Something Of Value Quotes

Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only, truth. But the world isn't perfect, and the law is incomplete. Equivalent Exchange doesn't encompass everything that goes on here, but I still choose to believe in its principle, that all things do come at a price, that there's an ebb and a flow, a cycle, that the pain we went through did have a reward, and that anyone who's determined and perseveres will get something of value in return, even if it's not what they expected. I don't think of Equivalent Exchange as a law of the world anymore. I think of it as a promise, between my brother and me. A promise that, someday, we'll see each other again. ~ Hiromu Arakawa

One cannot live from one day into the next without changing. It is the nature of life. Small choices are always necessary even when large ones do not loom. I will change what I choose to change and retain what I choose to retain. I will even listen to advice since it is foolish not to, provided the adviser has something of value to say. But I will not choose between Anna and Lady Anastasia, for I am both. I merely have to decide, one choice at a time, how I will somehow reconcile the two without rejecting either. ~ Mary Balogh

Statistically, it would seem improbable that any mathematician or scientist, at the age of 66, would be able through continued research efforts, to add much to his or her previous achievements. However I am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap period of about 25 years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort of vacation my situation may be atypical. Thus I have hopes of being able to achieve something of value through my current studies or with any new ideas that come in the future. ~ John Forbes Nash

What's more, engagement and flow tend to prompt a virtuous cycle of sorts: we become more motivated and aroused overall, and, consequently, more likely to be productive and create something of value. We even become less likely to commit some of the most fundamental errors of observation ~ Anonymous

If a man does away with his traditional way of living and throws away his good customs, he had better first make certain that he has something of value to replace them. ~ Robert Ruark

who can draw something of value from any situation have a tendency to do better and remain healthier than those who cannot. ~ Robert J. Wicks

Be ruthless! Say no to everything that is either not essential or doesn't add something of value to your life. ~ Dee Waldeck

Judo is the way to the most effective use of both physical and spiritual strength. By training you in attacks and defenses it refines your body and your soul and helps you make the spiritual essence of Judo a part of your very being. In this way you are able to perfect yourself and contribute something of value to the world. This is the final goal of Judo discipline. ~ Kano Jigoro

What's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart. To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don't necessarily end up so. That's the feeling I have, as someone who's felt this, who's experienced it. ~ Haruki Murakami

Give all your pearls, and the swine will make a pearl necklace, then run off. Don't show all your glory. ~ Anthony Liccione

Sometimes, it is not about guarding something of value that is important, but rather, being a valuable guard, so that when that thing comes along that needs guarding, there is no question. ~ James A. Owen

It was a mistake to think that in the new world they would be able to care in the old way. In the new world you had to find something of value and learn not to care for it. You had to learn how to sell it. ~ Caleb Crain

Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the meaning of life, a naïve query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

To waste valuable time on stressing over those who treat you unkindly, accomplish nothing of importance. Rather, that time should be spent working on most important things, that actually
create something of value that is worth your time. ~ Ellen J. Barrier

Dear Black Women… Save, Invest, and Spend Less. Save because you just never know what will come up. This will save you from having to borrow from friends, family, or going to get a payday loan. Invest so that you'll have something of value to show for. Investing also helps in building WEALTH. Spend less so that you're not broke, living paycheck to paycheck, and/or in a lot of debt. Don't allow money to control you. Take charge! Keep, and/or get your finances in order. Value your money and be mindful of how and what you're spending. ~ Stephanie Lahart

It's one thing to communicate to people because you believe you have something of value to say. It's another to communicate with people because you believe they have value. ~ John C. Maxwell

President Lyndon Johnson's 10 point formula for success:
1. Learn to remember names. Inefficiency at this point may indicate that your interest is not sufficiently outgoing.
2. Be a comfortable person so there is no strain in being with you. Be an old-shoe, old-hat kind of individual.
3. Acquire the quality of relaxed easy-going so that things do not ruffle you.
4. Don't be egotistical. Guard against the impression that you know it all.
5. Cultivate the quality of being interesting so people will get something of value from their association with you.
6. Study to get the "scratchy" elements out of your personality, even those of which you may be unconscious.
7. Sincerely attempt to heal, on an honest Christian basis, every msiunderstanding you have had or now have. Drain off your grievances.
8. Practice liking people until you learn to do so genuinely.
9. Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone's achievement, or express sympathy in sorrow or disappointment.
10. Give spiritual strength to people, and they will give genuine affection to you. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Get around people who have something of value to share with you. Their impact will continue to have a significant effect on your life long after they have departed. ~ Jim Rohn

