Things Not Done Quotes

I once heard a spiritual man say that he was not so much astonished at the things done by a soul in mortal sin as at the things not done by it. May God, in his mercy, deliver us from such great evil, for there is nothing in the whole of our lives that so thoroughly deserves to be called evil as this, since it brings endless and eternal evils in its train. ~ Teresa Of Avila

We aren't who we want to be. We are what society demands. We are what our parents choose. We don't want to disappoint anyone; we have a great need to be loved. So we smother the best in us. Gradually, the light of our dreams turns into the monster of our nightmares. They become things not done, possibilities not lived. ~ Paulo Coelho

What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And [he] thought he had the answer. Regret. Regret for things said, things done, and things not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be. ~ Louise Penny

You are full of wonderful possibilities. Do something with them. The most painful regrets, those which never go away, are regrets of things not done, things never attempted. ~ Ralph Marston

The past may or may not be a foreign country. It may morph or lie still, but its capital is always Regret, and what flushes through it is the grand canal of unfledged desires that feed into an archipelago of tiny might-have-beens that never really happened but aren't unreal for not happening and might still happen though we fear they never will. And I thought of Ole Brit holding back so much, as we all do when we look back to see that the roads we've left behind or not taken have all but vanished. Regret is how we hope to back into our real lives once we find the will, the blind drive and courage, to trade in the life we're given for the life that bears our name and ours only. Regret is how we look forward to things we've long lost yet never really had. Regret is hope without conviction, I said. We're torn between regret, which is the price to pay for things not done, and remorse, which is the cost for having done them. Between one and the other, time plays all its cozy little tricks. ~ Andre Aciman

He was dark-haired as his mother, and promised to be like her in mood also; for he was not merry, and spoke little, though he learned to speak early and ever seemed older than his years. Túrin was slow to forget injustice or mockery; but the fire of his father was also in him, and he could be sudden and fierce. Yet he was quick to pity, and the hurts or sadness of living things might move him to tears. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I always liked doing all sorts of different things. As a kid growing up, I was always drawing and painting - always doing art. But I also loved movies and music, so as I started doing everything, I liked every aspect. It's not really that I am a control freak; it's just that is what I love. ~ Rob Zombie

The underlying reason for convergence seems to be that all organisms are under constant scrutiny of natural selection and are also subject to the constraints of the physical and chemical factors that severely limit the action of all inhabitants of the biosphere. Put simply, convergence shows that in a real world not all things are possible. ~ Simon Conway Morris

At first glance, the painting on the fortune-telling tent seemed to depict
an eye, like the decoration on Madame Lulu's caravan and the tattoo on Count Olaf's ankle.
The three children had seen similar eyes wherever they went, from a building in the shape of
an eye when they were working in a lumbermill, to an eye on Esmé Squalor's purse when
they were hiding in a hospital, to a huge swarm of eyes that surrounded them in their most
frightening nightmares, and although the siblings never understood quite what these eyes
meant, they were so weary of gazing at them that they would never pause to look at one
again. But there are many things in life that become different if you take a long look at them, and as the children paused in front of the fortune-telling tent, the painting seemed to change
before their very eyes, until it did not seem like a painting at all, but an insignia. ~ Lemony Snicket

See, I know my life probably sounds glamorous and all, but trust me, it's not. Living with a bunch of do-gooders comes with some major drawbacks. At the top of the list is the fact that while superheroes are really great at the big things - like thwarting the forces of evil - they really stink at the little things. Like, for example, remembering their kid's birthday.
- Elliott Harkness, age 12 ~ R.L. Ullman

Facing the press is not easy, but because you have to go, you have to try to take a lot of positive things for yourself from these face-to-face meetings. ~ Jose Mourinho

He loves that you love the car more than he does and thinks it's awesome you're getting so good in your defense class. Not that that's a surprise. You're always so good at everything, and you don't even realize it. You don't even realize half the things you do - like how you watch out for others and never even think about yourself. ~ Richelle Mead

