Undertaken Quotes

A task, any task, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance. ~ Joseph Conrad

And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west. The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other's 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully. ~ Haruki Murakami

Today we are again witnessing the emergence of transnational elites ... [Whose] ties cut across national boundaries ... It is likely that before long the social elites of most of the more advanced countries will be highly internationalist or globalist in spirit and outlook ... The nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty ... Further progress will require greater American sacrifices. More intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken, with some consequent risk to the present relatively favorable American position. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

He had undertaken a little assay at the good fight and found that neither the good nor the fight was left to him ... he had gone after life again and they had shown him life and made him eat it. ~ Robert Stone

What is a hobby anyway? Where is the line of demarcation between hobbies and ordinary normal pursuits? I have been unable to answer this question to my own satisfaction. At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant. Certainly many of our most satisfying avocations today consist of making something by hand which machines can usually make more quickly and cheaply, and sometimes better. Nevertheless I must in fairness admit that in a different age the mere fashioning of a machine might have been an excellent hobby... Today the invention of a new machine, however noteworthy to industry, would, as a hobby, be trite stuff. Perhaps we have here the real inwardness of our own question: A hobby is a defiance of the contemporary. It is an assertion of those permanent values which the momentary eddies of social evolution have contravened or overlooked. If this is true, then we may also say that every hobbyist is inherently a radical, and that his tribe is inherently a minority.

This, however, is serious: Becoming serious is a grievous fault in hobbyists. It is an axiom that no hobby should either seek or need rational justification. To wish to do it is reason enough. To find reasons why it is useful or beneficial converts it at once from an avocation into an industry–lowers it at once to the ignominious category of an 'exercise' undertaken for health, power, or profit. Lifting dumbbel ~ Aldo Leopold

sealing the pores were undertaken, famously with a horse. The poor animal was carefully varnished all over with several layers of shellac (the same solution that is used to varnish furniture) to ensure a complete seal, and died within hours. It was assumed that it had asphyxiated, thus 'proving' that the skin played an important role in respiration as well as perspiration. ~ Ruth Goodman

Reflection and action must never be undertaken independently. ~ Paulo Freire

Piaget- ... A stage then, we may say, is an integrated set of operational structures that constitute the thought processes of a person at a given time. Development involves the transformation of such " structures of the whole" in the direction of greater internal differentiation, complexity, flexibility and stability. A stage represents a kind of balanced relationship between a knowing subject and his or her environment. In this balanced or equilibrated position the person assimilates what is to be "known" in the environment into her or his existing structures of thought. When a novelty or challenge emerges that cannot be assimilated into the present structures of knowing then, if possible, the person accommmodates, that is , generates new structures of knowing. A stage transition has occured when enough accommodation has been undertaken to require ( and make possible) a transformation in the operational pattern of the structural whole of intellectual operations. ~ James W. Fowler

Ascension seemed at such times a natural law. If one added to it a law of completion - that everything must finally be made comprehensible - then some general rescue of the sort I imagined my aunt to have undertaken would be inevitable. For why do our thoughts turn to some gesture of a hand, the fall of a sleeve, some corner of a room on a particular anonymous afternoon, even when we are asleep, and even when we are so old that our thoughts have abandoned other business? What are all these fragments for , if not to be knit up finally? ~ Marilynne Robinson

The pretense that the "abolition of slavery" was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same character with that of "maintaining the national honor." Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general - not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war measure," and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. ~ Lysander Spooner

Now the things done may not be evil or improper; they in fact may be good and godly (such as reading the Bible, praying, worshiping, preaching); but if they are not undertaken in a spirit of complete reliance upon the Holy Spirit, then the flesh is the source of all. The old creation is willing to do anything-even to submit to God - if only it is permitted to live and to be active. ~ Watchman Nee

