Quotes by Professors - Page 65

We hold all people to unspoken rules about who and how they should be, how they should think, and what the should say. We say we hate stereotypes but take issue when people deviate from those stereotypes.
Roxane Gay
We all have the capacity to do hurtful things, but we differ from one another in terms of scale-how much we can hurt others, how far we will go to make a statement about our beliefs, how remorseful we might feel in the aftermath of committing a terrible act.
Roxane Gay
He was trying to fit this Herakles onto the one he knew.
Anne Carson
People who have so much of their personality invested in the Internet can’t really survive as whole individuals without it.
Mark A. Rayner
Home isn't a place. Home is the people who love you most, the people who will always love you, forever and ever, no matter what.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
But he doesn't love her. I invented that. It is a plot if you imagine people in love--the lazy looping criss crosses of love, blows, stares, tears. No. It doesn't happen. No love. People meet, touch, stare into one another's faces, shake their heads clear, move on, forget. It doesn't happen.
Joyce Carol Oates
Animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.
Gregory Maguire
Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe.
Toni Morrison
See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be
Joyce Carol Oates
Just as we can’t fully explain what is beautiful, so we can’t fully explain why we are friends with someone in a way that will make the grounds of our attraction obvious to another — and even to ourselves. Our efforts always leave something out. And it is what is always left out that we try to gesture toward when we say that it is not something ABOUT our friends that we love but our friends THEMSELVES. But the self that we love is always just one one step behind whatever we can actually articulate. And so we are faced with a choice between saying something that seems informative but is never enough of an explanation ('loyal, practical, unworldly and so on') and saying something else that seems like an explanation but is completely uninformative ('the individual, in the uniqueness and integrity of his or her individuality').
Alexander Nehamas
I did have a friend,' I said.'And your friend trespassed upon you,' the Wally replied.
Alexandra Kleeman
Love your friends' kids even if you don't want or like children. Just do it.
Roxane Gay
The principle that first you try to solve your problems on your own and only turn to others as a last resort applies to friends. We have an obligation to show our friends that we are turning to them for a favor not because it happens to be convenient for us to do so but because of a compelling reason.
P.M. Forni
Ad we interviewing each other?Something like that.What position am I applying for?Best friend.I thought I already had the job.Don't be so sure, you arrogant son of a bitch.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Lucy settled into August's kitchen as if they were a family.
Susan Richards Shreve
We were two throats and one eye and we had no price.
Toni Morrison
It started to rain and we just sat. Sat and watched the rain in silence.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Whatever it means to be a friend, taking a black eye for someone has to be in it.
Gary D. Schmidt
How about "diamonds are a girl's best friends"? Nope. It should be switched around and pointed out, instead, that your best friends are diamonds.
Gina Barreca
So Sonia was not my only or even my first best friend. She was the last. It wasn t that I hadn t made friends since just that I thought myself past the age of that particular kind of friendship. Adult friendship doesn t grant you an exclusive isn t meant to be ranked above romance and family. I couldn t imagine ever living that moment again when you say with a shy and hopeful pride You re my best friend. The other person says it back and there you have chosen each other out of everyone else in the world.
Leah Stewart
Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me.Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.
Anne Carson
She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.
Toni Morrison
You can go through life and make new friends every year - every month practically - but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.
Alexander McCall Smith
I think you love him more than you can bear.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
How they madeout of shamelessness somethingbeautiful, for as long as they could.
Carl Phillips
Being blinded in love and friendship is a common mistake.
Eraldo Banovac
A person who is too proud in love will suffer from the devastating bitterness in the end.
Eraldo Banovac
She loved our dad in the inexplicable way that young women sometimes idolize men who greet their affection with casual indifference.
Daiva Markelis
..what moved me was that I had found something I didn't think could exist. And that thing - the thing that I found - was very simple. Most people know all about it and have never really doubted it because their lives have been such as to give them a glimpse of the thing that they were not sure about, which is love, of course: the sheer fact of feeling of love for another, of finding the one person - the only person, it seems - who makes the world make sense. It's like discovering the map that you've been looking for all your life and have never been able to find - the map that makes sense of the journey.
Alexander McCall Smith
This feat I also had no idea how to accomplish, but ignorance had never stopped me from taking action before.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
I treat my writing life like a fabulous, enchanting lover, because that is what it is to me. Something that is terribly time consuming, delicious and time-stopping. I have missed important meetings for love, and I will continue to put my writing life in the same position. My writing life is the lover at the center, not the neglected cranky demanding millstone, my ball and chain.When you are love, truly and passionately, you don't have to write down in your daily schedule "Spend quality time with Lover today. You can't not.
Heather Sellers
When our commitment is wavering, the best way to stay on track is to consider the progress we've already made. As we recognize what we've invested and attained, it seems like a waste to give up, and our confidence and commitment surge.
Adam M. Grant
Without a sense of urgency , people ... won't make needed sacrafices. Instead they cling to the status quo and resist.' - Quoting John Kotter
Adam M. Grant
... superb presentations - start by establishing "what is: here's the status quo." Then, they "compare that to what could be," making "that gap as big as possible" - Quoting Nancy Duarte
Adam M. Grant
By looking on the bright side, we'll activate enthusiasm and turn on the go system.
