Well Used Quotes

We are all here to take care of one another. We all know this. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. It's better to give than to receive. These phrases are so timeworn they almost lose meaning. And yet they are well used for a reason: They are the cornerstones of life. ~ Kirsten Gillibrand

This is something everyone knows: A well-used city street is apt to be a safe street. A deserted city street is apt to be unsafe. ~ Jane Jacobs

But she was well used to stubborn patients, the majority of which were always of the male persuasion. She figured it had something to do with carrying a penis around all the time. ~ Jill Shalvis

We all practice self-deception to a degree; no man can handle complete honesty without being cut at each turn. There's not enough room in a man's head for sanity alongside each grief, each worry, each terror that he owns. I'm well used to burying such things in a dark cellar and moving on. ~ Mark Lawrence

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst ... They are for nothing but to inspire. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

So discretion was the by-word. They would take meant only when the hunger became crippling, and only then victims who were unlikely to be missed. They would refrain from infecting others, so as no to advertise their presence. if one was found, no other would risk exposure by going to his aid. Hard laws o live by, but not as hard as the consequences of breaking them. The rest was patience, and they were well used to that. Their liberator would come eventually, if they could only survive the wait. Few had any clue as to the shape he'd come in. But all knew his name. Cabal, he was called. Who Unmade Midian. Their prayers were full of him. On the next wind, let him come. If not now, then tomorrow. They might not have prayed so passionately had they known what a sea change his coming would bring. They might not have prayed at all had the know they prayed to themselves. But these were revelations for a later day. For now, they had simpler concerns. Keeping the children from the roofs at night, the bereaved from crying out too loud, the young in summer from falling in love with the human. It was a life. ~ Clive Barker

The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, take the lesson from your own experience. Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried in the promotion of the great generals who gained their promotion by leading their army to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

If you go through any newspaper or magazine and look for active, kicking verbs in the sentences, you will realize that this lack of well used verbs is the main trouble with modern English writing. Almost all nonfiction nowadays is written in a sort of pale, colorless sauce of passives and infinitives, motionless and flat as paper. ~ Rudolf Flesch

Perhaps it's no coincidence that the word words is an anagram of sword. Well-used words cut through ambiguity and confusion like a sharp sword in the hands of an expert swordsman. ~ Anu Garg

Cat lovers can readily be identified. Their clothes always look old and well used. Their sheets look like bath towels, and their bath towels look like a collection of knitting mistakes. ~ Eric Gurney

For the general practitioner a well-used library is one of the few correctives of the premature senility which is so apt to take him. ~ William Osler

As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

We intersect. He says he thanks every star that we existed on the same celestial plain. But here we are on earth, dirty, well used, a man-made throughway for intersecting dreams. ~ Emma Forrest

I own a well-used library card and not much else, though it is true I live in a grand house full of expensive, useless objects. ~ E. Lockhart

I was very sensitive to the environment around, and this disparity in people, seeing beggars and laborers not paid well, used to disturb me. So these emotions in these roles came very naturally to me. ~ Om Puri

The event of falling in love is of such a nature that we are right to reject as intolerable the idea that it should be transitory. In one high bound it has overleaped the massive of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being. Spontaneously and without effort we have fulfilled the law (towards one person) by loving our neighbour as ourselves. It is an image, a foretaste, of what we must become to all if Love Himself rules in us without a rival. It is even (well used) a preparation for that. ~ C.S. Lewis

The value of a well-made and well-used tool lies not only in what it produces for us but what it produces in us. ~ Nicholas Carr

He says he thanks every star the we existed on the same clestial plain. But here we are on earth, dirty, well used, a man made throughaway for intersecting dreams. ~ Emma Forrest