I'm here to present my findings at the symposium. I'm an esteemed member of the Society, with an impressive record of scholarship, and I have something of value to contribute to these proceedings. I also happen to be female. I'm a woman who knows a great deal about rocks. I suggest you find the stones to deal with it. ~ Tessa Dare

The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value ~ Bruce Mau

But you listen to Coltrane and that's something human, something that's about elevation. It's like making love to a woman. It's about something of value, it's not just loud. It doesn't have that violent connotation to it. I wanted to be a jazz musician so bad, but I really couldn't. There was no way I could figure out to learn how to play. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Music gave me a sense that I was worthwhile and that I had something of value to offer the world even though everybody was telling me that I didn't. ~ Sarah McLachlan

You can't make money without selling something real. You can't make something real without first imagination manifesting itself in your head. You can't have imagination without surrendering yourself to an idea that you want to create something of value to other human beings. ~ James Altucher

We are risk averse by nature - but the only way you can reach your full potential is by taking chances. Understand that you are capable of far more than you've achieved, believe that you have something of value to share with the world, and take care to step outside of your comfort zone and into your greatness. Your courage will inspire others to do the same. ~ Les Brown

Museums matter only to the extent that they are perceived to provide communities they serve with something of value beyond their mere existence." - STEPHEN WEIL ~ G. Wayne Clough

As she removed the key, he stood close enough that she felt his breath on her ear. "Do you have something of value in there, or are you making certain I know you have a lock? ~ Cate Rowan

Gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give. ~ P.D. James

Before one finds peace with God, he must have lived, loved and lost something of value to him. ~ Angela Brown

It is impossible to be a cynic if you live a good deal with young people. Fundamentally, every young person has a feeling that the future is going to hold something of value. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

You can't just tell your team, 'Think long term.' It doesn't work that way. When you are starting out, you have to always think about trying to build something of value for the customer: something they can use all the time, something of use. ~ Ram Shriram

It's a serious character weakness to think you can get something of value for little or nothing, to believe that life will flood you with abundance when you won't commit yourself to delivering your best contribution in exchange. In fact, it's a safe bet that you'll subconsciously sabotage yourself from being in such a place for long. You won't allow yourself to receive what you don't feel you've earned. To receive life's bounty, you must know without a doubt that you deserve it. ~ Steve Pavlina

As I have said, the Bible consistently changes the questions we bring to the problem of pain. It rarely, or ambiguously, answers the backward-looking question "Why?" Instead, it raises the very different, forward-looking question, "To what end?"We are not put on earth merely to satisfy our desires, to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.We are here to be changed, to be made more like God in order to prepare us for a lifetime with him. And that process may be served by the mysterious pattern of all creation: pleasure sometimes emerges against a background of pain, evil may be transformed into good, and suffering may produce something of value. ~ Philip Yancey

The value of having an inner map of the world as it is (not as it's broadcast) is this: it allows you to know that your task is larger than yourself. If you choose, just by virtue of being a decent person, you are entrusted with passing on something of value through a dark, crazy time-preserving your integrity, in your way, by your acts and your very breathing for those who will build again when this chaos exhausts itself. ~ Michael Ventura

I want people to be entrepreneurs, but I want them to do it for the right reasons, because they think they can change the world, because they think they have got something of value to give to the world. Not because they think they can make a lot of money. ~ Pierre Omidyar

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

When billionaire car dealers or manufacturers pay for ambassadorships, at least they pay with money earned by selling something of value. ~ Elizabeth Warren

I think a good novel can be a doorstop to despair. I also think the real bravery comes with those who prepared to go through that door and look at the world in all its grime and torment, and still find something of value, no matter how small. ~ Colum McCann

In college, unable to be "special" - or in demand - as a girl, I made myself useful, even essential, in my microcosm - as a writer and photographer for the band, particularly for the band director. My "specialness" was to produce something of value, not to look like something (with that different kind of "value"), so I was still fundamentally invisible, but had a significant purpose. ~ Cris Mazza

Perhaps an eternal law of art is that, for everything discovered, something of value is forgotten. ~ Jan Swafford

I fought with all I had, a battle led by heart and faith. I fought till I had nothing. How do you restart without a heart or faith?? Now lost, broken and with no direction, I often wonder if I should have quit , while I had something left in the tank. ~ Terry Houchin

