Betterment Quotes (page 17)
If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides of a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget that their is such a thing as war. If the government if inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it.
Ray Bradbury
A great many young men try to justify themselves and check inward protests by the perpetual self-suggestion that it is better to keep on, for the present, in questionable occupations, because the great financial reward will put them in position to do better later. This is a sort of sedative to the conscience to keep it quiet until they can afford to listen to it.
Orison Swett Marden
Yes,' said Catherine, stroking his long soft hair, 'if I could only get papa's consent, I'd spend half my time with you - Pretty Linton! I wish you were my brother.'
'And then you would like me as well as your father?' observed he more cheerfully. 'But papa says you would love me better than him, and all the world, if you were my wife-so I'd rather you were that!'
'No! I should never love anybody better than papa,' she returned gravely. 'And people hate their wives, sometimes; but not their...
Emily Bronte
In a sense, the better you adapt to school the less your chances are of later adapting to the actual world. So I figure, the worse you adapt to school, the better you will be able to handle reality when you finally manage to get loose at last from school, if that ever happens. But I guess I have what in the military they call a 'poor attitude,' which means 'shape up or ship out.' I always elected to ship out.
Philip K. Dick
How should a Jew feel? There we went through the seven gates of hell for matzos. Here I stand in matzos over my head. So how should a Jew feel? You are an angel of God, and the Rebbe, he should live and be well, the Rebbe made miracles and wonders for me. At night, I tell myself it is a dream and I am afraid to wake up. If it is a dream, better I should not wake up, better I should die in my sleep.
Chaim Potok
America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumberable editions of The Lamplighter (by Maria Susanna Cummins), and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
We must eschew anything trivial. We must embrace all that is frivolous.... Trivial things take up all your time and dull your senses, whereas frivolity is meaningful, profound, worth living and dying for.... If we devote our lives to frivolity, the world will be a far, far better place. Humanity will be better able to fulfill its primary goal, that of having a good time.
Cynthia Heimel
But that doesn't mean to say, of course, there aren't occasions now and then - extremely desolate occasions - when you think to yourself: 'What a terrible mistake I've made with my life.' And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life you might have had. For instance, I get to thinking about a life I may have had with you, Mr. Stevens. And I suppose that's when I get angry about some trivial little thing and leave. But each time I do, I realize before long - my rightful place...
Kazuo Ishiguro