See Only Problems Quotes

If you see only problems, then the doors of opportunities will close. If you see only opportunities, then problems will fly away. ~ Debasish Mridha

Who Am I?
I'm a creator, a visionary, a poet. I approach the world with the eyes of an artist, the ears of a musician, and the soul of a writer. I see rainbows where others see only rain, and possibilities when others see only problems. I love spring flowers, summer's heat on my body, and the beauty of the dying leaves in the fall. Classical music, art museums, and ballet are sources of inspiration, as well as blues music and dim cafes. I love to write; words flow easily from my fingertips, and my heart beats rapidly with excitement as an idea becomes a reality on the paper in front of me. I smile often, laugh easily, and I weep at pain and cruelty. I'm a learner and a seeker of knowledge, and I try to take my readers along on my journey. I am passionate about what I do. I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always be a dreamer. Come dream with me. ~ Sharon M. Draper

Now is not the time to shrink from the challenge of saving our only home in the universe. Now is not the time to pull into ourselves, retreating into either survivalist or escapist mode. To the contrary, this is the time for titans, not turtles. Now is the time to open our arms, expand our horizons, and dream big. Big problems require big solutions. ~ Van Jones

Boxers risk a lot in the ring. That's one of the things that attracts me to it. You want to see a knockout but I also really don't want to see people get hurt. It's this constant dilemma when I'm watching boxing. The only times I get nervous is watching a really big fight or when my brother is playing. I get to the stage where I'm actually shaking. ~ Andy Murray

{Stockton, a playwright who performed plays about Robert Ingersoll, gives the four moments in Ingersoll's life that shaped him, first being the death of his father, who was a reverend}

Despite their opposing religious views, the old revivalist on his deathbed asked Bob to read to him from the black book clutched to his chest. Bob relented, took the book, and was surprised to discover that it wasn't the Bible. It was Plato describing the noble death of the pagan Socrates: a moving gesture of reconciliation between father and son in parting. The second event was Bob's painful realization that his outspoken agnosticism not only invalidated his own political career but ended his brother Ebon's career in Congress, as well. Third was the exquisite anguish of seeing his supportive wife Eva and his young daughters made to suffer for his right to speak his own mind. And fourth was the dramatic tension of having to walk out alone on public stages, in a glaring spotlight, time after time with death threats jammed in his tuxedo pocket informing him that some armed bigot in that night's audience would see to it that he didn't leave the stage alive. ~ Richard F. Stockton

I look out over my life and see a million question marks with only a few definitive exclamation points. I'm living for the next exclamation. ~ Christy Hall

The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyong reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see. ~ Edward Abbey

Always try to associate yourself closely with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you. Apart from the rewards of friendship, the association might pay off at some unforeseen time - that is only an accidental byproduct. The important thing is that the learning will make you a better person. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful woman who does not practice dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to attempt it with them. – But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess, together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness, treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

When people are on the same page, when they agree wholeheartedly, when they see eye to eye, very little learning actually takes place. Insight and learning only occur when what we experience in the moment conflicts, clashes with, or expands our awareness beyond what we know or take for granted. ~ Jeffrey Russell

If your only instrument is a sword, then you will always strike at your problems. ~ Alexandra Christo

Language allows us to talk about the past and plan the future. We can teach children about things that are not present. And above all, we can bring people with different backgrounds and different knowledge together to discuss our problems. This actually gives me hope. I still think we are smart enough to not destroy planet Earth, our only home. ~ Jane Goodall

No question about it: potential is wrapped in great mystery. Like rainbows, which are really circles-we see only the upper halves, the horizon hides the rest-potential never reveals its entirety. ~ Max De Pree

To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let's not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

He could hear her ramping up and rather than letting it happen, he silenced her the best way he knew hos.
He lowered his head to hers, slowly, so she could see him coming. Her lips parted, in anticipation, in fear, out of breathlessness or a need to speak, he didn't care. He pressed his against them and heard her quick intake of breath.
Her hands went up to his neck and she pulled herself closer, her mouth softening against his, opening, until they were necking like the pair of teenagers they had been, urgently, desperately, the rest of the world falling away until it was only them, no one else mattering, nothing necessary to their survival but that they hold on, hold on, hold on to each other and never let go. ~ Roxanne Snopek

