Quotes About Impact

A hundred times in life, she declares, the good that one does seems to serve no immediate purpose; yet it maintains in one way and another the tradition of well wishing and well doing, without which all would perish.

Tus cartas caen sobre mí como una lluvia que empapa la tierra y hace crecer de golpe lo que estaba en germen.

Le sillon du laboureur ne vaut-il pas celui de l'oisif qui a pourtant un nom, un nom qui restera si, par une singularité ou une absurdité quelconque, il fait un peu de bruit dans le monde ?…

Some blows fall too heavy upon those too fragile.

Why sad? Don't be sad. If sad, will make everyone sad.

Russian short story master Isaac Babel put it, "no iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.

A linked pair of writing dictums: "Don't make things happen for no reason" and "Having made something happen, make it matter.")

One of pleasures of parenting, future reader: parent can positively influence kid, make moment kid will remember for rest of life, moment that alters his/her trajectory, opens up his/her heart + mind.

We might imagine a story as a room-sized black box. The writer's goal is to have the reader go into that box in one state of mind and come out in another. What happens in there has to be thrilling and non-trivial.

You were a joy, he said. Please know that. Know that you were a joy. To us. Every minute, every season, you were a—you did a good job. A good job of being a pleasure to know.

Russian short story master Isaac Babel put it, "no iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place." We're

Is some of our media very stupid? Hoo boy. Does stupid, near-omnipresent media make us more tolerant toward stupidity in general? It would be surprising if it didn't. Is human nature such that, under certain conditions, stupidity can come to dominate, infecting the brighter quadrants, dragging everybody down with it?

causation is what creates the appearance of meaning. "The queen died, and then the king died" (E. M. Forster's famous formulation) describes two unrelated events occurring in sequence. It doesn't mean anything. "The queen died, and the king died of grief " puts those events into relation; we understand that one caused the other.

The shortfall between the imagined and the real, multiplied by the violence of one's intent, equals the evil one will do.

The contractor's performance was described in terms of what he could do, Yashka's in terms of what he caused his listeners to feel.

You are a wave that has crashed upon the shore

Focused word of mouth from the right sources in the right sequence at the right level in the right form at the right pace is going to lead them through a very easy-to-make series of decisions, without wasting time, effort, and money.

Everybody says that I have a lot of power. But what does that power consist of?... Can I influence governments? I am beginning to be able to... (1995)

People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.

When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive.

Every American who served in Iraq helped to make our nation safer, gave twenty-five million people the chance to live in freedom, and changed the direction of the Middle East for generations to come. There are things we got wrong in Iraq, but that cause is eternally right.

George W. Bush

Indeed, the forces unleashed by the rise of London, then New York, proved little less than apocalyptic for Africans and the indigenous of North America.

His heart cannoned like a billiard ball off some green wall of his innards.