They get married, but their marriage will look quite different from marriage as the world understands it. Christian marriage will be undertaken "in the Lord" (I Cor. 7.39). It will be sanctified in the service of the Body of Christ and in the discipline of prayer and self-control (I Cor. 7.5). It will be a parable of the self-sacrificing love of Christ for his Church. It will even be itself a part of the Body of Christ, a Church in miniature (Eph. 5.32). ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Everything we do, our every objective, must be undertaken for the sake of ... purity of heart ... we must practice the reading of the Scripture, together with all the other virtuous activities ... to hold our hearts free of the harm of every dangerous passion and in order to rise step by step to the high point of love. ~ John Cassian

There is a special charm to journeys undertaken before daybreak in hot lands: the air is soft and cool and the coming of dawn reveals a landscape fresh from the night dew. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Brilliant, hard-earned and honest. The erasures and reappearances of figure and ground-that hard drama-have rarely been so movingly undertaken. A heartbreakingly beautiful work. ~ Jorie Graham

An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction is always to have something to do.
Creech, the commentator on Lucretius, marked upon his manuscripts: "N. B. Must hang myself when I have finished." He kept his word with himself that he might have the pleasure of ending like his author. If he had undertaken a commentary upon Ovid he would have lived longer. ~ Voltaire

Psychoanalysis is an attempt to examine a person's self-justifications. Hence it can be undertaken only with the patient's cooperation and can succeed only when the patient has something to gain by abandoning or modifying his system of self-justification. ~ Thomas Szasz

Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms. ~ Earl Warren

Researching and writing about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98 was one of the most exciting and involving projects I've undertaken. ~ Will Hobbs

Exercise, not philosophically and with religious gravity undertaken, but with the wild and romping activities of a spirited girl who runs up and down as if her veins were full of wine. ~ Lola Montez

Through Jiu Jitsu I have developed many of the most meaningful relationships in my life, and if that were the only benefit of my practice, Jiu Jitsu would still be the best endeavor I have ever undertaken. ~ Chris Matakas

The truth is that Dr. Juvenal Urbino's suit had never been undertaken in the name of love, and it was curious, to say the least, that a militant Catholic like him would offer her only worldly goods: security, order, happiness, contiguous numbers that, once they were added together, might resemble love, almost be love. But they were not love, and these doubts increased her confusion, because she was also not convinced that love was really what she most needed to live. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service. ~ Plato

A finer body of men has never been gathered by any nation than the men who have done the work of building the Panama Canal; the conditions under which they have lived and have done their work have been better than in any similar work ever undertaken in the tropics; they have all felt an eager pride in their work; and they have made not only America but the whole world their debtors by what they have accomplished. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

A month after the fall of the Berlin Wall the US invaded Panama, killing a couple of hundred or maybe a couple of thousand people, destroying poor neighborhoods, reinstating a regime of bankers and narcotraffickers - drug peddling and money laundering shot way up, as congressional research bureaus soon advised - and so on. That's normal, a footnote to history, but there were two differences: one difference is that the pretexts were different. This was the first intervention since the beginning of the Cold War that was not undertaken to defend ourselves from the Russians. This time, it was to defend ourselves from Hispanic narcotraffickers. Secondly, the US recognized right away that it was much freer to invade without any concern that somebody, the Russians, might react somewhere in the world, as former Undersecretary of State Abrams happily pointed out. ~ Noam Chomsky

is perhaps true to say, not that civil liberty is the child of religious liberty, but that liberty, whether civil or religious, was the work often reluctantly, sometimes unconsciously, undertaken by communities of men who had an end higher than political, who refused to submit religion to politic arguments, who fought for ends never entirely utilitarian. ~ John Neville Figgis

But now, the final feeling ... is one of gratitude that the journey was undertaken. Looking at the past has meant, for the first time, being able to let it go. ~ Ruth Cracknell

The principal aim underlying this work is to render homage where homage is due, a task which I know beforehand is impossible of accomplishment. Were I to do it properly, I would have to get down on my knees and thank each blade of grass for rearing its head. What chiefly motivates me in this vain task is the fact that in general we know all too little about the influences which shape a writer's life and work. The critic, in his pompous conceit and arrogance, distorts the true picture beyond all recognition. The author, however truthful he may think himself to be, inevitably disguises the picture. The psychologist, with his single-track view of things, only deepens the blur. As author, I do not think myself an exception to the rule. I, too, am guilty of altering, distorting and disguising the facts - if 'facts' there be. My conscious effort, however, has been - perhaps to a fault– in the opposite direction. I am on the side of revelation, if not always on the side of beauty, truth, wisdom, harmony and ever-evolving perfection. In this work I am throwing out fresh data, to be judged and analyzed, or accepted and enjoyed for enjoyment's sake. Naturally I cannot write about all the books, or even all the significant ones, which I have read in the course of my life. But I do intend to go on writing about books and authors until I have exhausted the importance (for me) of this domain of reality.

