c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I purposely used a pretty cocky, abrasive writing style in Sex and Crime, to stir up some drama. My confrontational style quickly became the talk of the scene. Some of the things I wrote were so inflammatory, people had to vent about it on online forums. So suddenly everyone in the scene was talking about Sex and Crime, just as I had hoped. I enjoyed playing the role of agitator, and people from competing hacking crews didn't even realize that the more they bitched about the things I wrote, the more credibility and notoriety they were adding to my scene mag. Thanks to all the positive as well as negative feedback I was getting, the things I wrote actually mattered. Suddenly I was the most important opinion maker in the scene.
— Oliver Markus, Sex and Crime: Oliver's Strange Journey
Like so many of his successors in the language-crank world today, though, (Jonathan) Swift not only loathes (the) banal and common change (language); he ascribes it to moral failing.
— Robert Lane Greene, You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity
To listen to criticism and act on it if it is valid and ignore it if it is not is a sign of intelligence.
— Chloe Thurlow, The Secret Life of Girls
Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism helps. But after something is published, all I want to read or hear is praise.
— Truman Capote
An insincere critic of a sincere person never wins.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
The man who cannot listen to an argument which opposes his views either has a weak position or is a weak defender of it. No opinion that cannot stand discussion or criticism is worth holding. And it has been wisely said that the man who knows only half of any question is worse off than the man who knows nothing of it. He is not only one sided, but his partisanship soon turns him into an intolerant and a fanatic. In general it is true that nothing which cannot stand up under discussion and criticism is worth defending.
— James E. Talmage
When you say, ‘Women are untrustworthy bitches. They lie and cheat and will nail anything that moves.’ Do you know what I hear from your lips? Listen now, for I shall tell you. I hear you speak these words: 'I am an untrustworthy bastard. I lie and cheat and nail anything that moves.' André Chevalier
— Nikki Sex, Fate
Often the crowd does not recognize a leader until he has gone, and then they build a monument for him with the stones they threw at him in life.
— J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership
I only accept and pay attention to feedback from people who are also in the arena. If you're occasionally getting your butt kicked as you respond, and if you're also figuring out how to stay open to feedback without getting pummeled by insults, I'm more likely to pay attention to your thought about my work. If, on the other hand, you're not helping, contributing, or wrestling with your own gremlins, I'm not at all interested in your commentary.
— Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
But 'I worked hard on this' doesn’t exempt you from criticism. Those harsh reviews aren’t about anyone being out to get me. It’s not an Authors vs. Reviewers thing. It’s people taking the time to express their opinions because they care about this s
— Jim C. Hines
Only a few short years ago, the average stay-at-home mom spent her relaxation time reading Jackie Collins and staring at the pool boy. Now, half of them are outselling Jackie Collins writing porn about the pool boy.The other half are writing reviews of 
— Pete Morin
Remember, we all make our work available in a commercial transaction, the terms of which we, ourselves, dictate. If we give it away for free, that’s our decision, and there is no refuge in the lame defense, “what do you want for nothing?” The buyer does not waive his right to express his opi
— Pete Morin
...if anyone who speaks up to criticise something obviously evil is punished merely for speaking, civilisation will be in a bad way.
— Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice
Wealthy people attract critics like wealthy ships attract pirates.
— Orrin Woodward
Criticize me if you can, but that won't stop me from saying what i like, my mouth is mine, and not yours.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers’ faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and taken up with the faults and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers; and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the criticisms themselves have made.
— Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and Other Works
In his book Real Presences, George Steiner asks us to "imagine a society in which all talk about the arts, music and literature is prohibited." In such a society there would be no more essays on whether Hamlet was mad or only pretending to be, no reviews of the latest exhibitions or novels, no profiles of writers or artists. There would be no secondary, or parasitic, discussion - let alone tertiary: commentary on commentary. We would have, instead, a "republic for writers and readers" with no cushion of professional opinion-makers to come between creators and audience. While the Sunday papers presently serve as a substitute for the experiencing of the actual exhibition or book, in Steiner's imagined republic the review pages would be turned into listings:catalogues and guides to what is about to open, be published, or be released. What would this republic be like? Would the arts suffer from the obliteration of this ozone of comment? Certainly not, says Steiner, for each performance of a Mahler symphony is also a critique of that symphony. Unlike the reviewer, however, the performer "invests his own being in the process of interpretation." Such interpretation is automatically responsible because the performer is answerable to the work in a way that even the most scrupulous reviewer is not. Although, most obviously, it is not only the case for drama and music; all art is also criticism. This is most clearly so when a writer or composer quotes or reworks material from another writer or composer. All literature, music, and art "embody an expository reflection which they pertain". In other words it is not only in their letters, essays, or conversation that writers like Henry James reveal themselves also to be the best critics; rather, The Portrait of a Lady is itself, among other things, a commentary on and a critique of Middlemarch. "The best readings of art are art."No sooner has Steiner summoned this imaginary republic into existence than he sighs, "The fantasy I have sketched is only that." Well, it is not. It is a real place and for much of the century it has provided a global home for millions of people. It is a republic with a simple name: jazz.
— Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz
Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics, Wait a minute; this is a really good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s done you no harm; please leave it alone. Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
...some people become hypercritical when stressed.Then again, he hadn't been stressed last week. She giggled, remembering how he'd instructed her on the proper way to fold hand towels. Talk about nitpicky. Perhaps this would be a good time to call it quits.
— Cherise Sinclair, Dark Citadel
If the world like it not, so much the worse for them.
— William Cowper, Letters of William Cowper
CRITICISM'' is a first step of a Success
— Samar Sudha
The writers in the newspapers could sounds smart because they did not have the responsibilities of decision, and they could sound bold by enunciating positions which they were not required to implement.
— Elton Trueblood, Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership
Freedom of Speech has become Freedom of Stupidity on the internet. Some ignominious users should not be given a voice to comment at all.
— Michael P. Naughton, Deathryde: Rebel Without a Corpse
As uncomfortable as it might be, I refuse to let the comfort of being agreed with suffocate my opinions.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Criticism at its best is re-creative, not spirit-killing.
— Camille Paglia, Break, Blow, Burn
Nine times out of 10, criticism is a defense mechanism. We criticize in others what we don't like in ourselves.
— Mark Batterson, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars
I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick 
— Harper Lee
The best criticism, and it is uncommon, is of this sort that dissolves considerations of content into those of form.
— Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays
Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
When you receive criticism from well-meaning people, it pays to ask, ‘Are they right?’ And if they are, you need to adapt what they’re doing. If they’re not right, if you really have conviction that they’re not right, you need to have that long-term willingness to be misunderstood. It’s a key part of invention.
— Jeff Bezos
And, instead of pelting these babbling idiots with their own freshly toasted marshmallows, everyone else sitting around the fire is often nodding and smiling and looking solemny thoughtful.
— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into the palpitating entrails of his own soul.
— Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow
Not everybody that says that you suck is a hater. There are people who suck.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A man’s mind is hidden in his writings: criticism brings it to light.
— Solomon ibn Gabirol
Procrastination threatens critics’ livelihood.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Confessions of a Misfit
Cookbooks, it should be stressed, do not belong in the kitchen at all. We keep them there for the sake of appearances; occasionally, we smear their pages together with vibrant green glazes or crimson compotes, in order to delude ourselves, and any passing browsers, that we are practicing cooks; but in all honesty, a cookbook is something you read in the living room, or in the bathroom, or in bed.
— Anthony Lane, Nobody's Perfect: Writings from The New Yorker
Matthew Arnold was a fastidious social critic and hence an accomplished complainer. When he died, an acquaintance said: "Poor Matt, he's going to Heaven, no doubt – but he won't like God.
— George F. Will, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation
If philosophy has to serve some really noble purpose, it must be more observant than critical towards life.
— Raheel Farooq
There is something essentially ridiculous about critics, anyway: what is good is good without our saying so, and beneath all our majesty we know this.
— Randall Jarrell
Critiquing a doer isn’t doing.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Confessions of a Misfit
What deserves my loyalty, art or prestige?
— Anis Shivani
Successful entrepreneurs figure out when to drive their ideas forward & when to listen to constructive criticism.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
Magicians made magic but critics made it tricks.