Hope is something that is built from small parts. Perceived actions. Observed effects. Imperfect understanding. Uncertain knowledge. Acknowledged fears. The things each of us projects and says and does in the physical world. Hope then is made up of tiny bits and pieces of us. All of us, together. ~ David Amerland

I had always believed that the very best food contains something elementally repugnant. That its innate grotesquerie is what makes it so perversely alluring. My own favorite foods tended toward a certain sludgy, muddy texture. And from the most expensive and genteel through to the indulgently crass, the appeal of slop abides: caviar, escargots, foie gras or hamburgers, kebabs, macaroni and cheese. Even vegetable soup forms a membrane. Apples begin rotting from the very first bite. No matter which end of the spectrum, there lies fundamentally and yet delectably disgusting, some squirmy, sinewy, oozing, greasy, sticky, glutinous, mushy, fatty, chewy, viscous thing that compels. The line between pleasure and revulsion can seem so very thin, if it even exists at all. ~ Lara Williams

There's a startling fact that you read somewhere: after airbags became standard in cars, statisticians noticed that the incidence of severe leg injuries increased dramatically. Think about it for a minute: Why should that be? Is there something about the way airbags inflate during collision that targets the passengers' legs, makes them more vulnerable? No. It's a matter of checks and balances. Before airbags, there were certain accidents that would have killed you; you'd be a corpse in the morgue, and no one would be paying any attention to your legs. When we change the way we do things - the way we shop for groceries or take care of our children or protect ourselves from harm - we set other changes in motion, for good or for ill. And it may be years before we figure out what we've done. ~ Carolyn Parkhurst

He had thought at first that they were all of common stature and costume, with the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he looked at the others, he began to see in each of them exactly what he had seen in the man by the river, a demoniac detail somewhere. That lop-sided laugh, which would suddenly disfigure the fine face of his original guide, was typical of all these types. Each man had something about him, perceived perhaps at the tenth or twentieth glance, which was not normal, and which seemed hardly human. The only metaphor he could think of was this, that they all looked as men of fashion and presence would look, with the additional twist given in a false and curved mirror. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Catch Fire, Do Something, Get Excited by Finding Your Purpose In Life. ~ Steve Harvey

The Psalms draw a hard and fast distinction between the righteous and the wicked, something that is not appreciated in a period of religious syncretism. ~ Kevin Swanson

I can pick up the city feeds on my antenna. It said they were going to change you all. Turn you into something less dangerous. Are you still ... ?"
She gazed at him. "What do you think, David?"
He peered into her eyes for a long moment, then sighed and shook his head. "You just look like Tally to me."
She looked down, her vision blurring.
What's the matter?"
Nothing, David." She shook her head. "You just took on five million years of evolution again."
I what? Did I say something wrong?"
No." She smiled. "You said something right. ~ Scott Westerfeld

I am naked, wrapped up in a dragon that should be a prince, I don't know how much of my crew is dead, and those mermaids could return at any time. Would somebody please say something that makes sense? ~ Megan Derr

Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values. It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise. ~ Aldo Leopold

When I think about the things that cause me pain or the things that cause me trouble or frustration, it's not people asking for my autograph; it's people breaking my heart. That happens to you whether you've sold millions of records or whether you're taking classes at college. You're going to believe people when they say that they love you. I don't leave out details when I write songs about that. I try to make my songs as personal as possible because, ultimately, my music started out as just trying to turn my diary entries into something that was a piece of music. And that has never changed. ~ Taylor Swift

I think there's something really thrilling to having to get people laughing about something, and then, when you have them in that comfort space, you can drop the weight into the texture of the story. ~ Uzo Aduba

The demands of Jesus are difficult because they require us to do something extraordinary. At the same time He asks us to regard these [acts of goodness] as something usual, ordinary. ~ Albert Schweitzer

So, " Nathan said, attention focused on Adrian, "now that Vasilisa's graduated, what are you going to do with yourself? You aren't going to keep slumming with high school students, are you? There's no point in you being there anymore. "
"I don't know, " said Adrian lazily. "I kind of like hanging out with them. They think I'm funnier than I really am. "
"Unsurprising, " his father replied. "You aren't funny at all. It's time you do something productive. If you aren't going to go back to college, you should at least start sitting in on some of the family business meetings. Tatiana spoils you, but you could learn a lot from Rufus. "
"True, " said Adrian deadpan."I'd really like to know how he keeps his two mistresses a secret from his wife. "
"Adrian!" snapped Daniella, a flush spilling over her pale cheeks ~ Richelle Mead

