Some Things Never Change Quotes

It seems as if we can't go right, or do right, or be righted,' said Toby. 'I hadn't much schooling, myself, when I was young; and I can't make out whether we have any business on the face of the earth, or not. Sometimes I think we must have a little; and sometimes I think we must be intruding. I get so puzzled sometimes that I am not even able to make up my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born bad. We seem to do dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always being complained of and guarded against. One way or another, we fill the papers. Talk of a New Year!' said Toby, mournfully. ~ Charles Dickens

We don't know each other, but I know that you must be very special. I can't be there today, to watch my baby boy promise his love to you, but there are a few things that I think I might say to you if I were.

First, thank you for loving my son. Of all my boys, Travis is the most tender hearted. He is also the strongest. He will love you with everything he has for as long as you let him. Tragedies in life sometimes change us, but some things never change. A boy without a mother is a very curious creature. If Travis is anything like his father, and I know that he is, he's a deep ocean of fragility, protected by a thick wall of swear words and feigned indifference. A Maddox boy will take you all the way to the edge, but if you go with him, he'll follow you anywhere.

I wish more than anything that I could be there today. I wish I could see his face when he takes this step with you, and that I could stand there with my husband and experience this day with all of you. I think that's one of the things I'll miss the most. But today isn't about me. You reading this letter means that my son loves you. And when a Maddox boy falls in love, he loves forever.
Please give my baby boy a kiss for me. My wish for both of you is that the biggest fight you have is over who is the most forgiving.

Love,
Diane ~ Jamie McGuire

When in doubt, discuss the weather. Some things never change. ~ Emma Lear

The guys exchange scowls as I climb off the mattress with Jeb's arm securely around my waist. It's nice to see some things never change. ~ A.G. Howard

I pushed a few sweaty strands of hair out of his face. Rowan reached up and squeezed my hand.
In a weakened tone, he said " Can't keep your hands off me, can you?"
Marcus laughed, "Some things never change."
I rolled my eyes, "You're incorrigible! "
Rowan smirked, "And, sexy. Don't forget, sexy. ~ Stacey O'Neale

Percy: I'll walk down to the cabins and Connor and Travis are stealing stuff from the camp store, and Silena is arguing with Annabeth trying to give her a new makeover, and Clarisse is still sticking the new kids' head into the toilets. It's nice that some things never change. ~ Rick Riordan

I guess some things never change. ~ Tim McGraw

Dear Mama,
I am most certainly not dead. Thank you for your tender concern. I will try to write more often so you don't have to worry so between letters. (Because a week's silence surely means I have fallen prey to a wasting illness or been murdered in these boring, gray streets.)
School is going well. I am excelling in all of my classes. (Apparently, some things never change, and girls are not challenged in Albion in the same way they weren't on Melei.) My professors are all intelligent and kind. (Kind of horrible.) None stand out. (I refuse to mention him by name, no matter how many obviously "subtle" questions you ask.) The other students are also quite focused on their schooling, and none of us has much time for socializing. Boys and girls attend separate classes as well, so no, I have not met many interesting young men. (I am neither courting nor being courted. Please stop hoping.)
Tell Aunt Li'ne thank you for the mittens. They are very much appreciated in this cold, damp climate I am so unused to. And please tell the sun hello and I miss her very much! I also miss you, of course. (I do. Very much.)
All my love,
Jessamin ~ Kiersten White

This has been going on through the ages. They criticize the silent ones. They criticize the talkative ones. They criticize the moderate ones. There is no one in the world that escapes criticism. There never was and never will be, nor is there now, the wholly criticized or the wholly approved. Shakyamuni Buddha said that more than twenty-five hundred years ago, but it seems that some things never change. ~ Pema Chodron

Rome became a republic in 509 B.C., after driving out its king and abolishing the monarchy. The next two centuries saw a long struggle for power between a group of noble families, patricians, and ordinary citizens, plebeians, who were excluded from public office. The outcome was a apparent victory for the people, but the old aristocracy, supplemented by rich pledeian nobles, still controlled the state. What looked in many ways like democracy was, in fact, an oligarcy modified by elections. ~ Anthony Everitt

But, like Shakespeare, I too am often occupied with the pursuit of my creative endeavors and dealing with all aspects of life's mundane matters. "Who are the best musicians for these songs?" "Am I recording in the right studio?" "Is this song in the right key?" Some things never change, even in 400 years.

Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, "Are my songs literature?"