To have undertaken the thankless task of listing all the books I can rec ~ Henry Miller

Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally. ~ Fernando Pessoa

As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish then to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture. ~ Plutarch

The greatest act of self-education I've ever undertaken has been to become a writer. ~ Mark Rubinstein

If Steinitz continually took pains to discover combinations, the success or failure of his diligent search could not be explained by him as due to chance. Hence, he concluded that some characteristic, a quality of the given position, must exist that would indicate the success or the failure of the search before it was actually undertaken. ~ Emanuel Lasker

The annual celebrations of God's mercy, justice, and power, the feasts or fasts undertaken in praise of His Name, the miracles He was supposed to have thrown our way over the centuries - in my grandfather's mind, it was all nullified by the thing he had not yet learned to call the Holocaust. In Egypt, in Shushan, in the time of Judah Maccabee, God had intervened to deliver us with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; big deal. When we were sent to the ovens, God had sat with His outstretched thumb up His mighty ass and let us burn. In 1947 there was, to my grandfather, one reason to continue calling oneself a Jew, to go on being Jewish before the world: as a way of telling Hitler Fuck you. ~ Michael Chabon

words 'ebed and doulos has been undertaken with particular attention to their meaning in each specific context. Thus in Old Testament times, one might enter slavery either voluntarily (e.g., to escape poverty or to pay off a debt) or involuntarily (e.g., by birth, by being captured in battle, or by judicial sentence). Protection for all in servitude in ancient Israel was provided by the Mosaic Law. In New Testament times, a doulos is often best described as a "bondservant" - that is, as someone bound to serve his master for a specific (usually lengthy) period of time, but also as someone who might nevertheless own property, achieve social advancement, and even be released or purchase his freedom. The ESV usage ~ Anonymous

I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect. ~ Thomas Jefferson

In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of State or Church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Leigh smiled. For her thirty-five years of life she had worked her way through the system, gained academic honours and achieved a senior government role. She was a leading scientist on the most far-reaching scientific experiment ever undertaken in the eighty years of the Greater Germanic Reich, or arguably in the whole history of humanity. She had run a good race. If it ended now, well that was what God intended. If not, she would continue her work to undo everything; in His name. ~ Ian Andrew

She grew up visiting her grandmother's house, and her grandmother had grown up in a time when the duties of the kitchen were undertaken as though they had vital consequence - and she always had a pot of stock on the stove. ~ Ryan Harvey

There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c'est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy! ~ Agatha Christie

Parker, who was six feet four with nothing to protect his bones from exposure to the weather but tough-looking leathery skin, was so skeptical that at one point I thought he was going to pass, but he finally conceded that the move might be undertaken without undue risk to juridical virtue, to his own reputation, or to his client's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. When all details had been settled and money passed - a dollar bill from Sarah to Parker as a token retainer - I got at the phone and dialed a number. ~ Rex Stout

Let us summarize these three points more concisely:

(a) The rejection of art as a mere emotional, individualistic, and romantic affair.
(b) "Objective" work, undertaken with the silent hope that the end product will nevertheless eventually be regarded as a work of art.
(c) Consciously goal-directed work in architecture, which will have a concise artistic effect on the basis of well-preparated objective-scientific criteria.