Huffing from her exertion, her face flushed and her expression happy, she looked toward the door - and went still.
Dare pushed past Trace and went to the wall unit to turn down the music.
Into the silence, Chris asked, "Everyone having fun?"
"God, Chris," Dare said. "Trace is going to kill you if you don't shut up."
"Really?" Priss struck a pose of annoyance, one hip cocked out, her arms crossed, her chin elevated. "And here Molly and Chris assured Matt that you weren't the type to cause bodily harm."
"They must have been jesting." Trace was well used to Chris's warped sense of humor, so Chris wasn't in any danger. But Matt . . . Trace zeroed in on him. In a tone more lethal for the quietness of it, he asked, "What are you doing?"
"Harmless dancing?" Matt replied in a nervous question, unsure of the right answer.
Priss suddenly stepped in front of Matt, which left Matt bemused. "Don't act snarky with him, Trace. I asked him to dance with me. We had some time to kill before this crud comes out of my hair. And you were nowhere to be found."
Matt pulled her aside, earning a glare from Trace. He quickly held up his hands, palms out, to prove he wasn't touching her. "Speaking of time, we can go wash your hair right now, if everyone will just excuse us."
"I need a minute with Priss first." Trace eyed her militant stance, and had to fight a smile. She had a backbone of steel. He liked that. "Alone. ~ Lori Foster

Life is messy and gloriously imperfect, and some signs of wear and tear indicate a well-loved, well-used home. ~ Deborah Needleman

Mahoney: "Thirty-seven seconds. Great, well done; now we wait."
Mr. Magorium: "No, we breathe, we pulse, we regenerate. our hearts beat, our minds create, our souls ingest. Thirty-seven seconds well used is a lifetime. ~ Suzanne Weyn

No. We breathe. We pulse. We regenerate. Our hearts beat. Our mind create. Our souls ingest. 37 seconds, well used, is a lifetime. ~ Zach Helm

A well-used minimum suffices for everything. ~ Jules Verne

And I will place within them as a guide My umpire conscience, whom if they will hear Light after light well used they shall attain, And to the end persisting, safe arrive. ~ John Milton

When I'm taking my last breath, I want to look at how I used up the best of myself. How much did I sweat, push, pull, rip, fall, hit, crash, explode? ... My dream is to be so well-used that in my last-half second, I just burst into dust. ~ Elizabeth Streb

A life well used procures a happy death. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

But if my research shows anything, it's that if you should happen to have had a surplus of mellow marmosets and they got the job done, you would have darned well used marmosets. ~ Therese Oneill

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is better to have a fair intellect that is well used than a powerful one that is idle. ~ Bryant H. McGill

A book worn out, is a book well used. ~ Kate Ashley

To be well used, creatures and places must be used sympathetically, just as they must be known sympathetically to be well known ... The "animal scientist" to whom it is of no concern whether or not animals suffer will almost inevitably aid and abet the destruction of the decent old ideal of animal husbandry and, as a consequence, increase the suffering of animals. I hope that my country may be delivered from the remote, cold abstractions of university science. ~ Wendell Berry

Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used. ~ William Shakespeare

I feel like people used to leave their homes and go to their local theatre, and they used to watch ballet dancers and musical theatre performers and tap dancers and orchestras and dog acts. You had to leave your home, be in the presence of other people, know how to behave, and enjoy the human being whose beating heart was in front of you. ~ Laura Benanti

The body that isn't used to. maybe the ninth, tenth ... eleventh, and twelfth rep with a certain weight. So that makes the body grow, then. Going through this pain barrier. Experiencing pain in your muscles and aching ... and just go on and go on. And this last two or three or four repetitions ... that's what makes the muscle then grow. And that divides one from a champion and one from not being a champion. lf you can go through this pain barrier, you may get to be a champion. lf you can't go through, forget it. And that's what most people lack, is having the guts. The guts to go in and just say, 'l'll go through and l don't care what happens.' lt aches, and if l fall down ... l have no fear of fainting in a gym ... because l know it could happen. l threw up many times while l was working out. But it doesn't matter, because it's all worth it. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

A lot of my friends are guys, so I'm used to bro antics. ~ Gillian Jacobs

One of the distinctive differences between historic, orthodox Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church has been that Protestants base doctrine on "Scripture alone" (once again, the Latin phrase commonly used for this is sola Scriptura), while Roman Catholics base doctrine on Scripture plus the authoritative teaching of the church through history.18 ~ Wayne A. Grudem