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

Another example of how a metaphor can create new meaning for us came about by accident. An Iranian student, shortly after his arrival in Berkeley, took a seminar on metaphor from one of us. Among the wondrous things that he found in Berkeley was an expression that he heard over and over and understood as a beautifully sane metaphor. The expression was "the solution of my problems" - which he took to be a large volume of liquid, bubbling and smoking, containing all of your problems, either dissolved or in the form of precipitates, with catalysts constantly dissolving some problems (for the time being) and precipitating out others. He was terribly disillusioned to find that the residents of Berkeley had no such chemical metaphor in mind. And well he might be, for the chemical metaphor is both beautiful and insightful. It gives us a view of problems as things that never disappear utterly and that cannot be solved once and for all. All of your problems are always present, only they may be dissolved and in solution, or they may be in solid form. The best you can hope for is to find a catalyst that will make one problem dissolve without making another one precipitate out. [...] The CHEMICAL metaphor gives us a new view of human problems. It is appropriate to the experience of finding that problems which we once thought were "solved" turn up again and again. The CHEMICAL metaphor says that problems are not the kind of things that can be made to disappear forever. To treat them as th ~ George Lakoff

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing; that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;-and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost: Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. ~ Laurence Sterne

The Romans recognized potential difficulties in advance and always remedied them in time. They never let problems develop just so they could escape a war, for they knew that such wars cannot be avoided, only postponed to the advantage of others. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

I am proud that I defy your categories. I am proud that I don't fit easily into any box. I am proud of all the things I am and all the things i can be. Question yourself every time you think you only see one thing in me. ~ David Levithan

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits. ~ Lewis Thomas

❝Washington - perhaps as many global powers have done in the past - uses what I might call the "immaculate conception" theory of crises abroad. That is, we believe we are essentially out there, just minding our own business, trying to help make the world right, only to be endlessly faced with a series of spontaneous, nasty challenges from abroad to which we must react. There is not the slightest consideration that perhaps US policies themselves may have at least contributed to a series of unfolding events. This presents a huge paradox: how can America on the one hand pride itself on being the world's sole global superpower, with over seven hundred military bases abroad and the Pentagon's huge global footprint, and yet, on the other hand, be oblivious to and unacknowledging of the magnitude of its own role - for better or for worse - as the dominant force charting the course of world events? This Alice-in-Wonderland delusion affects not just policy makers, but even the glut of think tanks that abound in Washington. In what may otherwise often be intelligent analysis of a foreign situation, the focus of each study is invariably the other country, the other culture, the negative intentions of other players; the impact of US actions and perceptions are quite absent from the equation. It is hard to point to serious analysis from mainstream publications or think tanks that address the role of the United States itself in helping create current problems or crises, through pol ~ Graham E. Fuller

You are a thinker. I am a thinker. We think that all human beings are thinkers. The amazing fact is that we tend to think against artificial intelligence - that various kind of computers or artificial robots can think, but most of us never cast any doubt on human thinking potential in general. If during natural conservation with human any computer or artificial robot could generate human-like responses by using its own 'brain' but not ready-form programming language which is antecedently written and included in the brain design and which consequently determine its function and response, then that computer or artificial robot would unquestionably be acknowledged as a thinker as we are. But is it absolutely true that all humans are capable of using their own brain while interpreting various signals and responding them? Indeed, religion or any other ideology is some kind of such program which is written by others and which determines our vision, mind and behavior models, depriving us of a clear and logical thinking. It forces us to see the world with its eyes, to construct our mind as it says and control our behavior as it wants. There can be no freedom, no alternative possibilities. You don't need to understand its claims, you need only believe them. Whatever is unthinkable and unimaginable for you, is said higher for your understanding, you cannot even criticise what seems to be illogical and absurd for you. The unwritten golden rule of religion and its Holy Scripture is tha ~ Elmar Hussein

Most people grow only large enough to solve their problems - not to reach their potential. ~ Gerald Brooks