— Amit Kalantri
Most people say that Shakespeare rocked merely because most people say that Shakespeare rocked.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#1. Spend more time considering evidences of grace in other Christians than you do pondering their sins and weaknesses. You, as a Christian, probably have a much greater ability to see weakness in other believers than to see strength. It is as if you use a magnifying glass when looking for weakness and a telescope when looking for grace. Brooks warns, "Sin is darkness, grace is light; sin is hell, grace is heaven; and what madness is it to look more at darkness than at light, more at hell than at heaven." Indeed.
— Thomas Brooks
I define influence simply as literary love, tempered by defense. The defenses vary from poet to poet. But the overwhelming presence of love is vital to understanding how great literature works.
— Harold Bloom, The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life
As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain sublime assurance of success, but as soon as honied words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1820-1824
What someone else thinks of you is not what you have to think of yourself.
— Bianca Frazier
I've always looked on criticism as a sort of envious tribute.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chances are like criticism; few like to take it, some love to give it, yet most never see it.
— Carl Henegan
A cowardly critique starts with a compliment.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
To maintain our own economy,we are disturbing the nature's economy
— Siddharth Seksaria
Some criticism, no doubt, is constructive, but too much is a subtle poison.
— Arthur Gordon, A Touch of Wonder
Dear lady, ... dear gentleman, reader, [it's] not right ... to put down this writer on his writing ... And I'll tell you why, too: it hurts, that's why.... People try to understand why writers commit suicide by jumping off boats or by alcoholism or by being heroic continuously or by rope or gun or drug or knife or water, and ... I can tell you straight out, ... it is reading slurring remarks about their writing that drives writers to the grave. Dirty remarks passed by ... dirty but damned nicely educated and very highly-paid ladies and gentlemen have the effect of killing writers. Yes, that's right. Dirty words ... in slick paper magazines read by smart people do assassinate writers. ... And boy let me tell you I am all for it, even when by some ... misunderstanding the dirty words are directed to me rather than to the party really deserving them. Accidents happen, dear clever reviewer or critic, and let it not be said that William Saroyan is one not to see a situation from the point of view of the other party, ... and I shall be the first to defend your right to be critical and even sarcastic, knowing full well that it is not about me and my writing, although my name is by mistake taken in vain by you. ... But go on, go on, do your good clever writing, every one of you, I am home, your are home, and we are each of us not yet on Variety's Necrology list, so if we can't take it, who can?
— William Saroyan
I will only start taking book reviews seriously from the day that books are able to review readers.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Excuses, criticisms, and superstitions are vitamins for haters, but poison for the successful. Rise above!
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots.
— Frank A. Clark
I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.
— Charles Schwab
In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.
— Voltaire
(Feedback) People become addicted to it. That’s why journalism is so popular, because you want to hear, every day, what people think of what you just wrote. I think a little patience on that front can be good, too.
— Zadie Smith
Red Carpet Events:Sitting on the couch and watching people who actually chase their goals and dreams
—  criticizing what they’re wearing… and wondering why we’re depressed.
You do not have to do anything to defend yourself in life; just BE beautiful, and life will defend you.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
I have often misunderstood men grossly, and I have misrepresented them when I understood them, sacrificing sense to make a phrase. Here, of course, is where even the most conscientious critic often goes aground; he is apt to be an artist before he is a scientist, and the impulse to create something passionately is stronger in him than the impulse to state something accurately.
— H.L. Mencken, H.L. Mencken's Smart Set Criticism
The pleasure of criticism takes away from us the pleasure of being deeply moved by very fine things.
— Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères
I want to say to the literature teacher who remains wilfully, even boastfully ignorant of a major element of contemporary fiction: you are incompetent to teach or judge your subject. Readers and students who do know the field, meanwhile, have every right to challenge your ignorant prejudice. Rise, undergraduates of the English departments! You have nothing to lose but your A on the midterm!
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Secret History of Fantasy
There are those who see film and take it seriously as an artistic medium, and others who go to have a good time, to simply be entertained. I have to be careful , because it sounds like I am condemning, or criticizing what people are doing. I have nothing against that, in the same way that some people like rock music or to go dancing, and other people like to go to a Beethoven concert. It's just that I'm more interested in the one than the other.