Such an architecture will actively raise the general standard of living. This represents the dialectic of our development process, which purports to arrive at the affirmative by negation - a process similar to melting down old iron and forging it into new steel. ~ El Lissitzky

The journey that I have undertaken, meeting people from all walks of life and learning from them, has been my biggest achievement. ~ Aamir Khan

Without harmony in the State, no military expedition can be undertaken; without harmony in the army, no battle array can be formed. ~ Sun Tzu

But by meditation I do not mean a practice or exercise undertaken as a preparation for something, as a means to some future end, or as a discipline in which one is concerned with progress. A better word may be "contemplation" or even "centering," for what I mean is a slowing down of time, of mental hurry, and an allowing of one's attention to rest in the present - so coming to the unseeking observation, not of what should be, but of what is. ~ Alan W. Watts

Thus the interpretation of dreams, whether by the analyst or by the dreamer himself, is for the Jungian psychologist an entirely personal and individual business (and sometimes an experimental and very lengthy one as well) that can by no means be undertaken by rule of thumb.
The converse of this is that the communications of the unconscious are of the highest importance to the dreamer-naturally so, since the unconscious is at least half of his total being-and frequently offer him advice or guidance that could be obtained from no other source. ~ C. G. Jung

It will be undertaken, of course, in the June or July summit, and then to bring NATO closer to Russia or vice versa is a way to move toward integration - toward the integration of Europe. ~ Warren Christopher

The indexing problem changes with each new book undertaken. To meet the needs of different classes of seekers and to suit various types of books, rules entirely satisfactory in one case must be varied in the next and perhaps ignored or even reversed for a third ... Indexing is a highly complex intellectual process involving the use of language in a specific and somewhat artificial way, and that it is also to a considerable extent a matter of intuition, the workings of which cannot be reduced to fixed rules. It is 'knowing what but not knowing how'. ~ Hans H Wellisch

The dream of the Convention was born from the that children and their needs were not been considered when policies were being made, laws passed or actions undertaken. ~ Carol Bellamy

I have undertaken to translate the Bible into German. This was good for me; otherwise I might have died in the mistaken notion that I was a learned fellow. ~ Martin Luther

In no obvious sense was the American Revolution undertaken as a social revolution. ~ Bernard Bailyn

Thus, critiques of the prison industrial complex undertaken by abolitionist activists and scholars are very much linked to critiques of the global persistence of racism. Antiracist and other social justice movements are incomplete with attention to the politics of imprisonment. ~ Angela Y. Davis

When you know for yourselves, 'These things are wholesome; these things are blameless; these things are praised by the wise; these things, if undertaken and practiced, lead to welfare and happiness,' then you should engage in them. ~ Gautama Buddha

The invasion was undertaken with the expectation that it probably would increase the threat of terror. That was the advice given by the government's own intelligence agencies and by others, by lots of specialists on terror, who said it was very likely to increase terror, for ~ Noam Chomsky

If D-Day - the greatest amphibious operation ever undertaken - failed, there would be no going back to the drawing board for the Allies. Regrouping and attempting another massive invasion of German-occupied France even a few months later in 1944 wasn't an option. ~ Douglas Brinkley

Like many cruel and evil women, Morgan le Fay knew men's weaknesses and discounted their strengths. And she knew also that most improbable actions may be successful so long as they are undertaken boldly and without hesitation, for men believe beyond proof to the contrary that blood is thicker than water and that a beautiful woman cannot be evil. ~ John Steinbeck

The problem, the only problem, is my mother. And she is the one of course that I am trying to get; it is to reach her that this whole journey has been undertaken. With what purpose? To mark her off, to describe, to illumine, to celebrate, to get rid of her; and it did not work, for she looms too close, just as she always did. She is heavy as always, she weighs everything down, and yet she is indistinct, her edges melt and flow. Which means she has stuck to me as close as ever and refused to fall away, and I could go on, and on, applying what skills I have, using what tricks I know, and it would always be the same. ~ Alice Munro

Revenge is undertaken by men who would repay in kind the evil done to them ~ Tracy Higley

Call it insensitivity or a passion for remorse, I have never undertaken to rescue what little Absolute this world contains. ~ Emil M. Cioran

that backsliding generally first begins with neglect of private prayer. Bibles read without prayer; sermons heard without prayer; marriages contracted without prayer; journeys undertaken without prayer; residences chosen without ~ J.C. Ryle