A lot of critics sometimes get into analyzing the way actors direct versus non-actors directing. And they really always miss it. It's one of those things where, by not being practitioners, they just came up with something that made sense to them. ~ Sean Penn

You can never ask God to tell you what the end is. You can ask, "Is this a good thing to do?" But not, "How is this going to turn out?" That answer you will never get. ~ Ann Romney

Jesus knows our world. He does not disdain us like the God of Aristotle. We can speak to Him and He answers us. Although He is a person like ourselves, He is God and transcends all things. ~ Alexis Carrel

You know, we spend so much of our lives not saying the things we want to say. The things we should say. We speak in code, we send little messages. Origami. So now, plainly, simply. I want to say that I love you both. ~ Michael Scofield

Whenever I arrive on a real location, I have to move around and work out what the best angles are going to be. When I was moving around with the lens, I discovered things that the naked eye would not have. ~ Pedro Almodovar

I have my faith, and that is a strong anchor. I will not stop praying. I believe all things happen for a reason. We may not see it right now, but Londy will be vindicated, and God will work all this out for the best. ~ Janice Cantore

Libertarian paternalism is a relatively weak, soft, and nonintrusive type of paternalism because choices are not blocked, fenced off, or significantly burdened. If people want to smoke cigarettes, to eat a lot of candy, to choose an unsuitable health care plan, or to fail to save for retirement, libertarian paternalists will not force them to do otherwise - or even make things hard for them. ~ Anonymous

Bad things are not life. For example, death is not life. If you are truly confronting life, you must confront the good things. ~ Meir Ezra

And although I'm all for freedom of expression and against censorship, there are certain things I'm not willing to go to jail for. ~ Tom Lehrer

We are so accustomed to the comforts of "I cannot", "I do not want to" and "it is too difficult" that we forget to realize when we stop doing things for ourselves and expect others to dance around us, we are not achieving greatness. We have made ourselves weak. ~ Pandora Poikilos

Two things, almost incompatible, are united in me in a manner which I am unable to understand: a very ardent temperament, lively and tumultuous passions, and, at the same time, slowly developed and confused ideas, which never present themselves until it is too late. One might say that my heart and my mind do not belong to the same person. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He'd been thinking about a lot of things lately, things that would
never happen, things it was best not to think about. Things like waking up with Delaney every morning for the rest of his life and watching her hair turn
gray. ~ Rachel Gibson

Awareness of having better things to do with their lives is the secret to immunizing our children against false values
whether presented on television or in "real life." The child who finds fulfillment in music or reading or cooking or swimming or writing or drawing is not as easily convinced that he needs recognition or power or some "high" to feel worthwhile. ~ Polly Berrien Berends

Miguel," he said, when he felt my defenses weakening, "the conflict you speak of exists in the human mind, and it is not actually a conflict between good and evil; it is a conflict between truth and lies. When we believe in truth, we feel good and our life is good. When we believe in things that are not true, things that encourage fear and hatred in us, the result is fanaticism. The result is what people recognize as evil - evil words, evil intentions, evil actions. All the violence and suffering in the world is a direct result of the many lies we tell ourselves. ~ Miguel Ruiz

That we shall use every discovery of science in the preservation of our children's health goes without saying; but we shall do more than this - we shall give them a free start, not loading them up with our own ideas and experiences, nor advising them to live according to our lights. We were burned in the fire here and there, but - who knows? - fire may not burn our children, and if we warn them away from it they may end by never growing warm. We will not even inflict our cynicism on them as the sentimentality of our fathers was inflicted on us. The most we will do is urge a little doubt, asking that the doubt be exercised on our ideas as well as on all the mortal things in this world. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

It's the forties look," she says to George, hand on her hip, doing a pirouette. "Rosie the Riveter. From the war. Remember her?"
George, whose name is not really George, does not remember. He spent the forties rooting through garbage bag heaps and begging, and doing other things unsuitable for a child. He has a dim memory of some film star posed on a calendar tattering on a latrine wall. Maybe this is the one Prue means. He remembers for an instant his intense resentment of the bright, ignorant smile, the well-fed body. A couple of buddies had helped him take her apart with the rusty blade from a kitchen knife they'd found somewhere in the rubble. He does not consider telling any of this to Prue. ~ Margaret Atwood