— Michael Haneke
Bad art is always basically creepy
—  that is its first and most obvious identifying sign
Though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least will not be more than you can bear. Marriage may change your circumstances for the better, but in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result
— Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
How is he made? Oftentimes bitter, sometimes sweet, seldom even wide-awake, architectural criticism of "the modern" wholly lacks inspiration or any qualification because it lacks the appreciation that is love: the flame essential to profound understanding. Only as criticism is the fruit of such experience will it ever be able truly to appraise anything. Else the spirit of true criteria is lacking. That spirit is love and love alone can understand. So art criticism is usually sour and superficial today because it would seem to know all about everything but understand nothing. Usually the public prints afford no more than a kind of irresponsible journalese wholly dependent upon some form of comparison, commercialization or pseudo-personal opinion made public. Critics may have minds of their own, but what chance have they to use them when experience in creating the art they write about is rarely theirs? So whatever they may happen to learn, and you learn from them, is very likely to put over on both of you as it was put over on them. Truth is seldom in the critic; and either good or bad, what comes from him is seldom his. Current criticism is something to take always on suspicion, if taken at all.
— Frank Lloyd Wright, A Testament
Easy to be a critic
—  hard to be a quarterback.
If yourhands are tied towardsanyone who's in need ofa helping hand, let yourtangue also be tied
— Nathanael Kanyinga
It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Nothing ruins a good thing quite like knowing you share your opinions with mindless little tits.
— Yahtzee Croshaw
Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.
— Idries Shah, Reflections
I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface a little, critical articles crying out, indeed begging, for a return to the Greek and Latin greats, to the Troubadours, to the dolce stil nuovo and the classics of Spain, France and England, more culture! more culture! read Whitman and Pound and Eliot, read Neruda and Borges and Vallejo, read Victor Hugo, for God’s sake, and Tolstoy, and proudly I cried myself hoarse in the desert, but my vociferations and on occasions my howling could only be heard by those who were able to scratch the surface of my writings with the nails of their index fingers, and they were not many, but enough for me, and life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain, partly because to do so required the vision of a lynx or an eagle, and partly because the landscapes usually turned out to contain unpleasant surprises like coffins, makeshift cemeteries, ghost towns, the void and the horror, the smallness of being and its ridiculous will, people watching television, people going to football matches, boredom navigating the Chilean imagination like an enormous aircraft carrier. And that’s the truth. We were bored. We intellectuals. Because you can't read all day and all night. You can't write all day and all night. Splendid isolation has never been our style...
— Roberto Bolaño, By Night in Chile
Regarding Christians who feel they have a free pass on being criticized; When the blind worship of an invisible being and the doctrine of millennia-old texts written by ignorant men in another country becomes more important than real, present human beings, then the blind worshiper SHOULD be shunned and criticized. It would be unethical to respond otherwise.
— Kelli Jae Baeli, Supernatural Hypocrisy: The Cognitive Dissonance of a God Cosmology
Whenever convictions are not arrived at by direct contact with the world and the objects themselves, but indirectly through a critique of the opinions of others, the processes of thinking are impregnated with ressentiment. The establishment of “criteria” for testing the correctness of opinions then becomes the most important task. Genuine and fruitful criticism judges all opinions with reference to the object itself. Ressentiment criticism, on the contrary, accepts no “object” that has not stood the test of criticism
— Max Scheler, Ressentiment
Who is the wrong person to criticise?You
— Idries Shah, Reflections
And when you are criticized, as you will be, remind your critics that you have the right to speak your mind. And if they shout you down, as they probably will, then inform them that since they insist on being asses, you will henceforth communicate with them with the appropriate part of your own anatomy. And turning to face them from the posterior, let them know where you stand. Let every fart count as a peal of thunder for liberty. Let every fart remind the nation of how much it has let pass out of its control. It is a small gesture, but one that can be very effective - especially in a large crowd. So fart, and if you must, fart often. But always fart without apology. Fart for freedom, fart for liberty - and fart proudly
— Carl Japikse
A leader is always first in line during times of criticism and last in line during times of recognition.