Moral crusade: Public activity undertaken by middle-aged men who are cheating on their wives or diddling little boys. Moral crusades are particularly popular among those seeking power for their own personal pleasure, politicians who can't think of anything useful to do with their mandates, and religious professionals suffering from a personal inability to communicate with their god. ~ John Ralston Saul

Every work undertaken in obedienced to a divine command, whether the work be that form of conflict with the powers of darkness that we call prayer, or whether it be the action that follows, leads sooner or later to a new demand on personal devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ. ~ Amy Carmichael

There's the most extraordinary, unheard of poetry buried in America, but none of the conventional means known to culture can even begin to extract it...the agony is too deep, the disorder too big for art enterprises undertaken in the old way. ~ Saul Bellow

God delights to hear the prayers of His people when they individually ask, "Lord, what do you want me to do?" The Christian pursues God, looking for His marching orders, seeking to know what course of action
is pleasing to Him. This search for the will of God is a holy quest-a pursuit that is to be undertaken with vigor by the godly person. ~ R.C. Sproul

For Schwartz this formed the paradox at the heart of baseball, or football, or any other sport. You loved it because you considered it an art: an apparently pointless affair, undertaken by people with special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value yet somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about The Human Condition. The Human Condition being, basically, that we're alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not.
Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn't matter how beautifully you performed SOMETIMES, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren't a painter or a writer
you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't just your masterpieces that counted. ~ Chad Harbach

The right actions undertaken for the right reasons generally lead to good outcomes over time. ~ John Mackey

What we (U.S.) have done, is undertaken diplomacy through public assertions that tend to alienate everyone. ~ John Prendergast

It requires a strong sense of responsibility to be a good functionary. In situations involving obedience to authority, people carry out orders partly to honor the obligations they have undertaken. One must, therefore, distinguish between two levels of responsibility - duty to one's superiors, and accountability for the effects of one's actions. ~ Albert Bandura

At heart, the mobile concept is about being in control - as a separate and distinct individual. This is the basis of mobilising the concept of communication - that it's an activity undertaken by an individual, over which that individual seeks control. (20) ~ George Myerson

I wouldn't like Greece to stay recession. I do think that everything has to be undertaken to reconnect with growth. ~ Jean-Claude Juncker

You have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you. ~ Cornelius Vanderbilt

They had to stir the churn of the ocean, until the soma floated up, as butter floats from milk. And this task could not be undertaken in opposition to the Asuras, but only with their help. The pronouncement ran contrary to everything the Devas had previously thought. But in the end, what did they have to lose, given that their lives were so futile? Now they thought: Anything, so long as there be a trial, a risk, a task. ~ Roberto Calasso

Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise. That is the faith, the experimental faith, by which we Americans have undertaken to live. ~ Alexander Meiklejohn

In its outward manifestation, meditation appears to involve either stopping, by parking the body in a stillness that suspends activity, or giving oneself over to flowing movement. In either case, it is an embodiment of wise attention, an inward gesture undertaken for the most part in silence, a shift from doing to simply being. It is an act that may at first seem artificial but that we soon discover, if we keep at it, is ultimately one of pure love for the life unfolding within us and around us. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

With the commissioning of new schools undertaken by a local director of school standards, decisions will be fair and transparent, rooted in the needs of the local community. The admissions code and the role of the adjudicator will also be strengthened to provide fairness for all children. ~ David Blunkett

For action, whatever its immediate purpose, also implies relief at doing something, anything, and the joy of exertion. This is the optimism that is inherent in, and proper and indispensable to action, for without it nothing would ever be undertaken. It in no way suppresses the critical sense or clouds the judgment. On the contrary this optimism sharpens the wits, it creates a certain perspective and, at the last moment, lets in a ray of perpendicular light which illuminates all one's previous calculations, cuts and shuffles them and deals you the card of success, the winning number. ~ Blaise Cendrars

Conservatism is the tacit acknowledgement that all that is finally important in human experience is behind us; that the crucial explorations have been undertaken, and that it is given to man to know what are the great truths that emerged from them. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

