.

When it comes to decisions, decide to always decide.

The second we stop growing, we start dying. Stagnation easily morphs into laziness, and once a person stops trying to grow and improve, he or she is nothing more than mediocre.

Develop the no-excuse mentality.

Do not let anything interrupt those tasks that are most critical for growth in the important areas of your life. Find a way, no matter what, to prioritize your daily process goals, even when you have a viable excuse to justify not doing it.

"If you don't evaluate yourself, how in the heck are you ever going to know what you are doing well and what you need to improve?

Those who are most successful evaluate themselves daily. Daily evaluation is the key to daily success, and daily success is the key to success in life.

If you want to achieve greatness, push yourself to the limits of your potential by continuously looking for improvements.

Within 60 se ~ Jason Selk

History is not a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken, but rather, a glorious tale which I wish to be cast in. ~ Pietros Maneos

Be aware, and wine becomes water. Be aware - sex becomes love. Be aware - love becomes prayer. Be aware - prayer becomes meditation. Simply one thing has to be remembered: do whatsoever you like, but do it with full consciousness, and then you will not go astray. ~ Rajneesh

Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success lets you know that it is not good enough to simply exist. Life is more than wading through a lifeless job, earning a gold watch, and cashing in your 401(k). Your life has to be more than just waiting for the right opportunity to come along and find you. Your life has to be more than just marking time watching others achieve success. The words in this book will motivate you to get the most out of your life by using something that you already have - your gift. ~ Steve Harvey

It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner. A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Madden sizes me up.
"Did you even ever get Christmas presents ...?"
"Yes. And Hanukkkah presents. And Kwanzaa. Three Kings Day. Also, Saint Lucia Day and Ramadan. It's important not to play favorites. You know ... you never know who could actually be running this thing ... probably important not to put all your eggs in one basket -"
"Stop. Stop talking. ~ Andrea Portes

We want to live a simple life, ... I want to emphasize I'm not an environmentalist who goes to church. I want my principal identity as a Christian to be someone who follows Jesus. I want to work for peace and justice, care for God's environment, be a good neighbor and friend and live the right life. ~ Allen Johnson

There is no need to justify what we are. there is no need to work hard to become what we are not. we just need to return to our intergrity, to the way we were before we learned to speak. perfect. as little children, we are authentic. only the present time is real for us; wo don't care about the past, and we aren't worried about the future. we enjoy life; we want to explore and have fun. nobody teaches us to be that way; we are born that way. ~ Miguel Ruiz

Evil conquered?' said Gwydion. 'You have learned much, but learn this last and hardest of lessons. You have conquered only the enchantments of evil. That was the easiest of your tasks, only a beginning, not an ending. Do you believe evil itself to be so quickly overcome? Not so long as men still hate and slay each other, when greed and anger goad them. Against these even a flaming sword cannot prevail, but only that portion of good in all men's hearts whose flame can never be quenched. ~ Lloyd Alexander

But being around so much love has managed to thaw my frozen parts into something human. I feel human. Like maybe I could be part of this world. Like maybe I don't have to be a monster. Maybe I'm not a monster. Maybe things can change. ~ Tahereh Mafi

He's a murdering chud," Zil was yelling.
"What do you want to do? Lynch him?" Astrid demanded.
That stopped the flow for a second as kids tried to figure out what "lynch" meant. But Zil quickly recovered.
"I saw him do it. He used his powers to kill Harry."
"I was trying to stop you from smashing my head in!" Hunter shouted.
"You're a lying mutant freak!"
"They think they can do anything they want," another voice shouted.
Astrid said, as calmly as she could while still pitching her voice to be heard, "We are not going down that path, people, dividing up between freaks and normals."
"They already did it!" Zil cried. "It's the freaks acting all special and like their farts don't stink."
That earned a laugh.
"And now they're starting to kill us," Zil cried.
Angry cheers.
Edilio squared his shoulders and stepped into the crowd. He went first to Hank, the kid with the shotgun. He tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Give me that thing."
"No way," Hank said. But he didn't seem too certain.
"You want to have that thing fire by accident and blow someone's face off?" Edilio held his hand out. "Give it to me, man."
Zil rounded on Edilio. "You going to make Hunter give up his weapon? Huh? He's got powers, man, and that's okay, but the normals can't have any weapon? How are we supposed to defend ourselves from the freaks?"
"Man, give it a rest, huh?" Edilio said. He was doing his best to sound more weary tha ~ Michael Grant