— Orrin Woodward, LIFE
Because his [Damien Hirst] art is idea art - art drawn on the back of cigarette packets and beer mats, roughed out in airport departure lounges and the back of the taxis, usually delegated to and carried by others - this leaves Damien a lot of time for what might loosely be called socializing. Hanging around.
— Gordon Burn
Those who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write,Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.
— John Dryden
It is peculiar to “ressentiment criticism” that it does not seriously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely the pretext for the criticism.
— Max Scheler, Ressentiment
When you lay down a proposition which is forthwith controverted, it is of course optional with you to take up the cudgels in its defence. If you are deeply convinced of its truth, you will perhaps be content to leave it to take care of itself; or, at all events, you will not go out of your way to push its fortunes; for you will reflect that in the long run an opinion often borrows credit from the forbearance of its patrons. In the long run, we say; it will meanwhile cost you an occasional pang to see your cherished theory turned into a football by the critics. A football is not, as such, a very respectable object, and the more numerous the players, the more ridiculous it becomes. Unless, therefore, you are very confident of your ability to rescue it from the chaos of kicks, you will best consult its interests by not mingling in the game.
— Henry James, Views and Reviews
There is probably no hell for authors in the next world--they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this one.
— Christian Nestell Bovee
To call you my critic is to call you my friend.
— Karen E. Quinones Miller
This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an overcooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job.
— Susan Sontag
Hem,' he said, and I knew he was a critic now, since, in conversation, they put your name at the beginning of a sentence rather than at the end.
— Ernest Hemingway
This has been done by masters of the trade and Garcia had taken in every stock situation with amazing powers of retention, but he had not put things together right and had used extraordinary discernment in not adding one single touch of originality.
— Felipe Alfau, Chromos
It shows a mediocre architect at the top of his game [on the Beetham Tower in Manchester]
— Owen Hatherley, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain
Anaemia is an illness primarily affecting characters in novels.
— Marchel Reich-Ranicki
Stay away from lazy parasites, who perch on you just to satisfy their needs, they do not come to alleviate your burdens, hence, their mission is to distract, detract and extract, and make you live in abject poverty.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Remember then that there is only one important time, and that time is now. The most important one is always the one you are with. And the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side. This is why we are here.
— Jon J. Muth, The Three Questions
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for the lost? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love “the lost”. You can’t feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as “all lost people”.Don’t wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God.
— John Piper
Lack of interest in mission is not fundamentally caused by an absence of compassion or commitment, nor by lack of information or exhortation. And lack of interest in mission is not remedied by more shocking statistics, more gruesome stories or more emotionally manipulative commands to obedience. It is best remedied by intensifying peoples’ passion for Christ, so that the passions of his heart become the passions that propel our hearts.
— Tim A. Dearborn, Beyond Duty: A Passion For Christ, A Heart For Mission
God desires that we be like living signs of the kingdom, to provide visual aids of what life will look like one day when the kingdom is here fully. We will not bring the Kingdom or build the kingdom, but our privilege is to live out previews of “coming attractions,” revealing what this Kingdom will look like.
— Tim A. Dearborn, Beyond Duty: A Passion For Christ, A Heart For Mission
I was taught to think about mission and people. Mission. What are you trying to accomplish? Don't do anything until you know what the mission is. Drilled into our hearts and into our heads.
— Colin Powell
Up until the 1950s the subject of the missionary movement was referred to as "missions" in the plural form. In fact, the term "missions" was first used in its current context by the Jesuits in the sixteenth century. But the International Missionary Council discussions in the 1950s on the missio- Dei convinced most that the mission of the Triune God was prior to any of the number of missions by Christians during the two millennia of church history. Consequently, since there was only one mission, the plural form has dropped out of familir usage and the singular form, "mission," has replaced it for the most part. Nevertheless, most churches and lay-persons hang on the plural missions. For that reason, and to make our point clear here, we will refer to it in this work from time to time while alerting believers to the coming change.
— Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Mission in the Old Testament: Israel as a Light to the Nations
My mission is vague. I am here to appreciate the situation.
— Lawrence of Arabia film
Everyone is useful for specific task.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Permission to disregard your orders, Underqueen." "Permission not granted. Permission categorically denied.
— Samantha Shannon, The Song Rising
To succeed in your kingdom mission is to be consumed with the heartbeat of God
— Sunday Adelaja
To have a life mission is to be pivoted on the ultimate fulfilment of God’s will
— Sunday Adelaja
Don't worry. You'll find your message in your mess.
— Richie Norton
Commitment is a promise to a cause. Being non-committal is a promise to catastrophe.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
The Mission is completed...this is why you die!
— Deyth Banger
I want to find the answers of my questions!
— Deyth Banger
Charlie Everman understood, in the very depth of his soul, that God's mercies were new each morning.
— Vannetta Chapman, Joshua's Mission
What is your quest in life?
— Lailah Gifty Akita
We have our mission and we are going to complete it. So grab your straws and suck it the fuck up.
— Greg Rucka, Lazarus, Vol. 4: Poison
Molding the Minds of the Future
— Robert E.O.  Crewe
Life is for a specific mission. Find your role and fulfill it.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Death is easy, you just take the gun or the knife and you just start to suicede by your own or you tell to somebody who is relative to you or somebody who is a friend it doesn't matter and you give him the gun or you say to him what to do and he kills you. This is easy, we aren't born to give up, we aren't born to die let's make ways, let's make our choices, even if you are down in the misearble place and you have lost hope and everything. You mustn't give up continue, stand up say that you won't give up, make few breaths and exhalations, then go to this road and continue. That's your mission!
— Deyth Banger
Men of Athens, I honor and I love you, but I will obey the god rather than you and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to practice philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to any one of you whom I happen to meet.
— Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates
Only a clear, focused, and common mission can hold the organization together and enable it to produce results.
— Peter F. Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society
There are roads where people go, and where they should arrive is their mission.
— Eraldo Banovac
Kanan thumped his chest. “I’m a man with a mission.”“You’re an oaf with a delusion.
— John Jackson Miller, A New Dawn
Your expenses will rise to meet your increased income, unless you are on a mission.
— Manoj Arora, From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom
We are on a mission to win the hearts and minds of our employees.
— Vern Dosch, Wired Differently
As salvation is personal, so also is the territory every individual has to possess.
— Sunday Adelaja
The point of the mission trip is to invite young people to act in ways that witness to the promise of God's action, which will make all things new.
— Andrew Root, Unlocking Mission and Eschatology in Youth Ministry
Apathy sets in when our passion for the future is miscarried.
— Andrew Root, Unlocking Mission and Eschatology in Youth Ministry
When God gives you a mission, He also gives you everything you need to fulfill that mission.
— Elizabeth George, Beautiful in God's Eyes: The Treasures of the Proverbs 31 Woman
On an individual and corporate level the church is learning to love and accept people where they are at on their journey along with providing opportunities and experiences for them to engage relationally with other Christians along with exploring the implications of Christ's teachings. I am a big proponent of the concept that Christianity is more “caught that taught” and that a person’s meaningful involvement in the process is critical to them experiencing the power of the gospel in their lives. This meaningful involvement takes time and persevering love.
— Gary Rohrmayer, Spiritual Conversations: Creating and Sustaining Them Without Being a Jerk
I might not have faith in many things, but I do have faith in this; that the one who sent me out will allow me to finish the mission.” -Regan
— Brittany L. Engels, Rompita Kero, Healing for the Broken Heart
As the church get older and older it becomes harder to keep evangelism on the front burner because of all the competing issues that keeps pushing it back.
— Gary Rohrmayer, Church Planting Landmines
Legacy accounting: Will you have been an asset or a liability on the world's balance sheet?
— Ryan Lilly
Do we run from money in fear of being a slave to it? I know I did that for a while. I don’t think that’s the answer, though.I think the answer is our mission. Are you on a mission? Not only with your money, but with your life – are you on a mission?I have a feeling that if we were on a mission, if we were working towards something - whether it be the end of human trafficking or abortion or poverty - if we were on a mission, we would do what ever it took. We would sell everything if it meant furthering the mission.Money’s not the problem. The problem is our heart. Money only reveals it. Money reveals what our mission really is.Money reveals if we care for ourselves more than we care for our neighbors.