We were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations; we have stamped it out. ~ Adolf Hitler

Ambition left to itself, like a Rupert Murdoch, always becomes tedious, its only object the creation of larger and larger empires of control; but a true vocation calls us out beyond ourselves; breaks our heart in the process and then humbles, simplifies and enlightens us about the hidden, core nature of the work that enticed us in the first place. We find that all along, we had what we needed from the beginning and that in the end we have returned to its essence, an essence we could not understand until we had undertaken the journey. ~ David Whyte

The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries. ~ Blaise Pascal

Of course, the champions of totalitarianism protest that what they want to abolish is "only economic freedom" and that ali "other freedoms" will remain untouched. But freedom is indivisible. The distinction between an economic sphere of human life and activity and a noneconomic sphere is the worst of their fallacies. If an omnipotent authority has the power to assign to every individual the tasks he has to perform, nothing that can be called freedom and autonomy is left to him.
He has only the choice between strict obedience and death by starvation.1
Committees of experts may be called to advise the planning authority whether or not a young man should be given the opportunity to prepare himself for and to work in an intellectual or artistic field. But such an arrangement can merely rear disciples committed to the parrotIike repetition of the ideas of the preceding generation. It would bar innovators who disagree with the accepted ways of thought. No innovation would ever have been accomplished if its originator had been in need of an authorization by those from whose doctrines and methods he wanted to deviate. Hegel would not have ordained Schopenhauer or Feuerbach, nor would Professor Rau have ordained Marx or Carl Menger. If the supreme planning board is ultimately to determine which books are to be printed, who is to experiment in the laboratories and who is to paint or to sculpture, and which alterations in technological methods should be undertaken, there will ~ Ludwig Von Mises

What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honor of succeeding in that which they have undertaken. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is one of the great weaknesses of reasonable men and women that they imagine that projects which fly in the face of commonsense are not serious or being seriously undertaken. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Whoever, at any time, has undertaken to build a new heaven has found the strength for it in his own hell ... ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I wasn't thinking of Tom but of myself. And of a self who seemed to be mot 'me' but 'she.' An innocent, moving fecklessly through the days, knowing nothing, whom I saw now with awful wisdom ... I had hesitated to make this journey, had put it off year after year but had known always that eventually it must be undertaken. And, confronted at last with the mirage
with the shining phantom of that other time
I was surprised to find that it was myself that was the poignant presence. ~ Penelope Lively

Bibles read without prayer; sermons heard without prayer; marriages contracted without prayer; journeys undertaken without prayer; residences chosen without prayer; friendships formed without prayer; the daily act of prayer itself hurried over, or gone through without heart: these are the kind of downward steps by which many a Christian descends to a condition of spiritual palsy, or reaches the point where God allows them to have a tremendous fall. ~ J.C. Ryle

Not to understand the doer is to have no certain knowledge of what has been done, or why it was undertaken ~ Philip Wylie

Thieving was not a sheer absurdity. It was a form of human industry, perverse indeed, but still an industry exercised in an industrious world; it was work undertaken for the same reason as the work in potteries, in coal mines, in fields, in tool-grinding shops. It was labour, whose practical difference from the other forms of labour consisted in the nature of its risk, which did not lie in ankylosis, or lead poisoning, or fire-damp, or gritty dust, but in what may be briefly defined in its own special phraseology as "Seven years' hard". Chief Inspector Heat was, of course, not insensible to the gravity of moral differences. But neither were the thieves he had been looking after. They submitted to the severe sanction of a morality familiar to Chief Inspector Heat with a certain resignation. They were his fellow citizens gone wrong because of imperfect education, Chief Inspector Heat believed; but allowing for that difference, he could understand the mind of a burglar, because, as a matter of fact, the mind and the instincts of a burglar are of the same kind as the mind and the instincts of a police officer. Both recognize the same conventions, and have a working knowledge of each other's methods and of the routine of their respective trades. They understand each other, which is advantageous to both, and establishes a sort of amenity in their relations. Products of the same machine, one classed as useful and the other as noxious, they take the machine for granted in different w ~ Joseph Conrad