Adam Grant
Instead of courage' management guru Tom Peters recommends fostering 'a level of fury with the status quo such that one cannot not act.
Adam M. Grant
Motivating employees to work at their full potential is the main premise of successful management.
Eraldo Banovac
Managers can use power, money or certain circumstances to achieve short-term results. However, motivation is crucial for achieving long-term results.
Eraldo Banovac
You asked about important factors in management. I think the answer is quite simple – the most important factor is motivation.
Eraldo Banovac
When we're determined to reach an objective, it's the gap between where we are and where we aspire to be that lights a fire under us.
Adam M. Grant
The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is the only thing that matters.
Dana Spiotta
[I]t is important not to abandon the practice [of yoga] because we believe it is driven by the wrong motivation. The practice of yoga itself transforms. Yoga has a magical quality. . . . (20)
Ravi Ravindra
Although each of her nurses was markedly different from the others in looks, dress, manner of speech, food and medical preferences, their similarities were glaring. There was no excess in their gardens because they shared everything. There was no trash or garbage in their homes because they had a use for everything. They took responsibility for their lives and for whatever, whoever else needed them. The absence of common sense irritated but did not surprise them. Laziness was more than intolerable to them; it was inhuman. Whether you were in the field, the house, your own backyard, you had to be busy. Sleep was not for dreaming; it was for gathering strength for the coming day. Conversation was accompanied by tasks; ironing, peeling, shucking, sorting, sewing, mending, washing, or nursing. You couldn't learn age, but adulthood was there for all. Mourning was helpful but God was better and they did not want to meet their Maker and have to explain a wasteful life. They knew He would ask each of them one question: "What have you done?
Toni Morrison
I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.
Norman Maclean
I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language not to revel ourselves but to hide. I was as sure then as I am now that by looking at contemporary Iranian fiction I could gain access to a real understanding of political and social events. (p289)
Azar Nafisi
Our personal fears and emotions are at times stronger than public danger. By keeping them secret, we allow them to remain malignant. You need to be able to articulate something if you want it to go away, and to do that, you must acknowledge that it exists.
Azar Nafisi
If we fear loss enough, in the end the things we possess will come to possess us.
Rachel Naomi Remen
Then, the massive hands lifted the new people up to a pair of giant indescribable lips and whispered, in a fundamentally untranslatable Creator-language, something that meant, approximately: THIS TIME, BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER. REMEMBER: EACH OF YOU WANTS TO BE HAPPY. AND I WANT YOU TO. EACH OF YOU WANTS TO LIVE FREE FROM FEAR. AND I WANT YOU TO. EACH OF YOU ARE SECRETLY AFRAID YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH. BUT YOU ARE, TRUST ME, YOU ARE.
George Saunders
Dominion won by fear and secured by fear was still sweeter than any that could be got another way.
Toni Morrison
The prospect of a certain loss brings the go system online.
Adam M. Grant
The point of Political Correctness is not and has never been merely about any of the items that it imposes, but about the imposition itself. (The Rise of Political Correctness)
Angelo Codevilla
Tacit collaboration by millions whobite their lip is even more essential than lip service by thousands of favor seekers. Hence, to stimulate at least passive cooperation, the party strives to give the impression that “everybody” is already on its side. (The Rise of Political Correctness)
Angelo Codevilla
From children to men we cage ourselves in patterns to avoid facing new problems and possible failure after a while men become bored because there are no new problems. Such is life under the fear of failure.
Luke Rhinehart
Being a parent is joyful, but it's also haunted by the specter of loss.
Richard Beck
Often, the human animal dresses terror in rage, and expresses both in a way unlike either.
Julius Lester
Don't be scared," Willa Mae said.I looked at her. "Aren't you scared?"Willa Mae looked at me and said, "Shoot. Only thing I'm afraid of is that I'm going to do something I'll regret.""Being scared is just one more thing to turn into what you want it to be," Willa Mae said. "The thing with fear is, it's like anger. You've got to change it into something else. Make it your weapon. Some can just turn it into smarts. The best of 'em can turn fear and anger into love." She looked out toward our neighborhood. "I'm not there yet.
Margaret McMullan
She knew Paul D was adding something to her life—something she wanted to count on but was scared to... His waiting eyes and awful human power. The mind of him that knew her own. Her story was bearable because it was his as well—to tell, to refine and tell again. The things neither knew about the other—the things neither had word-shapes for—well, it would come in time.
Toni Morrison
Mental illness" is among the most stigmatized of categories.' People are ashamed of being mentally ill. They fear disclosing their condition to their friends and confidants-and certainly to their employers.
Elyn R. Saks
...we, and I mean humans, are meaning makers. We do not discover the meanings of mysterious things, we invent them. We make meanings because meaninglessness terrifies us above all things. More than snakes, even. More than falling, or the dark. We trick ourselves into seeing meanings in things, when in fact all we are doing is grafting our meanings onto the universe to comfort ourselves. We gild the chaos of the universe with our symbols. To admit that something is meaningless is just like falling backward into darkness." (p184)
Benjamin Hale
Anger prepares us to fight and fear prepares us to flee.
Chip Heath