The Doug is just in mourning," he goes on. I avoid looking at Charlotte, in case she's on the verge of laughing, too. It takes a certain something to pull off talking about yourself in third person. ~ Catherine Rider

Everything we do means something, Ender realized. Them laughing. Me not laughing. He toyed with the idea of trying to be like the other boys. But he couldn't think of any jokes, and none of theirs seemed funny. Wherever their laughter came from, Ender couldn't find such a place in himself. ~ Orson Scott Card

I never consciously said, 'I want to be an actor.' It sounds stupid, but it's kind of like being a painter or something. You don't say, 'From today on I'm going to be a painter.' It's not something conscious - you've just been painting pictures all your life. ~ Franka Potente

Science fiction has done a really good job of scaring us into thinking that computers shouldn't get too smart, because as soon as they get really smart, they're going to take over the world and kill us, or something like that. But why would they do that? ~ Luis Von Ahn

People with a condition called prosopagnosia cannot distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar faces. They rely entirely on cues such as hairlines, gait, and voices to recognize people they know. Pondering this condition led researchers Daniel Tranel and Antonio Damasio to try something clever: even though prosopagnosics cannot consciously recognize faces, would they have a measurable skin conductance response to faces that were familiar? Indeed, they did. Even though the prosopagnosic truly insists on being unable to recognize faces, some part of his brain can (and does) distinguish familiar faces from unfamiliar ones. ~ David Eagleman

There are - as every one knows - two kinds of writing: one coming out of your vitals and the other from the top of your head. The first is the only sort from which any true private pleasure can be gained, for it is a way of getting something out of life which seemed to be there in childhood, when childhood is quite over. ~ J. E. Buckrose

Stop saying things like that! You can't ... tell me all of that and then walk off like it's no big deal! You're killing me ... Offer me something or offer me nothing,
but stop trying to play both sides. ~ Tiffany Snow

Writing a novel is like pottery. Your initial draft of your story is like a lump of clay. Editing is like shaping that piece of clay into something interesting and beautiful. ~ Monika Pardon

Without rich people who want it done now, who would animate the free world? In theory, you want everyone to live peacefully according to their needs, along the banks of a river. In fact, you worry that you'd die of boredom there. In fact, you get a buzz from someone like Carole Potter, who keeps prize chickens and could teach a graduate course in landscaping; who maintains a staff of four (more in the summers, during High Guest Season); a handsome, slightly ridiculous husband; a beautiful daughter at Harvard and an incorrigible son doing something or other on Bondi Beach; Carole who is charming and self-deprecating and capable, if pushed, of a hostile indifference crueler than any form of rage; who reads novels and goes to movies and theater and yes, yes, bless her, buys art, serious art, about which she actually fucking knows a thing or two. ~ Michael Cunningham

On his back, Robert must have had time to see something beautiful, and not just the ugliness of a city street at the end of life. Even with the tremendous pain in his badly gutted belly he would have looked up beyond the fire escapes and the windows with their glittery trees and television glows, to the sky about the rooftops. A sky shimmery with the possibilities of the death; lights exaggerated, the heavens peeled back- a swirling haze of nebulae and comets - in some distant place, intimations of the new beginning into which he would soon journey ~ Oscar Hijuelos

I like to think that at best the interview becomes something like the unaccountable experience of talking to oneself in a mirror. ~ Michael Silverblatt

I am glad that I wrote something that brought joy to millions of people. ~ Chuck Mangione

The thing that's hard about it - the thing that makes it so hard when the person you love has been taken from you, not by something evil you could have seen coming but by random, pure chance - is that you find yourself suddenly living through a history other than the one you expected to live, through no fault of your own. I feel . . . it's hard to describe, but I feel weirdly outside of time. Ever since the accident I've had these moments when I felt like a visiting guest in this world, not a permanent resident. Like sometimes I look in a mirror and I feel like I can almost see through the version of me on the other side of the glass. And sometimes I feel like I can see the history I used to be in more clearly than the history I'm in now - the real history is one where Philip and Sean and I are all together, being a family and doing whatever family things people do, and this one's like . . . like a fake version of events that I've been yanked into, where everything's gone wrong. ~ Dexter Palmer

Our eyes met and his grin stretched another quarter-inch. Another schoolgirl flip
followed by a very un-schoolgirl wave of heat. He leaned even farther over the boards, lips parting to say something.
"Hey, Kris!" someone yelled behind him. "If you want to flirt with Eve, tell her to meet you in the penalty box. You'll be back there soon enough. ~ Kelley Armstrong

Happiness above all seems to be of this character, for we always choose it on account of itself and never on account of something else. Yet honor, pleasure, intellect, and every virtue we choose on their own account - for even if nothing resulted from them, we would choose each of them - but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, because we suppose that, through them, we will be happy. ~ Aristotle.

Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen ~ Sukhraj S. Dhillon

I'm sorry," he said. He shook his head. "There are about a dozen girls who I had to say I was sorry to because I didn't love them. So I get what it's like for you right now.
Believe me. I know. It's terrible. You feel guilty and awkward and like you failed to communicate something to me." He nodded. "But most of all you feel like you want to get the hell away as fast as possible. And I know what that feels like and I'll make this easy for you. Take off. Go home. It's fine. I broke the rules and I got burned and that's my fault. ~ Audrey Bell

It's not about the amount of time you put in, it is the way you spend the time on the work you need to get done. Saying that you worked ten hours on something that went nowhere is not really anything to brag about. ~ Loren Weisman

Whatever your aptitudes, the greatest source of achievement is passion. Aptitude matters, but passion often matters more… If you love doing something, you'll be constantly drawn to get better at it. ~ Ken Robinson

I realize that the times I have known some sort of inner peace in my life, those have always been times when I focused on helping others more than myself ... babysitting, cooking dinner for my family, cleaning up the house, talking to a friend on the phone and just listening to them vent about something or other without offering an opinion or judging. Those have been the moments when I get to stop obsessing about myself and really feel a sense of liberation. 'Freedom from the bondage of self ... ~ Nic Sheff

The absolute value of love makes life worth while, and so makes Man's strange and difficult situation acceptable. Love cannot save life from death; but it can fulfill life's purpose. ~ Arnold J. Toynbee

I used to spend a lot of time alone as a kid, creating characters and doing voices in my room, and I thought to myself, I'm either going to go absolutely nuts, or I'm going to find something to put that energy into. ~ Rami Malek

Some things are too precious to forget, such as the lessons of history, and the deeds of unsung heroes, for if we stumble into the habit of forgetting, we lose both the value of life and the opportunity to become a wiser and stronger generation. ~ Sara Niles

She had just pulled her dress coat from it's hanger when Connor came bouncing out of her bedroom and down the hallway with something in his hand.
"Mommy, what's this jiggle stick?"
She looked up to see her son standing not two feet away from Reece with her purple jelly vibrator in his hand. And he was shaking it, making it waggle back and forth. ~ Pamela Clare

I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about! ~ Rita Dove

Give me something to go on, here. What kind of black magic are we talking? Elphaba,Wicked Witch of the West-type stuff or Slytherin-type stuff? ~ Chloe Neill

The downside of attending to the emotional life of groups is that it can swamp the ability to get anything done; a group can become more concerned with satisfying its members than with achieving its goals. Bion identified several ways that groups can slide into pure emotion - they can become "groups for pairing off," in which members are mainly interested in forming romantic couples or discussing those who form them; they can become dedicated to venerating something, continually praising the object of their affection (fan groups often have this characteristic, be they Harry Potter readers or followers of the Arsenal soccer team), or they can focus too much on real or perceived external threats. Bion trenchantly observed that because external enemies are such spurs to group solidarity, some groups will anoint paranoid leaders because such people are expert at identifying external threats, thus generating pleasurable group solidarity even when the threats aren't real. ~ Clay Shirky

Know your value, accept nothing but the best. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

When I got into all the grunge stuff, I really liked Hole. I actually saw them in concert when I was a sophomore in high school. It was kind of rare to see a successful female rocker get down and dirty with the guys. And Courtney Love did. It was fun to be a fan of something different. ~ Carrie Underwood

Because subjects like literature and art history have no obvious material pay-off, they tend to attract those who look askance at capitalist notions of utility. The idea of doing something purely for the delight of it has always rattled the grey-bearded guardians of the state. Sheer pointlessness has always been a deeply subversive affair. ~ Terry Eagleton

Are we at some kind of evolutionary equipoise as a species? Or, are we destined to become something different - something, perhaps, even better adapted to the environment? ~ Harvey V. Fineberg

There is something funny about the human condition, and civilized intelligence makes fun of its own ideas. ~ Saul Bellow

One of the many problems with the American left has been its image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. ~ Christopher Hitchens