I need nothing in this world in order to be happy. I only need to see Jesus in heaven, Whom I now see and adore on the altar with the eyes of faith. ~ Dominic Savio

We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly. ~ John Pilger

You … That was all I thought about when I was rescued, that was all I thought about during the six years I was there. You." He slipped a wisp of hair behind my ear. "You were what kept me alive in that hell. And you're what will keep me alive in this one."
"You're free. Alive. How is this hell?"
"It might not be a wall of metal bars and a half a world if distance, but there's still something keeping me separated from you … It's hell to go from loving someone, thinking of them every minute of every day and thinking you'd never see them again, only to make it home and see them and realize they aren't yours to love anymore. ~ Nicole Williams

Jobs are a part of life. Maybe you've heard of the concept. It's called work? See, what happens is that you suffer through doing annoying and humiliating things until you get paid not enough money. Like those Japanese game shows, only without all the glory. ~ Jim Butcher

They had to die. They were killing innocent people. (Wulf)
They were surviving, Wulf. You never had to face the choice of being dead at twenty-seven. When most people's lives are just beginning, we are looking at a death sentence. Have you any idea what it's like to know you can never see your children grow up? Never see your own grandchildren? My mother used to say we were spring flowers who are only meant to bloom for one season. We bring our gifts to the world and then recede to dust so that others can come after us. When our loved ones die, we immortalize them like this. I have one for my mother and the other four are my sisters. No one will ever know the beauty of my sisters' laughter. No one will remember the kindness of my mother's smile. In eight months, my father won't even have enough of me left to bury. I will become scattered dust. And for what? For something my great-great-great-whatever did? I've been alone the whole of my life because I dare not let anyone know me. I don't want to love for fear of leaving someone like my father behind to mourn me. I will be a vague dream, and yet here you are, Wulf Tryggvason. Viking cur who once roamed the earth raiding villages. How many people did you kill in your human lifetime while you sought treasure and fame? Were you any better than the Daimons who kill so that they can live? What makes you better than us? (Cassandra)
It's not the same thing. (Wulf)
Isn't it? You know, I went to your Web site and saw the ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Everything you've done, everything you've seen, everything you've become, remains. You never can go back, only forward, and if you don't bring the whole of yourself with you, you'll never see the sun again. ~ Michael Marshall Smith

It was a fairy tale, no fooling. It was unreality becoming real. This frightened her. Because people don't care for unreality becoming real. It pricks their well-fed minds, you see, with something like a hunger pang. They prefer the logical stuffiness of expectancy. It is only at certain times that they weaken, letting imagination in. That's the time to get them. ("The Disinheritors") ~ Richard Matheson

Because Rhy didn't need his protection, not anymore, and he'd only told a partial truth when he said they both needed this.
The whole truth was, Rhy needed it more.
Because Kell had given him a gift he did not want, could never repay.
He'd always envied his brother 's strength.
And now, in a horrible way, it was his.
He was immortal.
And he hated it.
And he hated that he hated it. Hated that he'd become the thing he never wanted to be, a burden to his brother, a source of pain and suffering, a prison. Hated that if he'd had a choice, he would have said no. Hated that he was grateful he hadn't had a choice, because he wanted to live, even if he didn't deserve to.
But most of all, Rhy hated the way his living changed how Kell lived, the way his brother moved through life as if it were suddenly fragile. The black stone, and whatever lived inside it, and for a time in Kell, had changed his brother, woken something restless, something reckless. Rhy wanted to shout, to shake Kell and tell him not to shy away from danger on his account, but charge toward it, even if it meant getting hurt.
Because Rhy deserved that pain.
He could see his brother suffocating beneath the weight of it. Of him.
And he hated it.
And this gesture - this foolish, mad, dangerous gesture - was the best he could do.
The most he could do. ~ V.E. Schwab

Disaster movies do us the psychological service of forcing a quick march through the worst that could happen. At the end we see that you win a few, you lose a few, some cars are up in trees, and only the most attractive of the young people have survived. ~ Frederica Mathewes-Green

You feel quite distant by playing at huge stadiums year after year, where you only can see a great darkness in front of you. ~ Robert Plant