So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer. ~ Bob Dylan

Some Things Never Change. They just Become Different. ~ Joshua Caleb

Alain gazed at the old road, his expression uncharacteristically somber. "The Emperors believe they have the power to force their illusions on all others. This is part of that. The road itself is declared dead, never to be used, and no one dares dispute the Imperial will."
"Not much better that the Great Guilds, is it?"
"No I do not think so. When you seek allies among the commons, Mari, I believe you should look to those who do not blindly accept the authority of their leaders."
"Too much failure to accept authority and you end up with anarchy, like in Tiae," Mari pointed out.
"That is so," Alain agreed. "But as you told your elder, there is much that lies between total control and anarchy. The leaders of our Guilds and the rulers of the Empire would have us believe that only those two extremes exist, but I have been among the free cities and you have been in the confederation. Their governing systems are not perfect, but they work while still allowing their people freedom."
"Freedom?" Mari turned to Alain, surprised. "I've never heard you use that word. Hardly anybody uses it."
"I was taught that freedom is an illusion, only one more illusion which distracts from the path of wisdom." A flare of some deep emotion showed in Alain's eyes. "But I have felt freedom, Mari, as I walked the road beside you, and I know it is no illusion. The will of the Great Guilds, of the Emperor, those things are illusions, and their images will not endure. ~ Jack Campbell

Every culture that's ever existed has operated under the illusion that it understood 95% of reality and that the other 5% would be delivered in the next 18 months, and from Egypt forward they've been running around believing they had a perfect grip on things and yet we look back at every society that preceded us with great smugness at how naive they all were. Well, it never occurs to us, then, that maybe we're whistling in the dark too! That the universe is stranger than you CAN suppose, and that that openness that that perception imparts is a great joy, a great blessing, because then you can live your life not in service to some fascistic metaphor but in service to the living mystery: the fact that you're not going to understand it; it is not going to yield to logic; or magic; or any other technique that's been developed ... ~ Terence McKenna

He shook his head. "No, they never went. He checked and it turns out the Kavach plans are still considered active material and are still on file at Public Works." "Fantastic," said Xela. "So we can go see them." Nate shook his head. "Nope. That's where it ends. They're sealed records." Tim's eyebrows went up. "Sealed?" "Yep. The same way they seal plans for things like the Federal Building or parts of the state capitol or embassies. The guy emailed me to explain why he couldn't tell me anything. He even said he has to make a note in the file that I asked about them because of some Patriot Act thing. ~ Peter Clines

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen has been the Queensland premier the whole time we've been in Australia, and the state is a national joke for having a Deep North government thats said to resemble governments of a generation or more ago in some parts of the US Deep South - governments that always talk about getting things done and never talk about rights. ~ Nick Earls

With a monolithic project, late in the game, we can't even do much to cut costs. We have already written requirements for things we'll never get. We've designed, and even written code for things that we'll never complete. All that work is wasted. If only we had known the truth. We could have deferred some of that work. We laid out this project with an all-or-nothing mentality. We analyzed it all. We designed it all. We tried to code it all. We discovered, too late, that we can't have it all. ~ Anonymous

Every little trifle for some reason does seem incalculably important today and when you say of a thing that "nothing hangs on it" it sounds like blasphemy. There's never any knowing - how am I to put it? - which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it forever. ~ E. M. Forster

It was about the impression our students made on a German who lived for some time in Russia: 'If you show a celestial map to a Russian schoolboy who has never heard about such things before,' that German wrote, 'the next day he will return the map corrected.' The Germa was trying to say o Russian youth that they combine infinite conceit with total ignorance. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The main thing I want to show in this chapter is that there is no magic involved in building your own language. I've often felt that some human inventions were so immensely clever and complicated that I'd never be able to understand them. But with a little reading and tinkering, such things often turn out to be quite mundane. ~ Marijn Haverbeke

Painting is almost like a religious experience, which should go on and on. Age just gives you the freedom to do some things you've never done before. Great work can come at any stage of your life. ~ Will Barnet

Well, some books are destined never to be read,' said Mervyn. 'Its's the natural order of things.'
Like women who are destined never to marry, though Ianthe. ~ Barbara Pym

The cost of a loaf is a simple thing, and so a loaf is often sought, but some things are past valuing: laughter, land, and love are never bought. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Our Lady of the Underground never asks me to choose between day and night. If I want to flourish I need the ever-changing light of darkness as much as I need the full of light of day. Give your heart to them both, she says. When I complain that I cannot see as well at night as I can during the days, she tells me this is a good thing. Maybe it will slow you down. When I tell her that I cannot get as much done at night because darkness makes me sleepy, she says yes, that is the plan. Maybe you will get some rest. When I point out that slowing down just makes me think about things I would rather not think about, she laughs. Do you think that not thinking about them will make them go away? ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

