Provisional Value Quotes

As our life is our main provisional value, 'taking the time' to interpret our experiences is a momentous choice. Time, life and choice outline a trilogy that can solve and unite so as to vanquish the powerlessness which we might face on our path. (Could time be patient?) ~ Erik Pevernagie

Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality - it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible? ~ Duane Michals

And so I was scared. I was scared of my own sexual hunger, which felt so secretive and uncharted, and I was scared of the sexual hunger of boys, which felt so vivid and overt, and I was terribly uncertain of the relationships between sex and power and value, which seemed so merged and hard to tease apart. In the midst of all that, I didn't exactly loathe my body, or feel ashamed of it, but I was deeply ashamed of my fear, which felt disabling and immature and woefully, painfully uncool, a terrible secret, evidence of some profound failing and ignorance on my part. Other girls, or so I imagined, knew what to do, how to use their power, how to derive pleasure from it, and in contrast, I felt not only freakish but isolated, as though I was standing outside a vital, defining loop. ~ Caroline Knapp

Change gives you the courage to look at your past without any regrets. Change says your past made you stronger and wiser and is getting you ready to emerge from hibernation. It is preparing you to never comprise your self-worth and to take everything at face value. Take a breather. Don't underestimate your ability to create your own happiness. Your journey starts when you begin to love (Y.O.U.) Yourself. Over. Unhappiness. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

God's friendship gave such a value and meaning to his life that he had something to sing about. ~ Vishal Mangalwadi

Love is a daily, mutual exchange of value. ~ Denis Waitley

There is much in our culture to affront the eye of the fervent terrorist postulant, things out there that do us no favors, to be sure. If, for example, it came to light that the dangerously thin, affectless, value-deficient, higher aspiration-free, amateur-porn chanteuse Paris Hilton was actually a covert agent from some secret Taliban madrassa whose mission was to portray the ultimate capitalist-whore puppet of a doomed society with nothing more on its mind than servitude to Mammon and celebrity at any cost, I wouldn't be a bit surprised. ~ David Rakoff

The way he loved was almost like a vise, a weight; at times she felt it verged on codependence--that his identity, his value system, all of it very much hinged on her. ~ Nickolas Butler

I don't think there's any single finished point for a work. It's done when something's happening with the work that feels like a balanced, coherent disharmony. That's one way to say it. And where if I keep working on it, to discover and struggle with new problems, I'll obliterate the ones I was working on. I could keep working on it, but it'd become something different. And I value what's here, at the moment. ~ Jessica Stockholder

He's feeling a pull, like gravity, of the approaching TV news. It's a condition of the times, this compulsion to hear how it stands with the world, and be joined to the generality, to a community of anxiety. The habit's grown stronger these past two years; a different scale of news value has been set by monstrous and spectacular scenes. [ ... ] Everyone fears it, but there's also a darker longing in the collective mind, a sickening for self-punishment and a blasphemous curiosity. Just as the hospitals have their crisis plans, so the television networks stand ready to deliver, and their audiences wait. Bigger, grosser next time. Please don't let it happen. But let me see it all the same, as it's happening and from every angle, and let me be among the first to know. ~ Ian McEwan

There is a difference between fiction and nonfiction deeper than technique or intention. I value both but genuinely believe that fiction can tell a larger truth. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Societies raise their grandest monuments to what their cultures value most highly. As the tallest buildings in a city noted for tall buildings, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were certainly monumental. ~ Michael Mandelbaum

First reason is, it's not authorized in the Constitution, it's an illegal institution. The second reason, it's an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value. ~ Ron Paul

The anthropologist Margaret Mead concluded in 1948, after observing seven different ethnic groups in the Pacific Islands, that different cultures made different forms of female sexual experience seem normal and desirable. The capacity for orgasm in women, she found, is a learned response, which a given culture can help or can fail to help its women to develop. Mead believed that a woman's sexual fulfillment, and the positive meaning of her sexuality in her own mind, depend upon three factors:
1: She must live in a culture that recognizes female desire as being of value;
2: Her culture must allow her to understand her sexual anatomy;
3: And her culture must teach the various sexual skills that give women orgasms. ~ Naomi Wolf

I you don't value your time, no one else will. ~ Donna Brazile

Of course (said Oryx), having a money value was no substitute for love. Every child should have love, every person should have it ... but love was undependable, it came and then it went, so it was good to have a money value, because then at least those who wanted to make a profit from you would make sure you were fed enough and not damaged too much. Also there were many who had neither love nor a money value, and having one of these things was better than having nothing. ~ Margaret Atwood