I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name. ~ William Morris

Clearly there are common sense things we can do to help children to have better lives and keep them from becoming so despondent that their only perceived solution is to kill themselves or others. How oblivious do we have to be to the inner turmoil of our own children to not see what they're going through, and then suggest when they completely snap with homicidal violence, it must've been the video games? ~ Edward M. Wolfe

I think one begins to feel when things aren't important. I'm not sure how to put it. When you've spent thirty years entering rooms filled with strangers you feel less pressure than when you've had only half that number of years of experience. You know what the room and the people in it probably hold for you and you go looking for it. If it's not there, you sense it earlier and leave to go about your business. You just know more about what is, what isn't, and how little time there is to learn the difference. Do you understand, Merin? Do you follow me even a little bit? ~ Dan Simmons

There are things that happen so quickly. A better cameraman can capture them, but if the light is not bright and you hoist up your camera by the time you've dialed in your settings. there are eye blink moments where you're like "Aaahhhh, I wish," but those are too many to catalogue. Nothing really sticks out. ~ Henry Rollins

We are human beings, Lord, and we do not know our own greatness. Lord, give us the humility to ask for what we need, because no desire is vain and no request is futile. Each of us knows how best to feed our own soul; give us the courage to see our desires as coming from the fount of Your eternal Wisdom. Only by accepting our desires can we begin to understand who we are. Amen."
"Lord, help me understand that all the good things in life that happen to me do so because I deserve them. Help me understand that what moves me to seek out Your truth is the same force the moved the saints, and the doubts I have are the same doubts that the saints had, and my frailties are the same frailties. Help me to be humble enough to accept that I am no different from other people. Amen. ~ Paulo Coelho

The beauty of my body is not measured by the size of the clothes it can fit into, but by the stories that it tells. I have a belly and hips that say, "We grew a child in here," and breasts that say, "We nourished life." My hands, with bitten nails and a writer's callus, say, "We create amazing things. ~ Sarah

I only can write a book every two years, you know. And I write very fast, but I'm not always writing every day. I needed a contact with different things, like nature, for example. I cannot be in front of a computer trying to tell a story. ~ Paulo Coelho

If you look at the game and everything, it's not quite like looking at an animated film, because that's total character. This, this is really movement, but it's got funny little things if you look for the humor. They're actually getting to the character. ~ Don Bluth

One of the curious things about our educational system, I would note, is that the better trained you are in a discipline, the less used to dialectical method you're likely to be. In fact, young children are very dialectical; they see everything in motion, in contradictions and transformations. We have to put an immense effort into training kids out of being good dialecticians. Marx wants to recover the intuitive power of the dialectical method and put it to work in understanding how everything is in process, everything is in motion. He doesn't simply talk about labor; he talks about the labor process. Capital is not a thing, but rather a process that exists only in motion. When circulation stops, value disappears and the whole system comes tumbling down. ~ David Harvey

So telling a lie becomes a sin if you tell it to take advantage of a person, but if you tell a lie to do a good thing for him that is not a sin. Even God tells lies very often; you can see this throughout history. ~ Sun Myung Moon

One of the first things we have to let go of is not being able to let go of anybody. ~ Merrit Malloy

If we do our best, and things do not unfold according to our plans, trust that everything has happened for your highest good. ~ Robin S. Sharma

I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for, wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments, than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. - I shall be employed about things, not words! ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

We use concepts like "consciousness"
"mind"
"personality," but we don't really know yet what these things are.' He was shaking his head. 'Not really. Not at all. ~ William Peter Blatty

I'm a man of different types of flavors and tastes. I like listening to things that inspire me. Older music, when instruments were being played, not just people hitting buttons. It's manlier. You're touching things to make sounds appear. ~ Action Bronson

