Quotes About Balance

But now I think that there's no reason that Mrs. Dotta's job is more important than my mother's job. Mamaji wouldn't have a job without Mrs. Dotta's factory, but Mrs. Dotta wouldn't have a factory without Mamaji's work, right?

That's the walkaway dilemma. If you take without giving, you're a mooch. If you keep track of everyone else's taking and giving, you're a creep scorekeeper. It's our version of Christian guilt—it's impious to feel good about your piety. You have to want to be good, but not feel good about how good you are. The worst thing is to be worrying about what someone else is doing, because that has nothing to do with whether you're doing right.

But beautiful was not the opposite of terrible. The two could easily coexist.

He was, indeed, a governour, who had most exactly studied that book which, pretending to teach politicks, did only contain three leaves, and but one word in each of those leaves, which word was, MODERATION.

You gotta laugh because if you didn't you'd cry

God doesn't want us to be happy when it causes us to do something wrong or unwise

I was valuing my survival more than sharing my faith.

love God and do as you please.

You see how good and evil are twisted together? Like a golden dragon bracelet snaking brightly about a person's arm.

It is always a mistake to underestimate the little people of the world, for it is often they who tip the balance.

Is the universe a Good Egg or a Bad Egg?

Surely, just because SOME Magic is bad, it doesn't mean that ALL Magic is bad?

And this was the surprising thing about life on Berk. It was a bit like the sea itself. One minute it was all storms, and shipwrecks, and desperate escapes from deadly dragons, the next is was calm, and peacefully restful, as if these things had never happened.

You think civilization is some horrible, polluting human invention that separates us from the state of nature. But civilization doesn't separate us from nature. Civilization protects us from nature.

The margin between staying and leaving was so thin; really, it could have gone either way.

We're so lucky, I said. Don't you think? Most people don't have that. I know, everywhere other than New York, if you have a good job and a spouse and kids and a house and a car, those are the markers of maturity and stability and completeness. And you eat your dinner at seven P.M. and go to bed at ten, and go for vigorous jogs on the weekend. If you're into that, great. But there are lots of other ways to put a life together.

working out is such an important way of maintaining an even keel with regard to sobriety

Blessed are the ones who have become spiritually domesticated; the ones who have tamed the wild animal energy within them, the passions and compulsions of our lower nature.

Evil would be done, that was the nature of the world; that was bearable if good could also be done.

She was too often too close to off balance, she knew that.

I enjoy almost everything I do, perhaps because when I don't enjoy something, I don't do it. I enjoy writing; I enjoy teaching; I enjoy having a family to live among. I am neither a feminist nor an antifeminist, because it seems to me that we are first human beings and after that men and women. Human beings have, so far, proved interesting enough to keep me busy just trying to figure out what might be right and true about them.

Even your joy is like a flame coming off of sadness

And as he loped slowly past her, on his flexible hips, it seemed to her still that he was stronger than she was. Of all the men she had ever seen, this one was the only one who was stronger than she was, in her own kind of strength, her own kind of understanding.

Oh - one would feel things instead of merely looking at them. I should feel the air move against me, and feel the things I touched, instead of having only to look at them. I'm sure life is all wrong because it has become too visual - we can neither hear or feel nor understand, we can only see. I'm sure that is entirely wrong.