To be here, is a dream come true. A dream is something that you set for yourself, not what other people set for you. When I qualified in Seville I burst into tears. I couldn't believe that I was going to the Olympic Games. ~ Natalie Du Toit

Brandi and I struggled with our marriage, but it was obvious we were falling apart as a couple. That was probably clear to me even from as far away as Iraq, but I did try to make it better. One day I suggested marriage counseling. Initially Brandi agreed. I took advantage of the fact that the military has a program called Military OneSource. It's basically one-stop shopping for all the help you could need from moving, to retirement, to marriage counseling, as it turns out. So I called one day and asked to be set up with a marriage counselor. The morning of our appointment Brandi decided she didn't want to go. She didn't give much detail other than to say, "I'm not going." Annoyed, I said, "Well shit. I'm going."
I arrived and sat down in a chair across the counselor. He looked at the empty chair next to me and started flipping through the paperwork on his clipboard. Finally he looked up and asked, "I have down that you're here for marriage counseling?"
"Yes, sir, I am," I answered matter-of-factly. Again he looked at the empty seat next to me and then back at me.
And then, in a really deadpan tone, he said, "Huh. Seems like things are going well. ~ Noah Galloway

I was depressed. I was just depressed. I did not want to be a Pittsburgh Steeler because I knew of the record. ~ Joe Greene

For death is the only certain thing in life,and despite this cliché being an absolute truth, with only the timing varying from one person to another, we never seem to be prepared for it. It is regarded as an end, as final and as negative, not as the metamorphosis it might be– the release of a spirit from physical to energy form, not unlike a caterpillar turning into a butterfly and experiencing new found freedom from the limitation of eternal crawling in search of sustenance. ~ Daniela I. Norris

When does life begin? When does the soul enter? That's a religious question. Science is not going to be able to help with that. ~ Francis Collins

Lord Carlston was not a man to be contained, even in adjectives. ~ Alison Goodman

I'm not trying to be a different weight. I want to be a different body type so that I'm not an apple. I just want to be a pear! ~ Octavia Spencer

Like the minor poet who knows the meanness of his gift, I am doomed to a lifetime of frustration: to be able to comprehend beauty, but not create it. ~ Elizabeth Bear

Immature love seeks to change the beloved for its own benefit. Mature love seeks to see the beloved change for their benefit. Sacrificial love recognizes that there may be wounds so deep that their beloved may not be able to change. It is content to care, sometimes without the contentment which is to be found in being cared for. ~ James Castleton, MD, Mending Of A Broken Heart

There's something about writing that demands a leave-taking, an abandonment of the world, paradoxically, in order to see it clearly. This retreat has to be accomplished without severing the vital connection to the world, and to people, that feeds the imagination. It's a difficult balance. And here is where these ruminations about writing touch on morality. The same constraints to writing well are also constraints to living fully. Not to be a slave to fashion or commerce, not to succumb to arid self-censorship, not to bow to popular opinion - what is all that but a description of the educated, enlightened life? ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

I told you I try not to live in the past and nothing could change the fact that my mum was gone. But I'm a liar. The truth was, I'd had one dream ever since I was six: to see my mum again. To actually get to know her, talk to her, go shopping, do anything. Just be with her once so I could have a better memory to hold on to. ~ Rick Riordan

He tried not to notice that her hair was loose. He tried not to see that she was wearing her nightclothes. They were demure, yes, but still meant to be removed, and his gaze kept dipping to the silken hem, which brushed the top of her foot, allowing him a tantalizing peek at her toes.
Good God, he was staring at her toes. Her /toes/. What had his life come to? ~ Julia Quinn

I think once you start as an announcer, you have to decide what kind of approach you're going to have. I decided very early that I was going to be a reporter, that I would not cheer for the team. I don't denigrate people who do it. It's fine. I think you just have to fit whatever kind of personality you have, and I think my nature was to be more down the middle and that's the way I conducted the broadcasts. ~ Ernie Harwell

Today, the pain, the stoking, the thrill of someone new, the promise of so much bliss hovering a fingertip away, the fumbling around people I might misread and don't want to lose and must second-guess at every turn, the desperate cunning I bring to everyone I want and crave to be wanted by, the screens I put up as though between me and the world there were not just one but layers of rice-paper sliding doors, the urge to scramble and unscramble what was never really coded in the first place. ~ Andre Aciman