Quotes About Commitment

His words of thanks contain four of the top six releasers for producing action patterns in someone else: reciprocity, scarcity, validation, and appeal to commitment. He hides the evidence of his begging under another trick gleaned from Chapter 12: If you want a person to help you, convince them that they've already helped you beyond saying. People will work hard to protect their legacy.

He saw a cross on a wall with another cross behind it, a shadow cross, the shadow of what God left behind when God was gone, the continued need for joy and beauty, a commitment to hope where there appeared to be none, and to grace in spite of everything.

What decided him (almost invariably) was a college project in which he had occasion to do some independent research—to find out things for himself. Once he discovered the pleasures of this kind of work, he never turned back. He is completely satisfied with his chosen vocation. . . . He works hard and devotedly in his laboratory, often seven days a week.

It took Drake more than a year to find someone to drill his well. One salt-well driller after another refused him or failed to appear when promised. His standards were high.

No matter what you do with the rest of your life, nothing will be as important to the future of the World as your work on this Project right now.

Rose Bethe, who was then twenty-four, understood instantly. "My wife knew vaguely what we were talking about," says Bethe, "and on a walk in the mountains in Yosemite National Park she asked me to consider carefully whether I really wanted to continue to work on this.

I work to support my habit of writing.

Failure and suffering are the great equalizers and levelers among humans. Success is just the opposite. Communities and commitment can form around suffering much more than around how wonderful or superior we are.

So Jesus pulls no punches, saying you must "hate" your home base in some way and make choices beyond it.

Just do it better yourself and don't waste any time criticizing others or the past! This, in fact, purifies your own commitment and motivation.

I finally had to be either Roman or catholic, and I continue to choose the catholic end of that spectrum.

spirituality" which means that things are only found to be true in the doing of them.

In Mary, humanity has said our eternal yes to God. A yes that cannot be undone. A corporate yes that overrides our many noes.

My favorite teacher in college advised me not to write a book until it was impossible not to.

Perhaps he was frightened by the sheer prospect of matrimony, of marrying a girl he would one day want to murder.

There are no compelling reasons for matrimony," Jacob admits. "Getting married is something you do despite compelling reasons.

If she wanted to go back to Boston so damn bad, she should just do it. He said this knowing full well she wouldn't, for it was the particular curse of the Whiting men that their wives remained loyal to them out of spite. By

Really? When? Had all his material become threadbare? After thirty years of marriage, were you supposed to come up with new stuff all the time?

Was this what we wanted from our oldest friends? Reassurance that the world we remember so fondly still exists? That it hasn't been replaced by a reality we're less fully committed to?

Sully always maintained that if you had ten guys working on a rock pile, Rub would be the last you'd fire for laziness. Only when you'd fired all the others would you realize that Rub had not yet addressed his first rock.

Because—and don't let anybody tell you different—novel writing is mostly triage (this now, that later) and obstinacy.

If you were going to be reckless in this life, you needed total commitment to the principle.

The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake.

A bed is where a sense of shared purpose first takes root.