Just the actual physical ability to hold four instruments simultaneously and do some of the things that Vivien was able to do is mind blowing to any surgeon. He never went to medical school and he became one of the great teachers of medicine himself, people are just amazed. ~ Mary Stuart Masterson

I would never really listen to my own music or whatever, but I write music so I can deal with things and I hope that some people can relate in that. Maybe help people, or just bring a smile to their face or make them feel cool or something. ~ Zac Farro

There are some things I guess we bury so we can get on with living. I don't think it's wrong, necessarily, just what we do to survive. It's the remembering part that's hard. Some people remember and some never have to. The blessed and the cursed. ~ Nicole A. Seitz

There's really educated women out there who are feminists and they have read up on their stuff. They can talk to me right now, and school me on some things I've never known, and that's amazing, you are a scholar, you are wise, you are educated. But the unfortunate thing is also the reality, and the fact is, millions of people might not even know who these educated feminists are - hundreds will, thousands maybe. ~ Lizzo

One of the things I do take some pride in is that if you had never read an article about my life, if you knew nothing about me, except that my books were being set in front of you to read, and if you were to read those books in sequence, I don't think you would say to yourself, 'Oh my God, something terrible happened to this writer in 1989.' ~ Salman Rushdie

Give Me The Simple Life"

I don't believe in frettin' and grievin'
Why mess around with strife'
I never was cut out to step and strut out
Give me the simple life

Some find it pleasant dining on pheasant
Those things roll off my knife
Just serve me tomatoes and mashed potatoes
Give me the simple life

A cottage small if all I'm after
Not one that's spacious and wide
A house that rings with joy and laughter
And the ones you love inside

Some like the high road, I like the low road
Free from the care and strife
Sounds corny and seedy, but yes, indeed
Give me the simple life ~ Ella Fitzgerald

I mention all this to make the point that if you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos, to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you wouldn't choose human beings for the job.
But here's an extremely salient point: we have been chosen, by fate or Providence or whatever you wish to call it. It's an unnerving thought that we may be living the universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.
Because we are so remarkably careless about looking after things, both when alive and when not, we have no idea-- really none at all-- about how many things have died off permanently, or may soon, or may never, and what role we have played in any part of the process. In 1979, in the book The Sinking Ark, the author Norman Myers suggested that human activities were causing about two extinctions a week on the planet. By the early 1990s he had raised the figure to about some six hundred per week. (That's extinctions of all types-- plants, insects, and so on as well as animals.) Others have put the figure ever higher-- to well over a thousand a week. A United Nations report of 1995, on the other hand, put the total number of known extinctions in the last four hundred years at slightly under 500 for animals and slightly over 650 for plants-- while allowing that this was "almost certainly an underestimate," particularly with regard to tropical species. A few interpreters think most extinction figures are grossl ~ Bill Bryson

Accept That You Often Won't Know Why Other People Have Acted in a Particular Way

Humans like to have explanations for why things happen. When we don't have one, we tend to invent something. Sometimes the explanations involve personalizing. Personalizing is when you take something more personally than it was meant in reality. If a work colleague is rude and abrupt, you might think it's because she's annoyed at you, and not consider that it might be because she's feeling flustered by something unrelated. Anxiety-prone people who don't like uncertainty can be especially likely to ruminate about why something has happened and come up with explanations involving excessive personalizing. To overcome this, you need to learn to tolerate that you're not always going to know why people behave the way they do.
Recognize that if someone acts strangely, there's a very high likelihood that the behavior has something to do with what's happening for that person, rather than being about you, and you're probably never going to know what the reason was. You can save yourself hours or days of rumination and upset if you can tolerate the idea of not knowing. While there might be some cases in which you try to find out what the issue was, in many cases your only real choice is to let it go. Try to arrive at this insight before you've done hours of ruminating!
Experiment: Was there a time recently when in retrospect it would've been better to accept not knowing the reason for s ~ Alice Boyes