In 1914, Thomas Edison, at age sixty-seven, lost his factory to fire. It had very little insurance. No longer a young man, Edison watched his lifetime effort go up in smoke and said, "There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burnt up. Thank God we can start anew." In spite of disaster, three weeks later, he invented the phonograph. What an attitude! ~ Shiv Khera

My imaginings, of course, had no objective value whatever. My spontaneous fantasies lived in my mind because I felt completely helpless in the face of this threat that might come upon me at any time, and because there did not exist to my knowledge any possible course of action which could have saved me if I had ever been confronted with a white mob. My fantasies were a moral bulwark that enabled me to feel I was keeping my emotional integrity whole, a support that enabled my personality to limp through days lived under the threat of violence. These fantasies were ~ Richard Wright

It's not what you take, it's what you give.
It's not what you know, it's what you apply.
It's not who you lack, it's what you acquire.
It's not what you have, it's what has you.

It's not what you earn, it's what you save.
It's not what you buy, it's what you enjoy.
It's not what you seek, it's what you find.
It's not what you encounter, it's what you experience.

It's not what you think, it's what you believe.
It's not what you see, it's what you comprehend.
It's not what you feel, it's what you value.
It's not what you do, it's what you accomplish.

It's not what you want, it's what you pursue.
It's not what you chase, it's what you attract.
It's not what you avoid, it's what you follow.
It's not what you intend, it's what you execute.

It's not what you mask, it's what you reveal.
It's not what you desire, it's what you need.
It's not what you receive, it's what you embrace.
It's not what you demand, it's what you deserve.

It's not what you lose, it's what you gather.
It's not what you cherish, it's what you honor.
It's not what you fear, it's you master.
It's not what you conquer, it's what you win over. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Even if you forget everything else I want you to always remember that you are a person of value, and you have a friend who loved you enough to give you his most valued possession. ~ Bette Greene

Loss of focus is what most worries Charlie and me when we contemplate investing in businesses that in general look outstanding. All too often, we've seen value stagnate in the presence of hubris or of boredom that caused the attention of managers to wander. ~ Warren Buffett

Self-esteem is not a value that, once achieved, is maintained automatically thereafter; like every other human value, including life itself, it can be maintained only by action. Self-esteem, the basic conviction that one is competent to live, can be maintained only so long as one is engaged in a process of growth, only so long as one is committed to the task of increasing one's efficacy. In living entities, nature does not permit stillness: when one ceases to grow, one proceeds to disintegrate
in the mental no less than in the physical. ~ Ayn Rand

The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even though the bee is small, there she is on the flower, doing something of value. And the value she creates there contributes to a larger ecosystem of value, in that mountain meadow, in that range of mountains, in the world and even the universe. And can't you just feel how happy she is? ~ Jay Ebben

I kneeled in front of the E M T chair, in front of the mirror on the medicine cabinet, and wiped the rest of the makeup away. My skin was raw, pink and new. The ambulance had a single round light in the middle of the ceiling. The light cast long shadows under my nose, ears, eyes, and chin, and in the shadows I was young and I was a crone, in the exact same moment. That's it, I thought: life is short. The only value of wated time is knowledge. p.295 ~ Monica Drake

Exploration is an oft-lauded human activity, and one that resonates in the same way that music and good stories do. It's hard-wired into our species (and into many others), no doubt because it has survival value. Exploration occasionally rewards those who accept its risks, usually with new resources. ~ Seth Shostak

There are only two creatures of value on the face of the earth: those with the commitment, and those who require the commitment of others. ~ John Adams

In the days when money was backed by its face value in silver or gold, there were limits to how much wealth could flow around the world. Today, it's virtual money that the bank lends into existence on a computer screen. "And unless the economy continually expands, there is no new flow of money to pay back that money, plus interest." ... "As it stands now, if banks start loaning money more slowly than they collect debts, the quantity of money in the economy goes down, and it's impossible to pay back debts. So we get defaults on houses ... our economy plunges into misery and unemployment. Under our current monetary system, the only alternative to that is endless growth. So one absolute thing we have to change is the whole nature of the monetary system ... we deny banks the right to create money." ... There's a challenge with that solution, he admits. "You're trying to take the right to create wealth away from some of the wealthiest people on the planet. ~ Alan Weisman