Can you tell me why I'm here?" "You ran out of sheep to fuck and went looking for some action?" "Gods, I love Camorri. Constitutionally incapable of doing things the easy way." Cortessa slapped Jean hard enough to make his eyes water. "Try again. Why am I here?" "You heard," Jean gasped, "that we'd finally discovered the cure for being born with a face like a stray dog's ass." "No. If that were true you would have used it." Cortessa ~ Scott Lynch

She glanced up from his lips to those dark eyes that smoldered with his fire. She remembered now what they had looked like as she'd seen him before Morgen had entered his world. "Your eyes used to be blue."
"That was a long time ago."
-Seren to Kerrigan ~ Kinley MacGregor

I'm getting made fun of because I used to be fat? The laws of bullying allow you to be cruel even when the victim had made strides for improvement? This is when I realized that bullies have no code of conduct. ~ Mindy Kaling

A brick could be used to enhance your sex life. So what are you waiting for? Get that gerbil out of your pants ~ Jarod Kintz

When I was in high school I used to sit by myself in the cafeteria - not necessarily by choice - but I thought it was funny to talk to people that weren't there. ~ Zach Galifianakis

It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I used to hate everybody," I say. "Until I met you. ~ Colleen Hoover

Oh, Phil," I teased. "You know what happens when you assume."
"Yes. Someone makes an overdone, tripe joke about the spelling of a commonly used verb. ~ Megan Squires

I was glad that I could be used as a focal point to possibly bandy around some ideas, and maybe people would open their eyes to Obama's socialist ideology. However, there were so many important issues to be discussed other than the 'Joe the Plumber, Joe the Plumber.' ~ Joe Wurzelbacher

I think real enlightenment is total sanity, a kind of acceptance of what actually is. It does involve a kind of different way of looking at things. As I've done this Zen practice for years and years, I've acquired what I realize is an almost upside down view of life compared to what most people think, which is just what I used to think it was too. It's not really an insane view, at least I hope it's not. ~ Brad Warner

had come out and said - if not in so many words - that he was innocent of libel and that another truth existed. Precisely because she had not used the word "innocent," his innocence ~ Stieg Larsson

My chest feels full of glitter and helium, the way it used to when I was little and riding my father's shoulders at twilight, when I knew that if I held up my hands and spread my fingers like a net, I could catch the coming stars. ~ Jodi Picoult

Money was tight and Mum used to do two jobs to support us. ~ Holly Valance

I'll let you off your leash, but you have to show some manners. No humping, no pissing on anything man made, and keep the crotch greetings exclusive to your four-legged fury friends. Got it?"

Swarley nods because I've made him part human over the past few months and I'm pretty sure I saw him roll his eyes at me too. Guess I'd better start getting used to sassiness and eye rolling … read that on a parenting blog too.

Note to self. Find more positive bloggers that paint the picture of parenthood with rainbows, fairies, and pixie dust.

"Sydney?"

I turn. "Hey, Dane!"

He bends down to let his dogs off their leashes. "Gosh, I didn't think you'd be back. How was Paris?"

Which part? The view of the ceiling from the couch or the drain from the top of the toilet?

"Great!" Extremely sugarcoated … maybe teetering on an outright lie.

"So how long are you staying?" He rests his hands on his hips.

Dane is adorable. I'm sure grown men don't like to be called adorable; hell, I didn't like it when Lautner said it to me, but Dane is just that. Tall, dark, and admittedly handsome with a boyish grin that makes me want to take him home, bake him cookies, and pour him a tall glass of milk.

"I'm not sure. Trevor and Elizabeth just moved to San Diego and I'm staying at their house until it sells or until I find something else."

He cocks his head to the side. "Yet, they left Swarley ~ Jewel E. Ann

You give a lot of great advice about what to do. Do you have any advice of what not to do?


