Quotes About Commitment

because to work means to sacrifice the hypothetical delights of the present for the potential improvement of what lies ahead.

Do what is meaningful, not what is expedient.

Dedica tus esfuerzos a hacer cosas con significado, no aquello que más te convenga.

Así que los sacrificios son necesarios para mejorar el futuro, y si son grandes, entonces valen más.

I would like to thank Sally Harding, my agent, and the fine people she works with at CookeMcDermid. Without Sally, this book would have never been written.

To move forward with resolve, it is necessary to be organized—to be directed toward something singular and identifiable.

Si no hubieras decidido que lo que estás haciendo ahora es mejor que las alternativas, no lo estarías haciendo.

Life is indistinguishable from effortful maintenance. No one finds a match so perfect that the need for continued attention and work vanishes (and, besides, if you found the perfect person, he or she would run away from ever-so-imperfect you in justifiable horror). In truth, what you need—what you deserve, after all—is someone exactly as imperfect as you.

Only careful aim and wakeful striving and commitment can eliminate the oft-incremental calamity of willful blindness, stem the entropic tide, and keep catastrophe—familial and social alike—at bay.

Face the demands of life voluntarily.

What might serve as a more sophisticated alternative to happiness? Imagine it is living in accordance with the sense of responsibility, because that sets things right in the future.

Faith is not the childish belief in magic. That is ignorance or even willful blindness. It is instead the realization that the tragic irrationalities of life must be counterbalanced by an equally irrational commitment to the essential goodness of Being. It is simultaneously the will to dare set your sights at the unachievable, and to sacrifice everything, including (and most importantly) your life.

Have some humility. Clean up your bedroom. Take care of your family. Follow your conscience. Straighten up your life. Find something productive and interesting to do and commit to it. When you can do all that, find a bigger problem and try to solve that if you dare. If that works, too, move on to even more ambitious projects. And, as the necessary beginning to that process . . . abandon ideology.

And maybe these responses are tests, too—tests deeply associated with the lack of courage to trust: "If you really loved me, you would brave the terrible landscape that I have arrayed around myself to discover the real me." And perhaps there is even something to such claims, implicit though they may be. A certain testing of commitment might have its utility.

If you make what you want clear and commit yourself to its pursuit, you may fail. But if you do not make what you want clear, then you will certainly fail.

He decided to be a good person, and then did the impossible things required to live that way.

I will trust you—I will extend my hand to you—despite the risk of betrayal, because it is possible, through trust, to bring out the best in you, and perhaps in me. So, I will accept substantial risk to open the door to cooperation and negotiation.

Adultery is still in.

Faith is not the childish belief in magic. That is ignorance or even willful blindness. It is instead the realization that the tragic irrationalities of life must be counterbalanced by an equally irrational commitment to the essential goodness of Being.

the notion that it was good, well even if you don't believe that because maybe it's not as good as it could be. I would say it's incumbent on you as someone who participates in the process of furthering creation to act as if it could be good at least and to further that with all of your efforts. Partly because what the hell else do you have to do that could possible be better than that, that could possible justify your existence more than that?

A responsible person decides to make a problem his or her problem, and then works diligently—even ambitiously—for its solution,

You must decide how much of your time to spend on this, and how much on that. You must decide what to let go, and what to pursue.

You don't choose who you fall in love with, do you? And once you do fall in love—that obsessive sort of love, that all-consuming love, where two people can't stand to be apart from each other for even a moment—how are you supposed to let a love like that pass you by?

Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions.