c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The mechanism by which spirituality becomes passionate is metaphor. An ineffable God requires metaphor not only to be imagined but to be approached, exhorted, evaded, confronted, struggled with, and loved. Through metaphor, the vividness, intensity, and meaningfulness of ordinary experiences becomes the basis of a passionate spirituality. An ineffable God becomes vital through metaphor: The Supreme Being. The Prime Mover. The Creator. The Almighty. The Father. The King of Kings. Shepherd. Potter. Lawgiver. Judge. Mother. Lover. Breath. The vehicle by which we are moved in passionate spirituality is metaphor. The mechanism of such metaphor is bodily. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience.
— George Lakoff, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought
My faith is a tool I employ, a metaphorical context I find apt, but it is inert until placed in a hand that needs it.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Pagan Standard Times: Essays on the Craft
One of the things that happens a lot is you get to see how many times things happen, literal things happen and how they are completely metaphors for where you are. It’s like a mirror is being held up just about an inch to your face.
— Cheryl Strayed
...I found my eyes repelled by hers as if they were the like poles of a pair of magnets.
— Alan Bradley, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust
Dark-bright fire lit eyes
— Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
You know what they say about air and water when it comes to fire, don’t you?” she
— Katherine Owen, The Truth About Air & Water
Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance. First, the subjects of deepest dread (corruption, decay, pollution, anomie, weakness) are identified with the disease. The disease itself becomes a metaphor. Then, in the name of the disease (that is, using it as a metaphor), that horror is imposed on other things. The disease becomes adjectival. Something is said to be disease-like, meaning that it is disgusting or ugly.
— Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor & AIDS and Its Metaphors
One feature of the usual script for plague: the disease invariably comes from somewhere else. The names for syphilis, when it began its epidemic sweep through Europe in the last decade of the fifteenth century are an exemplary illustration of the need to make a dreaded disease foreign. It was the "French pox" to the English, morbus Germanicus to the Parisians, the Naples sickness to the Florentines, the Chinese disease to the Japanese. But what may seem like a joke about the inevitability of chauvinism reveals a more important truth: that there is a link between imagining disease and imagining foreignness.
— Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor & AIDS and Its Metaphors
You put the thing that does the killing between your teeth, but you never give it the power to kill you
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
And then the finale, its four modest notes. Do, re, fa, mi: half a jumbled scale. Too simple to be called invented. But the thing spills out into the world like one of those African antelopes that fall from the womb, still wet with afterbirth but already running.
— Richard Powers
Mathematics, which most of us see as the most factual of all sciences, constitutes the most colossal metaphor imaginable, and must be judged, aesthetically as well as intellectually in terms of the success of this metaphor.
— Norbert Wiener
The Americans’ great wealth (and their great love for it) makes it precisely the appropriate metaphor. Supply and Demand as a principle has permeated their minds. As a practice, it stains all the way down to their souls.
— Geoffrey Wood
So this is the boom, eh?” I said. “Not exactly Scott Fitzgerald, is it?” “I’ll tell you what it’s like,” he said glumly. “It’s like being in Caligula’s Rome, and everyone around you’s having an orgy, and you’re the mug stuck looking after the horse.” He pulled heavily on his cigarette. “The whole thing’ll come crashing down,” he said bleakly, “and all anyone’ll have done is eaten a lot of expensive cheese.
— Paul Murray
Some say you have only one shot in life, well if you get ammo, you can reload.
— Micah Elza
The age-old, seemingly inexorable process whereby diseases acquire meanings (by coming to stand for the deepest fears) and inflict stigma is always worth challenging, and it does seem to have more limited credibility in the modern world, among people willing to be modern - the process is under surveillance now. With this illness, one that elicits so much guilt and shame, the effort to detach it from these meanings, these metaphors, seems particularly liberating, even consoling. But the metaphors cannot be distanced just by abstaining from them. They have to be exposed, criticized, belabored, used up.
— Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor & AIDS and Its Metaphors
It´s a metaphor: you see, you put the killing thing right between your teeth,you just don't give it the power to do it's killing.
— John Green
Beth's not on that train?""Nope. She's not even in that station, that town, or that part of whatever country your metaphor lives in.
— J.R. Ward, The King
I think back to the day I stood before my wife's grave for the final time, and turned away from it without regret, because I knew that what she was was not contained in that hole in the ground. I entered a new life and found her again, in a woman who was entirely her own person. When this life is done, I'll turn away from it without regret as well, because I know she waits for me, in another, different life.
— John Scalzi, Old Man's War
It is a great thing, indeed, to make a proper use of the poetical forms, as also of compounds and strange words. But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.
— Aristotle, The Rhetoric & The Poetics of Aristotle
Metaphors are tiny saviors leading the way out of sentimentality, small disciples of Pound, urging "Say it new! Say it new!" It's hard for emotion to feel flat if its language is suitably novel, to feel excessive if its rendering is suitably opaque. Metaphors translate emotion into surprising and sublime language, but they also help us deflect and diffuse the glare of revelation.
— Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams: Essays
Metaphor, everything is sort of Metaphor of something else.
— Sameh Elsayed
Walking a short way back along the embankment, almost to where the cross stood, Smiley took another look at the bridge, as if to establish whether anything had changed, but clearly it had not, and though the wind appeared a little stronger, the snow was still swirling in all directions.
— John le Carré, Smiley's People
We are all but symbols of some greater thing—totems of ourselves--subject to change and growth. When we forget that metaphoric sense of ourselves, we lose sight of the overall path.
— S. Kelley Harrell, Gift of the Dreamtime - Reader's Companion
There ́s a metaphor which I love: living like a drawing compass. As you know, one leg of the compass is static, rooted in a place. Meanwhile, the other leg draws a wide circle, constantly moving. Like that, my fiction as well. One part of it is rooted in Istanbul with strong Turkish roots. But the other part travels the world, connecting to different cultures.
— Elif Shafak
A half roll of Life Savers fused to the pockets,And in yet another, a lone unwrapped mintHad bundled itself in a stole of gray lint.
— David Rakoff, Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish
Life is a hurricane, and we board up to save what we can and bow low to the earth to crouch in that small space above the dirt where the wind will not reach. We honor anniversaries of deaths by cleaning graves and sitting next to them before fires, sharing food with those who will not eat again. We raise children and tell them other things about who they can be and what they are worth: to us, everything. We love each other fiercely, while we live and after we die. We survive; we are savages.
— Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped
Peeling an OrangeBetween you and a bowl of oranges I lie nudeReading The World’s Illusion through my tears.You reach across me hungry for global fruit,Your bare arm hard, furry and warm on my belly.Your fingers pry the skin of a naval orangeReleasing tiny explosions of spicy oil.You place peeled disks of gold in a bizarre patternOn my white body. Rearranging, you bend and biteThe disks to release further their eager scent.I say “Stop, you’re tickling,” my eyes still on the page.Aromas of groves arise. Through green leavesGlow the lofty snows. Through red lipsYour white teeth close on a translucent segment.Your face over my face eclipses The World’s Illusion.Pulp and juice pass into my mouth from your mouth.We laugh against each other’s lips. I hold my bookBehind your head, still reading, still weeping a little.You say “Read on, I’m just an illusion,” rollingOver upon me soothingly, gently unmoving,Smiling greenly through long lashes. And soonI say “Don’t stop. Don’t disillusion me.”Snows melt. The mountain silvers into many a stream.The oranges are golden worlds in a dark dream.
— Virginia Adair, Ants on the Melon: a Collection of Poems
YThat perfect letter. The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass. The question we ask over and over. Why? Me with my arms outstretched, feet in first position. The chromosome half of us don't have. Second to last in the alphabet: almost there. Coupled with an L, let's make an adverb. A modest X, legs closed. Y or N? Yes, of course. Upside-down peace sign. Little bird tracks in the sand.Y, a Greet letter, joined the Latin alphabet after the Romans conquered Greece in the first century -- a double agent: consonant and vowel. No one used adverbs before then, and no one was happy.
— Marjorie Celona, Y
But it was like a dance across a field strewn with razors, and I bled with every step I took.
— Ann Aguirre, Restoration
You're saying,' he said, weighing each word, 'that we should send Carrot away to be a duck among humans because Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle.
— Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
But how can you be there for someone who doesn't need you? It's like trying to scale a wall without anyone on the top throwing you a rope. You just keep sliding down and eventually your muscles give out, and your energy and your will and your heart.
— Katie Kacvinsky, Middle Ground
Until the thirst for power parched his throat, he was a fearless and noble lord.
— Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron
I’ve never had a rat, never chased one. I chase my own tail and that’s enough. I must now make plans for the day I catch it.
— Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations
Wrong, and wrong agains,' he said. 'The likeness is already there. The metaphor only sees it. And it is not a mere figure of speech. It is the very essence of our minds as we seek to make sense of our surroundings, our experiences, ourselves, seeing similarities, parallels, connections. We cannot help it. Even as the mind fails, it goes on trying to make sense of what is happening to it.
— Connie Willis, Passage
Many Christians, including BioLogos, like to throw out the "you can't take the Bible literally" argument. They think it is the ultimate zinger that will end any debate in their favor. But if we shouldn't take the Bible literally, why should we believe God is real in the literal sense? Perhaps God is a metaphor also. Maybe God is really a metaphor for nature or chance. Heaven forbid! However, BioLogos insists on having it both ways: God is literally true but the Bible is not. That's like saying Mother Goose is literally true but her nursery rhymes are not.
— G.M. Jackson, Debunking Darwin's God: A Case Against BioLogos and Theistic Evolution
A month in and it seemed to CY that he was an explorer summiting the foothill of an a bizarre and primitive island.
— Sarah Hall, The Electric Michelangelo
Smoke and mirrors’ is a useful metaphor for the ways in which organised abuse has chided conceptualisation and understanding. The chapter provides an overview of cite often incendiary debates over organised abuse before going on to suggest that critical theories on gender, crime and intersubjectivity may offer new insights into the phenomenon.
— Michael Salter, Organised  Sexual Abuse
Like a dog defeated in a frenzied circle by its own tail and slowing and realizing then that the tail it was after all along was already its possession
— Sarah Hall, The Electric Michelangelo
For somewhere," said Poirot to himself, indulging in an absolute riot of mixed metaphors, "there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrows into the air, one will come down and hit a glass house!
— Agatha Christie, Mrs. McGinty's Dead
The whiskey kicked like a mugger.
— Ken Bruen, Blitz
A sheet spread beneath an apple-tree can receive only apples
—  a sheet spread beneath the stars can receive only star-dust.
I am a shark. A shark who dreamed he was a man.
— Rick Yancey
In the time we spend reeling in confusion, grasping at straws trying to piece our egos together, we forget to acknowledge some things. Society created gender roles and categorizations and lifestyles and names and titles because we fear the unknown, especially when the unknown is us.It’s as though we’re stranded in the middle of an ocean, but we were promised the current would bring us back ashore. We’re given all we need on the life raft. As far as we can see, we’re being led back, slowly. We don’t know when we’ll approach the shore, but all evidence points to the fact that we will. But we don’t spend our time looking around, enjoying the view, seeing who came with us, and riding out the waves. We sit and panic about what we’re doing and why we came here.It doesn’t matter where we started because we may never know. It matters where we’re going, because that, we do. We begin and we end. We’ve seen one, so there’s only one other option.
— Brianna Wiest
I allowed myself the supernatural, the transcendent, because, I told myself, our love of metaphor is pre-religious, born of our need to express what is inexpressible, our dreams of otherness, of more.
— Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet
The cork was in the bottle. He and the Atropos were trapped.
— C.S. Forester, Hornblower and the Atropos
Everything was a metaphor; all things were something other than themselves. The pain, for example, was an ocean, and he was adrift on it. His body was a city and his mind a citadel. All communications between the two seemed to have been cut, but within the keep that was his mind he still had power. The part of his consciousness that was telling him the pain did not hurt, and that all things were like other things, was like...like...he found it hard to think of a comparison. A magic mirror, maybe.
— Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons
A poem without metaphor is a gelding
—  useless to nightmares.
As the new Adam, it might be said, his final act was to cast the Apple of Knowledge into the deep blue sea.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Galápagos
I was convinced that she was about to tell me my card was declined, and assumed Derek wanting to talk later meant he'd soon be telling me our life was declined. Everything, everyone had reached their limits with me.
— Joshua Mohr, Termite Parade
Anne tried to bite her tongue, but she was finding her mouth bloody too often.
— Janice Lane Palko, St. Anne's Day
I'm going to be frank, Max...""Of course. All cards on the table." But he gave me a poker smile.
— Alfred Alcorn, The Counterfeit Murder in the Museum of Man
Metaphor is a slippery eel, if it wasn't for its shock I'd stick to the easy catch of prose.
— David Joseph Cribbin, Father Crow and Other Poems
The water never stops, never gives up, and denies no faults in the path it takes,” he explained, my eyes still focused down the ravine, “It moves silently, only a mere trickle to entertain itself as it causes a massive gash in the world. This, Zack, is true power.
— Daniel "Z" Hastings, Soulfire
Acoustics reverberate inside of Lucy Anna, bouncing off her walls and slamming against her bars. Harmonic prison.
— Kelby Losack, Toxic Garbage
A mist rises from a nearby mound. It could be me, that mist, or simply the caretaker’s mower-dust. If the breeze blows just right, I’ll ghost your solid, entwine your hair. Promise me you won’t shampoo, but carry me along, tiny dust-particles of me.
— Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations
I feel all agitated, like one of those snow globes you see resting peacefully on shop counters. I was perfectly happy being an ordinary, dull little Swiss village. But now Jack Harper’s come and shaken me up, and there are snowflakes all over the place, whirling around until I don’t know what I think anymore. And bits of glitter, too. Tiny bits of shiny, secret excitement.
— Sophie Kinsella, Can You Keep a Secret?
Delia was an overbearing cake with condescending frosting, and frankly, I was on a diet.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception
My mother always says that love is like a snakebite, a venom slowly spreading through your veins.
— Cynthia Hand, Radiant
One more piece of sky in the jigsaw puzzle of our school.
— Em Bailey, Shift
GUIL (quietly): Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current…
— Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Did you ever get the feeling that everything was too perfect? Like the moment was so good that something had to be wrong? Kind of like the way a fish sees that bright, shiny lure just before it chomps down and gets hauled out of water to become someone's lunch.
— Neal Shusterman, Red Rider's Hood
If a tree is bent, every goat will jump on it.
— Eva Stachniak, The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great
...as vivid and fabulous as a unicorn...
— Anne Rivers Siddons, Sweetwater Creek
The mist hung in the air like a prancing unicorn.
— Graham Joyce, The Silent Land
...a tall, gaunt man with small narrow eyes set deep in his skull like two old sisters trying to spy out of the windows of their house without being noticed themselves.
— Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident
The humanoids told Don that if he went home with a whore, she would cook him a meal of petroleum and coal products at fancy prices. And then, while he ate them, she would talk dirty about how fresh and full of natural juices the food was, even though the food was fake.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions
At last he was to feel that he had the town, as it were, in his pocket, and was ready for anything. Accordingly he sent a confidential messenger to Rome, to ask his father what step he should next take, his power in Gabii being, by God's grace, by this time absolute. Tarquin, I suppose, was not sure of the messenger's good faith: in any case, he said not a word in reply to his question, but with a thoughtful air went out to the garden. The man followed him, and Tarquin, strolling up and down in silence, began knocking off poppy-heads with his stick. The messenger at last wearied of putting his question and waiting for the reply, so he returned to Gabii supposing his mission to have failed. He told Sextus what he had said and what he had seen his father do: the king, he declared, whether from anger, or hatred, or natural arrogance, had not uttered a single word. Sextus realized that though his father had not spoken, he had, by his action, indirectly expressed his meaning clearly enough; so he proceeded at once to act upon his murderous instructions.
— Livy, The Early History of Rome:
The HBS logo shone high above, a surrogate sun for the overcast day.
— Jack Heath, Money Run
Most people, including yourself, apparently, think The Moldau is about a river. It is not. It is a metaphor. It is about the progress of life, from its fragile beginnings through its joys and turbulence and on to its end, its magnificent end.
— Gerald Elias, Death and Transfiguration
When birds look into houses, what impossible worlds they see.
— Don DeLillo, The Body Artist
Give up the idea that by ruling over others you can do any good to them. But you can do just as much as you can in the case of the plant: you can supply the growing seed with the materials for the making up of its body, bringing to it the earth, the water, the air, that it wants. It will take all that it wants by its own nature, it will assimilate and grow by its own nature.
— Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda: v. 3
His smile was so wide he’d have had to break it into sections to fit it through a doorway
— Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee
And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather are metaphors.
— Gustave Flaubert
Together a brick and a blanket create the perfect metaphor for life. Will you be a brick and make something of your life, or be a blanket and sleep your life away?
— Amy Sommers, A bit of rubbish about a Brick and a Blanket
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
— Winston S. Churchill
Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.
— Peter F. Drucker
It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.
— Louis Sachar
We are made to persist.that's how we find out who we are.
— Tobias Wolff
Everything passes, but nothing entirely goes away.
— Jenny Diski
If you wish to be out front, then act as if you were behind.
— Lao Tzu
The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is, that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
— Henry Ward Beecher
Persistence is the key to solving most mysteries.
— Christopher Pike, Black Blood
You meet dozens of people who tell you you can't do it. Surround yourself with the people who believe you will do it. Seek out and spend time with those rare people who tell you, no BS, why you haven't done it yet, what it takes to do it, and how they could help you do it. Note how this advice works whether 'it' is robbing a bank, opening a gallery, or writing a bestseller. "It" is up to you. But you can't do it alone.
— Heather Grace Stewart, Three Spaces
As long as there’s breath in You - PERSIST!
— Bernard Kelvin Clive, 52 Seconds: Simplified Motivation - Words to Inspire
Slight persistent effort can move you successfully forward in anything you do.
— Kelli Wilson, The Clutter Breakthrough: Your Five-Step Solution to Freedom from Clutter Forever
I took off my sweatshirt and dropped it on the grass and set off around the track. As soon as I started running, the world changed. The bodies spread out across the green of the football field were parts of a scene remembered, not one real at this moment. The secret of effort is to keep on, I told myself. Not for the world would I have stopped then, and yet nothing- not even if I had been turned handsome as a reward for finishing- could have made up for the curious pain of the effort.
— Harold Brodkey
The HillI have come this far on my own legs,missing the bus, missing taxis,climbing always. One foot in front of the other,that is the way I do it.It does not bother me, the way the hill goes on.Grass beside the road, a tree rattlingits black leaves. So what?The longer I walk, the farther I am from everything.One foot in front of the other. The hours pass.One foot in front of the other. The years pass.The colors of arrival fade.That is the way I do it.
— Mark Strand
He taught me how small, day-by-day decisions add up to the great consequences and that every thoughtful and educated decision I made about my life would eventually lead me to a clear and more satisfying understanding of my calling.
— Eric Motley
I promise permanence. I promise persistence. I promise that falling in love was just the beginning for us.
— Liz  Newman
Look forward to failure. Fail quickly. If it does not start with Failure it is probably not meant to be
— David Sikhosana, Time Value of Money: Timing Income
You need to be able to think Independently.
— David Sikhosana, Time Value of Money: Timing Income
Push until you can push no more, and then, push some more.
— Kevin Abdulrahman, The Book on What Ever You're Into: These Are the 52 Timeless Winning Truths You Need to Know to Have a Chance at Winning
Your persistence is your measure of faith in yourself.
— Unknown
Words are drops of blood, from my heart.
— Jean Kenyon MacKenzie
One who finishes, lasts.
— Jeffrey Fry
Without delayed gratification,there is no persistence.
— Sunday Adelaja
Hold on to God, hold on to your visions and continue to develop them
— Sunday Adelaja
Nothing in life is stronger than perseverance; time only promotes it, failure is afraid of it, negative people hide from it, and disease is affected by it. Even rocks give way to perseverance: because if water perseveres its impacts on the surface of a rock long enough, the rock starts to wither.
— Dr. Jacinta Mpalyenkana, Ph.D, MBA
A certain readiness to perish is not so very rare, but it is seldom that you meet men whose souls, steeled in the impenetrable armour of resolution, are ready to fight a losing battle to the last, the desire of peace waxes stronger as hope declines, till at last it conquers the very desire of life. Which of us here has not observed this, or maybe experienced something of that feeling in his own person - this extreme weariness of emotions, the vanity of effort, the yearning for rest?
— Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
— Michael Jordan
Yes, this man had the persistence of an insect.
— Patrick Modiano, So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood
Be persistent like a mosquito, at the end you will get your bite
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity
Patient is a persistent act.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Love becomes imprudent only when it is impatient to enjoy; but when it is a matter of procuring the return of a happiness to which a baleful combination of circumstances has raised impediments, love sees and foresees all that the most subtle perspicacity can discover.
— Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Volumes III & IV
The source of all things, the luminescence, has more forms than heaven's stars, sure. And one good thought is all it takes to make it shine. But a single mistake can burn down a forest in your heart, hiding all the stars, in all the skies,. And while a mistake's till burning, ruined love or lsot faith can make you think you're done, and you can't go on. But it's not true. It's never true. No matter what you do, no matter where you're lost, the luminescence never leaves you. Any good thing that dies inside ca rise again, if you want it hard enough. The heart doesnt know how to quit, because it doesn't know how to lie. You lift your eyes from the page, fall into the smile of a perfect stranger, and the searching starts all over again. It's not what it was. It's always different. It's always something else. But the new forest that grows back in a scarred heart is sometimes wilder and stronger than it was before the fire. And if you stay in there, in that shine within yourself, that new place of light, forgiving everything and never giving up, sooner or later you'll always find yourself right back there where love and beauty made the world: at the beginning. The beginning. The beginning.
— ― Gregory David Roberts, The Mountain Shadow
The source of all things, the luminescence, has more forms than heaven's stars, sure. And one good thought is all it takes to make it shine. But a single mistake can burn down a forest in your heart, hiding all the stars, in all the skies. And while a mistake's till burning, ruined love or lost faith can make you think you're done, and you can't go on. But it's not true. It's never true. No matter what you do, no matter where you're lost, the luminescence never leaves you. Any good thing that dies inside can rise again, if you want it hard enough. The heart doesn't know how to quit, because it doesn't know how to lie. You lift your eyes from the page, fall into the smile of a perfect stranger, and the searching starts all over again. It's not what it was. It's always different. It's always something else. But the new forest that grows back in a scarred heart is sometimes wilder and stronger than it was before the fire. And if you stay in there, in that shine within yourself, that new place of light, forgiving everything and never giving up, sooner or later you'll always find yourself right back there where love and beauty made the world: at the beginning. The beginning. The beginning.
— Gregory David Roberts
The author describes the adoption process in which he and his wife participated as "a paperwork pregnancy".
— David Platt, Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live.
Inspiration does not linger in one place over time, therefore human effort shouldn't be scaled on earlier attempt.
— Unarine Ramaru
If you never persisted, you will never succeed.
— Vann Chow
Persistence is a writer's best friend disguised as a bully.
— A.M. McKnight, Goslyn County
Persistence Pays...Period.
— Sotero M Lopez II
Persistence is what keeps you hanging on when hanging on gets tough.
— Debasish Mridha
Persistence to fight for what you want is what separates those who win and those who don't.
— Tony Curl
The people you need to make your goals and visions happen aren’t just going to call you or walk up to you and hand you an opportunity. You have to go to them. And you must have a plan for how you will approach them.
— La La Anthony
Persistence is victory. Just . . . keep . . . going. It doesn’t matter if things aren’t going the way you thought they would or if you’re facing a disappointment. The only defeat is in quitting. If you keep going, you’re winning.
— Mara Schiavocampo, Thinspired: How I Lost 90 Pounds -- My Plan for Lasting Weight Loss and Self-Acceptance
My father told me never to take my foot off a ladder to kick at someone who was kicking at me. When I did that, I would no longer be climbing. While they are kicking, my father told me, I should keep stepping. They can kick only one time. If I continued to climb, they would be left behind. In trying to hurt me, to impede my progress, they would get left behind because they allowed themselves to get sidetracked from their agenda.
— Steve Harvey, Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success
There are two ways to do great mathematics. The first is to be smarter than everybody else. The second way is to be stupider than everybody else — but persistent.
— Raoul Bott
We ain't giving up," I said. "We done gone this far.
— Ernest J. Gaines, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
For while it is of no particular importance how many things you start in life, it is of great importance how many you finish!
— Josephine Daskam Bacon
Your voice is strongest when you remain firm, when you are not moved by your circumstance. For we must not permit others to define who we are or what we stand for.
— Lorna Jackie Wilson, Black Butterfly: The Journey - The Victory
I have never seen a heavyweight champion apologize for a knockout
— Jock J. Davis
Persistence is a necessary ingredient for success.
— Debasish Mridha
The art of love is largely the art of persistence.
— Albert Ellis
Persistence is often a detective's greatest ally.
— Lara Adrian, Taken by Midnight
Inspiring qualities make some people to feel a little uneasy.
— Auliq Ice
... if they are persistent enough, even tiny drops of water, over time, can change the rock forever. And it will never change back." - Zoe
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
— Max Beerbohm
You will never know what you can accomplish until you really put in persistent effort and never giving up.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
People stagger, but they pick up a tattered thread and wind it back onto a spool.
— Donia Bijan, Maman's Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen
Your persistent problems are because of your response to common misfortune.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
As the tides of life rise and fall, life is constant, like the waves crashing upon the shore. Persistence is the key in high and low times…
— James A. Murphy, The Waves of Life Quotes and Daily Meditations
She and me? We the same in some fings. We live. The others, those orphan kids, they dead. Because she and me, we want to live and we do anyfing to make that happen. That's the difference between us and the others.
— Melina Marchetta, Finnikin of the Rock
In algorithms, as in life, persistence usually pays off.
— Steven S. Skiena, The Algorithm Design Manual
start something, with a knowledge to end it.
— Krishna Sagar
We have begun a fight that it may be will take many a generation to complete...but you know that men are not put into this world to go the path of ease; they are put into this world to go the path of pain and struggle...We have given our lives to the enterprise, and that is richer and the moral is greater.
— Woodrow Wilson
Never underestimate the hidden power of one very determined person. There is nothing more powerful than determination and persistence.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
It's a funny word, persistence. It means not giving up, but it also means just passing on through time.
— Ahmir Questlove Thompson, Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove
Either you make things happen or you quit.
— Vivian Weissman
Believing in yourself truly means trusting your capability to think, learn, do, and deliver better results. In that case, it doesn’t matter where you’re starting from. As you keep going, you’re developing into a better person.
— SuccessCoach Nilesh, Go for Success: Be a Champion by 6 Effective Steps
For success, don't take the path of least resistance. Take the path of most persistence.
— Michele Jennae
Courage is the first of human qualities, because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.  - Winston Churchill
— Cara Charles, THEIR LAST SECRET: DECLASSIFIED
Inspiration comes when you stick your elbows on the table, your bottom on the chair and you start sweating. Choose a theme, an idea, and squeeze your brain until it hurts. That's called inspiration.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game
In conservation, the motto should always be 'never say die'.
— Gerald Durrell, The Aye-Aye and I
Love, endure, persist... Everything will return to you, innocent fool!
— Raheel Farooq
People don't just live one life. They keep coming back until they get it right.
— C.R. Strahan, Lucid Dreaming
She knew she could answer it. She knew how to put one foot in front of the other even when every step hurt. And she knew there was pain in the journey, but there was also great beauty. She’d seen it standing on rooftops and in green eyes and in the smallest, ugliest rock. She would find the answer.
— Veronica Rossi, Under the Never Sky
To shine and outshine the shining stars, to take your abilities to the greatest height, to sit on top of the world, you must fortify yourself with persistence, the determination and willingness to stay in the same direction over a long period of time whatever the cost might be.
— Ogwo David Emenike, You Are a Star
As you think and act, so your world becomes.
— T. Scott McLeod
I will not be defined by the marks left on me by the world, but by the mark I leave on the world (referring to the facial scars he still carries from his successful 1991 battle against cancer, which caused him to be turned down for a customer service job because he was "too ugly").
— James Houston Turner
Most of Csongor's time in T'Rain had been spent blundering about in a state of hapless newbie confusion. Only his long experience as a system administrator, struggling with Byzantine software installations, had prevented hum from plummeting into despair and simply giving up. Not that any of the sysadmin's knowledge and skills were applicable here. The psychological stance was the thing: the implicit faith, a little naive and a little cocky, that by banging his head against the problem for long enough he'd be able to break through in the end.
— Neal Stephenson, Reamde
Temporary setbacks are overshadowed by persistence.
— Quentin L. Cook
Start with the end in mind. 
— Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
What's measured improves
— Peter F. Drucker
Employers are like horses — they require management.
— P.G. Wodehouse, Carry on, Jeeves
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
— Peter F. Drucker
In the minds of great managers, consistent poor performance is not primarily a matter of weakness, stupidity, disobedience, or disrespect. It is a matter of miscasting.
— Marcus Buckingham
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet
— Henry Mintzberg
His management philosophy, tempered in his rain-dancing days, was always to give the project to whoever had the most to gain from success--or the most to lose from failure.
— Michael Crichton, Congo
Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else - cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments - as long as the paperwork's filled out properly. And in on time.
— Connie Willis, Bellwether
Little by little the agents have taken over the world. They don't do anything, they don't make anything, they just stand and take their cut.
— Mœbius
Remember the Golden Rule? "Treat people as you would like to be treated." The best managers break the Golden Rule every day. They would say don't treat people as you would like to be treated. This presupposes that everyone breathes the same psychological oxygen as you. For example, if you are competitive, everyone must be similarly competitive. If you like to be praised in public, everyone else must, too. Everyone must share your hatred of micromanagement.
— Marcus Buckingham
When you manage people, you must first convince them they need managing. So you create the problems and then let the people cry for solutions.
— Barbara Marciniak, Family of Light: Pleiadian Tales and Lessons in Living
...not doing what we love in the name of greed is very poor management of our lives.
— Warren Buffett
It’s not the people you fire who make your life miserable. It’s the people you don’t.
— Dick Grote, Discipline Without Punishment: The Proven Strategy That Turns Problem Employees Into Superior Performers
The role of the CEO is to enable people to excel, help them discover their own wisdom, engage themselves entirely in their work, and accept responsibility for making change. (164)
— Vineet Nayar, Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down
Management is proving beyond a shadow of a doubt they don't have enough to do," she murmured back. "So they've invented a new acronym.
— Connie Willis, Bellwether
A baseball manager recognizes a nonphysical talent, hustle, as an essential gift of great players and great teams. It is the characteristic of running faster than necessary, moving sooner than necessary, trying harder than necessary. It is essential for great programming teams, too.
— Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
...every time you make a rule you take away a choice and choice, with all of its illuminating repercussions, is the fuel for learning.
— Marcus Buckingham, First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently
Anything plus management amounts to success
— G.S. Alag
Shenanigans is a financial model on the catwalk.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
When the management iceberg is shaped like a huge phallus, you know that there are a lot of tossers that the top penguin has had to climb over to reach the tip and that there is no shortage of the same caliber of penguin in the balls and shaft of the corporation, just waiting for their chance to get a spurt to the top. Should I sugar coat this a little more? or tell it like it is?
— Daniel Prokop, Leaving Neverland: Why Little Boys Shouldn't Run Big Corporations
That's why I bake. To fill fairies with goodness."And it was true, she realized. She didn't run the kitchen just to boss other fairies around. She didn't give orders just to make herself feel important. Well, at least she wouldn't anymore. No. The day before, she hadn't missed that part of her job at all. She had missed the baking. She had missed creating something for others to enjoy.And, oh, how she wanted to go back to work!
— Gail Herman, Dulcie's Taste of Magic
Complacency often afflicts precisely those who have been the most successful.
— Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive
Business success contains the seeds of its destruction.
— Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive
The sad news is, nobody owes you a career. Your career is literally your buisness.
— Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive
Don't differentiate without a difference.
— Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive
To unleash your full potential recognise and acknowledge the greatness in others.
— Moonish Sood
To unleash your potential acknowledge the greatness in others
— Moonish Sood
The ability to seize initiative is the most essential quality of any truly successful manager.
— Sumantra Ghoshal, A Bias for Action: How Effective Managers Harness Their Willpower, Achieve Results, and Stop Wasting Time
The truly effective managers we've observed are purposeful, trust in their own judgement, and adopt long-term, big-picture views to fulfill personal goals that tally with those of the organization as a whole. They break out of their perceived boxes, take control of their jobs, ...
— Sumantra Ghoshal, A Bias for Action: How Effective Managers Harness Their Willpower, Achieve Results, and Stop Wasting Time
Effective managers proactively control their tasks and the expectations of their major stakeholders, which allows them to meet strategic goals rather than fight fires.
— Sumantra Ghoshal
The customer always comes first.
— Rajen Jani, Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories
Quality products and personalized attention secures retail customers.
— Rajen Jani, Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories
Going out of the way for a customer increases sales.
— Rajen Jani, Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories
Customer complaints need to be addressed effectively.
— Rajen Jani, Once Upon A Time: 100 Management Stories
Your savings is your earning actually
— Dr Rafiq Dar
Do not tend to hire only people who see what you see. Such a tendency may lead to a decline in operating profit, and even bankruptcy.
— Eraldo Banovac
Good management is the lifeblood of the healthy corporate body. Getting rid of it to save cost is like losing weight by giving blood.
— Tom DeMarco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
Any vigorous competition will entail at least two elements: offense and defense. Offense is the effort you put into scoring against your opponents, and defense is the effort you apply to stop them from scoring against you. Those who suggest that "a little healthy competition can't hurt" are thinking only of the offense part....The offense component of internal competition is problematic, but the defense component is always injurious. When peer managers play defense against each other (try to stop each other from scoring), they are engaging in anticooperation.
— Tom DeMarco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
If the essential task of middle managers is reinvention, when is that task to be carried out? The answer is, during time that is not used up directing day-to-day business. The fact that managers have time on their hands (i.e., their operations tasks take up less than eight hours per day) gives them time for reinvention. The extra time is not waste, but slack. Without it they could function in only their operational roles. Reinvention would be impossible because the people who could make it happen are just too busy to take the time.Even companies that didn't fire their change centers have hurt themselves by encouraging their middle managers to stay extremely busy. In order to enable change, companies have to learn that keeping managers busy is a blunder. If you have busy managers working under you, they are an indictment of your vision and your capacity to transform that vision into reality. Cut them some slack.
— Tom DeMarco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
There is no such thing as "healthy" competition within a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive. The nature of our work is that it cannot be done by any single person in isolation. Knowledge work is by definition collaborative.
— Tom DeMarco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
This fits in with what I saw in staff in astronomical facilities and was reporting to the management team: 10-14% Oxygen: Emotional upset, abnormal fatigue, disturbed respiration.
— Steven Magee
A measured response trumps a triggered reaction every time. Breathe first.
— Rev. Alexander, Uncluttered Living: 19 Ways To Infuse Your Time With Peace Of Mind
A farmer's work is more like that of a horse trainer than a mechanic, more like that of a healer than a computer repairperson. It is not really accurate to say that farmers grow food or raise animals. Farmers alter environmental conditions in such a way as to maximize a plant's or an animal's innate ability to do its own growing -- in the same way that the best horse trainers seek to draw out abilities already within their horses or in the way the best healers know when to stand back and let their patients' bodies do the work. There is mystery in farming.
— Ben Hartman, The Lean Farm: How to Minimize Waste, Increase Efficiency, and Maximize Value and Profits with Less Work
If you do not manage things, be prepared to face the consequences.
— Eraldo Banovac
The measures themselves are easily distorted to suit reporting purposes.
— John Seddon
Good management has considerable impact on engagement levels of the employees and drives them towards excellent performances.
— Abhishek Ratna, No Parking. No Halt. Success Non Stop!
A wise manager knows that it is sometimes more important to listen than to talk.
— Eraldo Banovac
Everything God has given to us is “for rent.” We can only manage what we have but the right of ownership belongs to God.
— Sunday Adelaja
A prudent ruler is distinguished by his ability to manage.
— Sunday Adelaja
In terms of organisational models and human relationship models, humankind has not evolved much over the last millennia.
— Miguel Reynolds Brandao, The Sustainable Organisation - a paradigm for a fairer society: Think about sustainability in an age of technological progress and rising inequality
One conclusion is becoming more and more evident: The primary focus of any manager should be to energize people, to make sure that they actually want to do all that stuff. And doing all that stuff requires motivation.
— Jurgen Appelo, Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders
To build up people teach them to be administrators and managers.
— sundayadelaja
Authenticity requires us to slow down. Fast times require us to slow down. To be effective, we need to slow down our pace of thought and action and focus on managing our attention. To be authentic leaders we need to act from intention and choice rather than from habit and impulse.
— Henna Inam, Wired for Authenticity: Seven Practices to Inspire, Adapt, & Lead
Technical staff were fairly good at estimation but were poor at defending their estimates
— Philip Metzger
Lorne knows that the most exhausting people occasionally turn out the best stuff.
— Tina Fey
Interesting office management skills, kind of a 'violence is not the answer so I'm going to beat the shit out of you philosophy.
— Craig Johnson, The Cold Dish
An effective leader is also an effective listener.
— Artika Tyner
The leader is always learning new things and gaining new insights.
— Artika Tyner
Digital organization is essentially a dynamic, people-centered ecosystem.
— Pearl Zhu, Digital Master
inspect what you expect
— Josh Kent