— Cole Ryan, Money: I Think We've Missed The Point
God is equipping you, protecting you, & readying you to fight for the mission He has given you to change the world.
— Paige Omartian
It is not the time for you to dream, It is the time for you to accomplish the mission!
— Albert Aristyo
The battle for the gospel in the opening years of the twenty-first century is being fought not primarily in the lecture rooms of North American seminaries but in the shanty towns, urban slums and villages of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
— Brian Stanley, The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Billy Graham and John Stott
Books are the immortality of the race, the father and mother of most that is worth while cherishing in our hearts. To spread good books about, to sow them on fertile minds, to propagate understanding and a carefulness of life and beauty, isn't that high enough mission for a man?
— Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop
A mission-minded family will serve together. Look for needs in your community and brainstorm with your spouse about how you can partner together to meet those needs in a way that works for you. My husband is handy, and I love to cook. My casserole dish and his tool box work well together. Is there a single mom who could use some help with yard work? Is there an elderly couple who needs help hanging their Christmas lights? Look for creative ways you can serve side by side and connect with each other and your neighbors.
— Lyli Dunbar, Missional Life; A Practical Guide to Living in Light of Eternity
Your number one mission in life is to be who you were intended to be.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
What is the point of living this beautiful life if you do not have a mission that ends up making the world a better place to live.
— Manoj Arora, From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom
Long term thinking and planing enhances short term decision making. Make sure you have a plan of your life in your hand, and that includes the financial plan and your mission.
— Manoj Arora, From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom
Each person born into the world has a unique mission to fulfill.Discover your mission and seek grace to fulfill this purpose.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
God is calling us to live for the sake of Christ and to do that through suffering. Christ chose suffering; it didn’t just happen to Him. He chose it as the way to create and perfect the church. Now He calls us to choose suffering. That is, He calls us to take up our cross and follow Him on the Calvary road and deny ourselves and make sacrifices for the sake of ministering to the church and presenting His sufferings to the world.
— John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist
The mission sat in a converted store front on the corner of a medium-busy street. There was a small crowd gathered in front - no real surprise, since they gave out food and clothing, all all you had to do was spend a few moments of your life listening to the good reverend explain why you were going to Hell. It seemed like a pretty good bargain, even to me, but I wasn't hungry.
— Jeff Lindsay, Dexter in the Dark
I guess the higher up on the food chain you go, the admiration isn’t just for the hungry, but for the ones that go the extra mile to take a bite.
— Angela Richardson, Pieces of Truth
A man on a mission would bring his heaviest artillery, and it looked like this guy hadn’t even packed a pocket knife.
— Angela Richardson, Pieces of Truth
Mission matching: an ask that creates synergistic congruence (aka win-win) between missions.
— Richie Norton, The Power of Starting Something Stupid: How to Crush Fear, Make Dreams Happen, and Live without Regret
In nothing do we fail more, as a Mission, than in lack of tact and politeness.
— James Hudson Taylor
God uses one whom others would have passed over without a second glance. The history of obedience to the Great Commission is full of such examples. Behind this reality is a truth that God will use any who will submit to and obey His purpose for mission in their generation.
— Ross Paterson, The Antioch Factor: The Hidden Message of the Book of Acts
Samuel, wise is relative. Wise is listening to your heart and letting it decide what to do.” -Joseph Dahr.
— Ray Anyasi, Ujasiri
No! The mission was to terminate one Hipo officer. Not four by random. You didn’t get him so the operation was a failure.”Johannes aka ‘BB’The Informer by Steen Langstrup
— Steen Langstrup, The Informer
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in suchan inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, theirabsolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lackof style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give usan impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements ofbeauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, thewhole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenlywe find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of theplay. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonderof the spectacle enthralls us.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Come what come may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
The tragedy in a man’s life is what dies inside of him while he lives.
— Albert Schweitzer
The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.
— Terri Garey
Humor is tragedy plus time.
— Mark Twain
Tragedy is when someone ends up dead. Everything else is just a bump in the road. For the record, that was something Daddy used to say.
— Gabrielle Zevin, All These Things I've Done
A person’s tragedy does not make up their entire life. A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren't one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own.