He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Even if I never read another book, I'm still a person with intrinsic value, and later I'll be a river. ~ Daniel Mallory Ortberg

The state exists for man,not man for the state.The same may be said ofscience. These are old phrases,coined by people who saw in human individuality the highest human value .I would hesitate to repeat them,were it not for the ever recurring danger that they may be forgotten,especially in these days of organization and stereotypes. ~ Albert Einstein

Nothing that's really worthwhile should be easy, Belgarion. If it's easy, we don't value it ...
Eriond ~ David Eddings

When a man and woman have sexual relations, who gets the
most out of the deal? The man, or the woman? Since we live in a society
full of tricks, the man thinks he gets more out of the encounter.
But what do men really get out of it? The reality is that women have
the potential to get more out of it than the man, especially if the
man's seeds have accumulated a certain amount of value. ~ Tariq Nasheed

The Malays were outstripped economically in their own country by the immigrant races. In the words of historian Lennox Mills, "when the British came, the Malay was a poor man in a poor country; when they left he was a poor man in a rich country." British attitudes and policies, what the Malays did for a living, the strengths of the immigrants and the nature of the Malay value system all contributed to their backward economic position. ~ Anonymous

Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.
As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I value my privacy, and if sometimes my actions seem strange or arbitrary or capricious, I do not want them challenged. ~ George R R Martin

The value of books is proportionate to what may be called their plasticity
their quality of being all things to all men, of being diversely moulded by the impact of fresh forms of thought. ~ Edith Wharton

She could see lines choices made and choices left untouched intertwine his soul in a rich mesh of pulsating orbits. She could see the value of past intentions, the trials he had chosen to bear and the wisdom that lay concealed within the mortal body. She knew that if she spoke of this, he would not believe her. No one believes in the perfections of the soul. There always is a certain relativity to events that throws a shadow against the perfection within each one. Seeing perfection consistently becomes a forbidden luxury, or maybe a practical flaw. ~ Shradhdha. S

We should live, my Lesbia, and love
And value all the talk of stricter
Old men at a single penny.
Suns can set and rise again;
For us, once our brief light has set,
There's one unending night for sleeping.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
Then still another thousand, then a hundred;
Then, when we've made many thousands,
We'll muddle them so as not to know
Or lest some villain overlook us
Knowing the total of our kisses.
(Translated by Guy Lee) ~ Catullus

Evidently, one thing seems to have more value in direct proportion to whether or not we feel we have the freedoms, joys or conveniences of that thing. ~ David Brier

The family which takes its mauve an cerise, air-conditioned, power-steered and power-braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, lighted buildings, billboards and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground. They pass on into countryside that has been rendered largely invisible by commercial art. (The goods which the latter advertise have an absolute priority in our value system. Such aesthetic considerations as a view of the countryside accordingly come second. On such matters we are consistent.) They picnic on exquisitely packaged food from a portable icebox by a polluted stream and go on to spend the night at a park which is a menace to public health and morals. Just before dozing off on an air mattress, beneath a nylon tent, amid the stench of decaying refuse, they may reflect vaguely on the curious unevenness of their blessings. Is this, indeed, the American genius? ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

I've heard people say that once you're an adult, you don't change. I don't believe that. I think we all have the capacity to change; we just have to want to do it. It's developing the want that is difficult. We become so stuck in our routines, so comfortable, so unwilling to take risk - we just don't see the value in change. Either that or we're just plain uncomfortable with what the change might offer. ~ Scott Hildreth

And by then I had understood that any ghazal that could not pierce your heart completely and instantly, like an arrow, had no value as a work of art. ~ Rabisankar Bal

Solomon resumes talking to

the envoys of Sheba: "Go back and tell her what you have seen, how the rare substance she

thinks we value can be scraped up anywhere as soil. Tell her the elaborate throne she loves

looks more like a bandage over a hurt place. We admire Ibrahim, who left his kingdom so

quickly. With us, one genuine kneeling down in total humility would buy hundreds

of governments. Our currency is an eagerness to accept the gift of soul change. Nothing

else. Sheba's sumptuous life is just a hole in the ground with children playing in it,

pretending to be kings and prime ministers. We perform reverse alchemy, transmuting

gold mines into abandoned sites! ~ Jalaluddin Rumi