Don't do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don't stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don't fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don't focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fall out. Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore. Don't seek joy at all costs. I know it's hard to know what to do when you have a conflicting set of emotions and desires, but it's not as hard as we pretend it is. Saying it's hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do - have the affair, stay at that horrible job, end a friendship over a slight, keep loving someone who treats you terribly. I don't think there's a single dumbass thing I've done in my adult life that I didn't know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself - as I did every damn time - the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I'm learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I've still got work to do. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Word ciao comes from. (If you must know, it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Sono il suo schiavo! Meaning: "I am your slave!") ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I used to be a street performer, and performances on Venice Beach, it's like playing the Apollo: They let you know if they don't like you! ~ Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

My idea was to release four four-song EPs, just like all the old Limey shoegaze bands used to do. ~ Keith Morris

When, as today, there is a market in human organs, when fetuses are produced to make spare organs available, or to make progress in research and preventive medicine, many regard the human content of these practices as implicit. But the contempt for man that underlies it, when man is used and abused, leads
like it or not
to a descent into hell. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

My father never cheated on my mother. He used to cheat on me. He used to pick other kids after school. Take them to the zoo. Take them to play ball. One day he came to me. He says, Look I got to level with you. I met another kid. ~ Dom Irrera

Studios are used to have an investment in you, an actual, literal investment in an actor. You paid them some money, you had a contract with them and you were almost like a commodity. ~ Ben Affleck

Mumford and Sons and Adele are both incredible artists and are great for popular music. There's a lot of club music with heavy beats, so to have that Mumford record and hear banjos being used is so cool. ~ Dave Haywood

I think it worked two ways. One, a lot of people writing about the movie used that as shorthand and it could either be a good thing or they could use it to dismiss the movie like we were a copycat movie or something like that. It's very much its own story. It is a young woman in a post-apocalyptic society, but after that it's just a whole different kind of story and a different journey that she goes through. ~ Neil Burger

I used to think that prizes were damaging and divisive, until I got one. And now they seem sort of meaningful and real. ~ Bill Nighy

The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people's interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise. ~ Steven Pinker

I used to murder people for money, but these days it's more of a survival technique. ~ Jennifer Estep

The key to praying with power is to become the kind of persons who do not use God for our ends but are utterly devoted to being used for His ends. ~ John Piper

I used to dream of being other places, other people. It was an escape for me. ~ Lauren Bacall

It was the same smile he used in bed with Crick
the gentle, sweet smile that made him look young and a little vulnerable. Crick turned the picture around, and Benny had written, I asked him to think of you. ~ Amy Lane

When I first started out all the attention could be a bit unnerving, especially when people stared. Now I find the best thing is to just relax. Being recognized is just something you have to get used to. ~ Tom Cruise

Define Your Options

When people are spinning their rumination wheels about a particular problem, they often don't concretely define what their options are for moving forward. To shift out of rumination and into problem-solving mode, concretely and realistically define what your best three to six options are. For example, imagine you've recently hired a new employee but that person is not working out. Instead of mentally slapping yourself around about why you made the hire, it would be more useful to define what your options are at this point:

--Giving the employee more time
--Shifting the employee's responsibilities to simpler jobs
--Giving the employee checklists of the steps needed to complete each task
--Having another employee work with the individual
--Firing the employee

Defining your options relieves some of the stress of rumination and helps you shift to effective problem solving. Keeping your list of options short will prevent you from running into choice-overload problems. Research shows that if you consider more than three to six choices, you're less likely to end up making a choice.
Experiment: Practice concretely defining your best three to six options for moving forward with a problem you're currently ruminating or worrying about. Write brief bullet points, like in the example just given. You can use this method for all sorts of problems. For example, a friend just used it to come up with ideas for how t ~ Alice Boyes

The negativity took some getting used to, but at the end of the day, life's too short. It's too short to get upset about what other people think . . . too short not to do what makes you happy . . . too short to not call that person back, to stay angry, to hold a grudge. ~ Elizabeth Meyer

My students still don't know what they will never be. Their hope is so bright I can almost see it.

I used to value the truth of whether this student or that one would achieve the desired thing. I don't value that truth anymore as much as I value their untested hope. I don't care that one in two hundred of them will ever become what they feel they must become. I care only that I am able to witness their faith in what's coming next.