— Amy Poehler
Great tragedies have great consequences. They ripple through the fabric of this world and the next. When the loss is too great for either world to bear, Everlost absorbs the shock, like a cushion between the two.
— Neal Shusterman, Everwild
Young men's love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
— William Shakespeare
The best thing you can say to someone going through a tragic loss is not that"It's going to be alright"It is:"Hold on tight because this is going to hurt like hell".
— JohnA Passaro
I felt I was drawing close to that age, that place in life, where you realize one day what you'd told yourself was a Zen detachment turns out to be naked fear. You'd had one serious love relationship in your life and it had ended in tragedy, and the tragedy had broken something inside you. But instead of trying to repair the broken place, or at least really stop and look at it, you skated and joked. You had friends, you were a decent citizen. You hurt no one. And your life was somehow just about half of what it could be.
— Roland Merullo, A Little Love Story
People know your tragedies and they treat you like you’re not human. Like you’re a three-headed goat. A monster from some other planet. They keep reminding you of your pain. You see how they look at me? They’re stuck on that person I used to be. They can’t see that old life as just a moment in time that I’ve moved on from. It was a horrible life.
— Eric Jerome Dickey, Genevieve
What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.
— William Shakespeare, Othello
It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course—for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.
— C.G. Jung, Aion
On a sunny Tuesday - for it seems so many awful things happen on a Tuesday - six astronauts and one schoolteacher attempted to pierce the sky. Instead they touched the stars.
— Neal Shusterman, Everwild
I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream...
— Black Elk
Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea.
— Oscar Wilde, The Nightingale and the Rose
If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle.
— Diana Gabaldon, A Breath of Snow and Ashes
Finish, good lady; the bright day is done, And we are for the Dark. (Act 5, Scene 2)
— William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
I had hoped that the rest of the world would stand still while I got myself together again, but Chaos and Tragedy had marched into other lives close to mine as well.
— Julie Metz, Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal
I don't really wanna know what makes you leave, or when you'll be back.I just wanna know what will make me cry at your arrival.
— Ade Santi
...our family became a place where you screamed for help but no one heard, not ever.
— Marceline Loridan-Ivens, But You Did Not Come Back
Her first reaction was one of hope, because his eyes were open and shining with a radiant light she had never seen there before. She prayed to God to give him at least a moment so that he would not go without knowing how much she had love him despite all their doubts, and she felt an irresistible longing to begin life with him over again so that they could say what they had left unsaid and do everything right that they had done badly in the past. But she had to give in to the intransigence of death. (Love in the Time of Cholera)
— Gabriel García Márquez
One hardly need believe that the events in your life are actually planned as bolts from the blue, sent special delivery from a deity who is testing and training you like a lab rat! And that is what we are saying when we fretfully ask, "What can God be trying to teach me through this tragedy?
— Robert M. Price
Love can be a very frightening thing.”“That is why most great love stories are tragedies.
— Agatha Christie
Receive what cheer you may. The night is long that never finds the day.
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
What art thou Faustus, but a man condemned to die?
— Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus
As a lord was heldfor the strength of his body and stoutness of heart.Much lore he learned, and loved wisdombut fortune followed him in few desires;oft wrong and awry what he wrought turned;what he loved he lost, what he longed for he won not;and full friendship he found not easily,nor was lightly loved for his looks were sad.He was gloom-hearted, and glad seldomfor the sundering sorrow that filled his youth...(On Turin Turambar - The Children of Hurin)
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lays of Beleriand
The world exists on thousands of different levels and just because some are more tragic than others, it doesn't make them any more valid. You fall into that way of thinking and you become so overwhelmed by the world's suffering, you go mad.
— Bella Pollen, Midnight Cactus
TEIRESIAS: Alas, how terrible is wisdom whenit brings no profit to the man that's wise!This I knew well, but had forgotten it,else I would not have come here.
— Sophocles, The Complete Greek Tragedies
TEIRESIAS:You have your eyes but see not where you arein sin, nor where you live, nor whom you live with.Do you know who your parents are? Unknowingyou are enemy to kith and kinin death, beneath the earth, and in this life.
— Sophocles, The Complete Greek Tragedies