Shigure: "Lemme guess; you lost your temper and yelled at her again, right? You know, you shouldn't do that if you're just going to regret it. Not too bright, now is it?"
Kyo: "Save your breath. I'm just not meant to get along with other people. Period. End of story."
Shigure: "Oh sure, some people just aren't. But you're not one of them. You lack experience, that's all. For example, I'm sure you could smash this table to bits with your bare hands. But I'm equally sure you could punch the table without breaking it. And why is that? Because I know your training has taught you to control your fists... at least I should hope so, after four months of fighting bears and-"
Kyo: "I didn't fight bears!"
Shigure: "My point is, it takes just as much training to get along with people. Only, training by yourself in the mountains won't do you any good. You need to surround yourself with others. As you get to know them, of course you take the chance that you'll end up hurting them, or they'll end up hurting you. One of those things might very well happen. That's the only way we learn... about others, and about ourselves. You're a black-belt in martial arts, but I'd guess you still a white-belt in social skills. Someday, you're going to meet someone that truly wants to be your friend, and you, theirs. But it if you don't keep training, you won't be ready when that happens."
Kyo: "It'll never happen, anyways!"
Shigure: "Uh-uh! Never say never."
Kyo: "Ok, fi ~ Natsuki Takaya

It's funny, in some of the interviews I've seen that were done for the film, some people say things like, 'Oh, I was never a very big Jim Woodring fan. I've never thought his work was that great.' ~ Jim Woodring

We've known his family forever. He doesn't seem to care about the scandal in ours, and he's an excellent shot-"
"That would certainly be at the top of my list of requirements for a husband," Minerva broke in, eyes twinkling. "'Must be able to hit a bull's-eye at fifty paces.'"
"Fifty paces? Are you mad? It would have to be a hundred at least."
Her sister burst into laughter. "Forgive me for not knowing what constitutes sufficient marksmanship for your prospective mate." Her gaze grew calculating. "I heart that Jackson is a very good shot. Gabe said he beat everyone today, even you."
"Don't remind me," Celia grumbled.
"Gabe also said he won a kiss from you."
"Yes, and he gave me a peck on the forehead," Celia said, still annoyed by that. "As if I were some…some little girl."
"Perhaps he was just trying to be polite."
Celia sighed. "Probably.
I didn't kiss you "properly" today because I was afraid if I did I might not stop.
"The thing is…" Celia bit her lower lip and wondered just how much she should reveal to her sister. But she had to discuss this with someone, and she knew she could trust Minerva. Her sister had never betrayed a confidence. "That wasn't the first time Jackson kissed me. Nor the last."
Minerva nearly choked on her chocolate. "Good Lord, Celia, don't say such things when I'm drinking something hot!" Carefully she set her cup on the bedside table. "He kissed you?" She seized Celia's free hand. "More than o ~ Sabrina Jeffries

When I finally did sit down in front of the machine - a familiar object, I had seen it daily when we were living together - I was reminded of how abrupt and unnatural death always is, at least as we experience it: always an interruption, always things that are left unfinished. This was manifested in Christopher's laptop, the desktop was covered in an intricate mosaic of files and document, there were at least a hundred different and sometimes oddly named folders - other people's work, internet. You name a folder without thinking, there are obvious names for some - accounts, articles - but others have the quality of junk drawers, you hardly remember their contents, you never imagine that one day someone else would be rummaging through them. ~ Katie Kitamura

Nature is infinitely rich and diverse in her ways. She can be seen to break her most unchanging laws. She has made self-interest the motive of all human action, but in the great host of men she produces ones who are strangely constituted, in whom selfishness is scarcely perceptible because they do not place their affections in themselves. Some are passionate about the sciences, others about the public good. They are as attached to the discoveries of others as if they themselves had made them, or to the institutions of public welfare and the state as if they derived benefit from them. This habit of not thinking of themselves influences the whole course of their lives. They don't know how to use other men for their profit. Fortune offers them opportunities which they do not think of taking up.
In nearly all men the self is almost never inactive. You will detect their self-interest in nearly all the advice they give you, in the services they do for you, in the contacts they make, in the friendships they form. They are deeply attached to the things which affect their interests however remotely, and are indifferent to all others. When they encounter a man who is indifferent to personal interest they cannot understand him. They suspect him of hidden motives, of affectation, or of insanity. They cast him from their bosom, revile him. ~ Jan Potocki

I've never been good with asking for help; it seems risky, but at some point when things are really dicey, your stubbornness gives way to a certain form of humility that, after you get over yourself, feels liberating. I started to believe that the universe was conspiring to help me finish my house, sending people along at the right moment. ~ Dee Williams

I think a lot of people may have a unique insight or some idea that they feel could be a great solution for a particular problem, but for some reason never have a chance to try or never have the courage or maybe the self-doubt. Really, it's best just to remain naive and continue to work on things and see if people have the same problems. ~ Chad Hurley

I was into her and it was creating some kind of war inside me. A war between the guy I was and the guy everyone wanted me to be. It never used to be a competition. I was happy to be that guy. The player, the football star, the charmer. I was those things. But I was more. ~ Cambria Hebert

Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it
tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest
if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself
you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say Here at last is the thing I was made for. ~ C.S. Lewis

I'd Begin to imagine my life in a foreign country, some faraway land where, if things went wrong, i could always blame somebody else, saying I'd never wanted to live there in the first place. ~ David Sedaris

For some people they say, it's about wish fulfillment, it's about the things you are never able to do in your day you are actually fulfilling at night. There are other people who will say that it's actually telling you something. ~ Shelby Harris

I believe that we must attack these things in which we do not believe. Not attack by the method of cutting off the heads of the people, but attack in the sense of discuss. I believe that we should demand that people try in their own minds to obtain for themselves a more consistent picture of their own world; that they not permit themselves the luxury of having their brain cut in four pieces or two pieces even, and on one side they believe this and on the other side they believe that, but never try to compare the two points of view. Because we have learned that, by trying to put the points of view that we have in our head together and comparing one to the other, we make some progress in understanding and in appreciating where we are and what we are. And I believe that science has remained irrelevant because we wait until somebody asks us questions or until we are invited to give a speech on Einstein's theory to people who don't understand Newtonian mechanics, but we never are invited to give an attack on faith healing, or on astrology - on what is the scientific view of astrology today. ~ Richard P. Feynman

I wonder how many people
I know are out there,
battling demons and leviathans
alone on this cold night.

How many people I know
who tell me they are fine,
and know how to expertly hide
the cry for help behind their eyes.

How many are just
a helping hand away
from a moment that could
better their entire life.

And how many will never ask,
instead ball up these terrible things
inside themselves thinking they
are all alone in their fight.

It is a sobering thought:
Everyone we love and know
and hate are all suffering
in some great or small way.

This is why we must
be swift with our kindness.
make greater efforts at compassion
when we ask someone if they are okay. ~ Nikita Gill

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honored poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

At times I can certainly see a subject clearly and distinctly, think my way through it, great sweeping thoughts that I can scarcely grasp but which all at once give me an intense feeling of importance. Yet when I try to write them down they shrivel into nothing, and that's why I lack the courage to commit them to paper - in case I become too disillusioned with the fatuous little as they that emerges. But let me impress just one thing upon you, sister. Wash your hands of all attempts to embody those great, sweeping thoughts. The smallest, most fatuous little essay is worth more than the flood of grandiose ideas in which you like to wallow. Of course you must hold on to your forebodings and your intuitions. They are the sources upon which you draw, but be careful not to drown in them. Just organise things a little, exercise some mental hygiene. Your imagination and your emotions are like a vast ocean from which you wrest small pieces of land that may well be flooded again. The ocean is wide and elemental, but what matter are the small pieces of land you reclaim from it. The subject right before you is more important than those prodigious thoughts of Tolstoy and Napoleon that occurred to you in the middle of last night, and the lesson you gave that keen young girl and Friday night is more important than all your vague philosophizing. Never forget that. Don't overestimate your own intensity; it may give you the impression that you were cut out for greater things than the so-calle ~ Etty Hillesum

Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around."
"Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abn ~ Ray Bradbury

I don't know. It's the world we live in, I guess. Some things will never be fair. ~ S. Walden

...I have had a remarkable experience. In the past the prophetic voice to which I have become accustomed has always been my constant companion, opposing me even in quite trivial things if I was going to take the wrong course. Now something has happened to me, as you can see, which might be thought and is commonly considered to be a supreme calamity; yet neither when I left home this morning, nor when I was taking my place here in court, nor at any point in any part of my speech did the divine sign oppose me. In other discussions it has often checked me in the middle of a sentence; but this time it has never opposed me in any part of this business in anything that I have said or done. What do I suppose to be the explanation? I will tell you. I suspect that this thing that has happened to me is a blessing, and we are quite mistaken in supposing death to be an evil. I have good grounds for thinking this, because my accustomed sign could not have failed to oppose me if what I was doing had not been sure to bring some good result. ~ Socrates

My Greek Chorus takes a break when I meet with Mrs. Castor. I've never told her about them, or the fact that I converse with my sister's cat whenever I'm over there visiting. Probably a lot of things will remain a secret to Mrs. Castor. Some people might argue that going to see a counselor is a waste if I'm going to remain so guarded. But the appointments are only a ten dollar co-pay thanks to the university's generous nature and, unlike my chorus and the cat, she answers back independent of my brain cells and challenges my 'long held beliefs about the way people interact'. Or somethin ~ Barry Brennessel