History proves abundantly that pure science, undertaken without regard to applications to human needs, is usually ultimately of direct benefit to mankind. ~ Irving Langmuir

Today's news consists of aggregates of fragments. Anyone who has taken part in any event that has subsequently appeared in the news is aware of the gross disparity between the actual and the reported events. We also learn frequently of prefabricated and prevaricated evens of a complex nature purportedly undertaken for the purposes wither of suppressing or rigging the news, which in turn perverts humanity's tactical information resources. All history becomes suspect. Probably our most polluted resource is the tactical information to which humanity spontaneously reflexes. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Bathing Checkers was a strenuous occupation and not to be lightly undertaken. Checkers hated being bathed, partly because he couldn't see where he was going afterward. No one knew what kind of dog Checkers actually was. He had a mass of black hair, and when he was bathed, it was impossible to tell one end of him from another until one end bit you. ~ Livi Michael

It's one thing to face great odds, but even the smallest struggle, if undertaken without hope, looms and swells with the fatal poisons of despair. ~ K.W. Jeter

Wherefore also these Kinds [elements] occupied different places even before the universe was organised and generated out of them. Before that time, in truth, all these were in a state devoid of reason or measure, but when the work of setting in order this Universe was being undertaken, fire and water and earth and air, although possessing some traces of their known nature, were yet disposed as everything is likely to be in the absence of God; and inasmuch as this was then their natural condition, God began by first marking them out into shapes by means of forms and numbers. ~ Plato

The State does not govern the market; in the market in which products are exchanged it may quite possibly be a powerful party, but nevertheless it is only one party of many, nothing more than that. All its attempts to transform the exchange-ratios between economic goods that are determined in the market can only be undertaken with the instruments of the market. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Christians must revive a centuries-old view of humankind as made in the image of God, the eternal Craftsman, and of work as a source of fulfillment and blessing not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfill itself to the glory of God. That it should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God's image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

The seeking of a mate shall be undertaken with due preparation and care. A life-bond should never be contemplated as a light thing
unlike a legal union or sanctified joining, the sealing of souls CANNOT be severed. When a mate is SOULBOUND to another
LIFEMATED, as some have come to regard it
a mystery is engaged. In one aspect mystical, the lifemating process is the most sublime endeavor that a Refarian may assume. Once formed, the bond must be ever cherished and nurtured by the process of lifelong rigor. ~ Deidre Knight

Alderic, Knight of the Order of the City and the Assault, hereditary Guardian of the King's Peace of Mind, a man not unremembered among the makers of myth, pondered so long upon the Gibbelins' hoard that by now he deemed it his. Alas that I should say of so perilous a venture, undertaken at dead of night by a valorous man, that its motive was sheer avarice! Yet upon avarice only the Gibbelins relied to keep their larders full, and once in every hundred years sent spies into the cities of men to see how avarice did, and always the spies returned again to the tower saying that all was well.
It may be thought that, as the years went on and men came by fearful ends on that tower's wall, fewer and fewer would come to the Gibbelins' table: but the Gibbelins found otherwise.
("The Hoard Of The Gibbelins") ~ Lord Dunsany

Fasting is the only method of suicide permitted by the Catholic Church. All other ways imply despair, a distrust of God's wisdom, an unwillingness to bear the hardships with which God tests his children. An absolute sin, suicide's punishment is eternal damnation in the fires of Hell. But fasting is undertaken for the purpose of penance, meditation, and spiritual ecstasy. It purifies the spirit by denying the body. It brings a soul closer to God. ~ David Morrell

If it was killing-and it was- then I thought it not murder, but a justifiable homicide, undertaken in desperate self defense. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Consider who and what you are; who the Spirit is that is grieved, what he has done for you, what he comes to your soul about, what he has already done in you; and be ashamed. Among those who walk with God, there is no greater motive and incentive unto universal holiness, and the preserving of their hearts and spirits in all purity and cleanness than this: That the blessed Spirit, who has undertaken to dwell in them, is continually considering what they give entertainment in their hearts unto, and rejoices when his temple is kept undefiled. ~ John Owen