I no longer believe in anything other than the middle, but my students still believe in beginnings. Ask them, and they will tell you that everything is about to start in just a moment, just one more moment. ~ Sarah Manguso

I grew up watching MTV, when Journey was huge, when Pat Benatar had 'Love Is a Battlefield,' and my friends and I used to cut school to watch this woman in the video. We loved Pat Benatar. ~ Mary J. Blige

For, by the disaster of his charity, God plays out at last the Game that began with the dawn of history. In the Garden of Eden - in the paradise of pleasure - where God laid out his court and first served the hint of meaning to humankind - Adam strove with God over the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But God does not accept thrown-down racquets. He refuses, at any cost, to take seriously, our declination of the game; if Adam will not have God's rules, God will play by Adam's. In another and darker garden he accepts the tree of our choosing, and with nails through his hands and feet he volleys back meaning for unmeaning. As the darkness descends, at the last foul drive of a desperate day, he turns to the thief on the right and brings off the dazzling backhand return that fetches history home in triumph: Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise.

God has Gardens to give away! He has cities to spare! He has history he hasn't even used! The last of all the mercies is that God is lighter than we are, that in the heart of the Passion lies the divine mirth, and that even in the cities of our exile he still calls to Adam only to catch the Glory, to offer the world, and return the service that shapes the City of God. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

The plunge was easier than the pull. The serrated edge caught the flaps of skin on the way out. It wasn't the nature of the blade; he'd chosen specific tools for the torture and wasn't about to skimp on the final cut. Most would have picked the sharpest. The sharpest would allow smooth entry both into and out of the body. He'd used the sharpest on the torso; four quick stabs just above the waist and one to pierce his side. No water; only blood. This final task required a specific tool and he'd chosen a bread knife. It'd been used for that too; winter soups with a rustic loaf, hearty bacon sandwiches in the family home. Use only a little pressure, move it back and forth, letting the edge do the work. That was the easy way to do it, but this wasn't ~ Darryl Donaghue

Literally. Unlike most people, even allegedly educated ones, he used ~ Laura Lippman

You never count your chickens before they hatch. I used to keep parakeets and I never counted every egg thinking I would get all eight birds. You just hoped they came out of the nest box looking all right. I'm like a swan at the moment. I look fine on top of the water but under the water my little legs are going mad. ~ Ian Holloway

Ironically, when you surrender your need to hog the glory, the attention you used to need from other people is replaced by a quiet inner confidence that is derived from letting others have it. ~ Richard Carlson

I used to think the opposite of control was chaos. But it's not. The opposite of control is surrender. ~ Erin Loechner

I'll do this," John says. "I'll let you know what's out there, within limits. But I want you to understand that there can't be information about you--that is true--that you don't already know. Your life takes place in your skin. No one else knows a goddamn thing, and the Internet is full of cowboys and sad people making stuff up." He pauses. "I love the Internet, or at least I used to, but it's not where you go for the truth. ~ Ann Napolitano

When I was little kid, I used to want to be a rock star. ~ Tommy Wiseau

But where do we go?"(Elinor)
"I used to think there was a plan, a rough plan, but a plan all the same," the doctor admitted. "Now, I believe there are a thousand plans. Every breath, every decision, influences the plan, expands it, shortens it, twists it all around. It's always changing. Those of us lucky enough to make it through the multitude of possible diseases and accidents get old. We get tired. We close our eyes."
"And then? Where are we then?"
Silly to ask him as though he knew, but in fact the doctor didn't hesitate. He took Elinor's hand and placed it on his chest, in the place where he knew his heart to be.
"There."
Elinor smiled and thought at last. At last someone had told her the truth. ~ Alice Hoffman

Sometimes things change irrevocably. You turn a corner, hear a new song, read a book, fall in or out of love, or look at a painting in a different light.
Or you get shot several times.
Then no matter how you try, you can't unsee or unexperience something to make life what it used to be. The river always flowed downstream. ~ Thea Harrison