Was there anything he wouldn't give for an isolated cabin and one night with her? No, he didn't imagine there was - not that he had anything left to give.
The last two things Phillip possessed he'd already bequeathed - to Milly, his heart, and to the Almighty, his vow to that he'd marry her if He would simply rearrange their circumstances to make it possible. ~ April W. Gardner

But what about you? Have you prayed about your own ancestors' work? Set aside those things in your life that don't really matter. Decide to do something that will have eternal consequences. Perhaps you have been prompted to look for ancestors but feel you are not a genealogist. Can you see that you don't have to be anymore? It all begins with love and a sincere desire to help those beyond the veil who can't help themselves. Check around. There will be someone in your area who can help you have success. ~ Richard G. Scott

Little bits of things make me do it; - perhaps a word that I said and ought not to have said ten years ago; - the most ordinary little mistakes, even my own past thoughts to myself about the merest trifles. They are always making me shiver. ~ Anthony Trollope

I'm not one to go on blogs and things like that, but we do have our own personal Twitter profiles, so we get a lot of tweets, and they are pretty passionate. It's fun. I like it. ~ Katharine McPhee

Have you ever known someone who worried about dating a long-time friend? If you have, you've probably heard that person say something like this: "He asked me out, but I'm just afraid that if we start actually dating it will change our friendship." What is this person really saying? People who make statements like that, whether or not they realize it, recognize that dating encourages romantic expectations. In a true friendship you don't feel pressured by knowing you "like" the other [35] person or that he or she "likes" you back. You feel free to be yourself and do things together without spending three hours in front of the mirror, making sure you look perfect.

C. S. Lewis describes friendship as two people walking side by side toward a common goal. Their mutual interest brings them together. . . .

In dating, romantic attraction is often the relationship's cornerstone. The premise of dating is "I'm attracted to you; therefore, let's get to know each other." The premise of friendship, on the other hand, is "We're interested in the same things; let's enjoy these common interests together." If, after developing a friendship, romantic attraction forms, that's an added bonus. . . .

A relationship based only on physical attraction and romantic feelings will last only as long as the feelings last. ~ Joshua Harris

Perhaps things have changed since. So all I know is that it was much the same weather when I left as when I came, so far as I was capable of knowing what the weather was. And I had been under the weather so long, under all weathers, that I could tell quite well between them, my body could tell between them and seemed even to have its likes, its dislikes. I think I stayed in several rooms one after the other, or alternately, I don't know. In my head there are several windows, that I do know, but perhaps it is always the same one, open variously on the parading universe. The house was fixed, that is perhaps what I mean by these different rooms. House and garden were fixed, thanks to some unknown mechanism of compensation, and I, when I stayed still, as I did most of the time, was fixed too, and when I moved, from place to place, it was very slowly, as in a cage out of time, as the saying is, in the jargon of the schools, and out of space too to be sure. For to be out of one and not out of the other was for cleverer than me, who was not clever, but foolish. But I may be quite wrong. And these different windows that open in my head, when I grope again among those days, really existed perhaps and perhaps do still, in spite of my being no longer there, I mean there looking at them, opening them and shutting them, or crouched in a corner of the room marvelling at the things they framed. ~ Samuel Beckett

I'm incredibly sad that my mother's not here to see my kids and that my kids don't get to know her. And she didn't meet my husband. That's one of the hardest things. I don't even know how to put that into words. ~ Stella McCartney

The eye of a man should be still more reverent before the rising of a young maiden than before the rising of a star. The possibility of touch should increase respect. The down of the peach, the dust of the plum, the radiated crystal of snow, the butterfly's wing powdered with feathers, are gross things beside that chastity that does not even know it is chaste. The young maiden is only the glimmer of a dream and is not yet statue. Her alcove is hidden in the shadows of the ideal. The indiscreet touch of the eye desecrates this dim penumbra. Here, to gaze, is to profane. ~ Victor Hugo

Circumstances do not push or pull. They are daily lessons to be studied and gleaned for new knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom that is applied will bring about a brighter tomorrow. A person who is depressed is spending too much time thinking about the way things are now and not enough time thinking about how he wants things to be. ~ Andy Andrews