Quotes About Responsibility

the only common denominator in all of your failed relationships is you.

wrote the editors at the Boston Globe and told them that Elizabeth Warren was likely fully aware that the fraud on Wall Street caused the collapse of Puerto Rico. Rather than run to the aid of the victims

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not Guilty'." — Theodore Roosevelt This is a famous quote that has been widely reprinted;

Owning something also means owning up to something. It means accepting responsibility, which means, literally, responsibility. When we write about our lives we respond to them. As we respond to them, we are rendered more fluid, more centered, more agile on our own behalf. We are rendered conscious. Each day, each life, is a series of choices, and as we use the lens of writing to view our lives, we see our choices.

if I had enough time" is the unstated sentence "to hear myself think." In other words, we imagine that if we had time we would quiet our more shallow selves and listen to a deeper flow of inspiration. Again, this is a myth that lets us off the hook—if I wait for enough time to listen, I don't have to listen now, I don't have to take responsibility for being available to what is trying to bubble up today.

We want to set aside time for our creative work, but we feel we should do something else instead. As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesn't. It makes us frustrated people.

To kill your dreams because they are irresponsible is to irresponsible to yourself.

We are not, as we had told ourselves, the victim of circumstances. We played an active part in our own undoing.

Be careful to safeguard your newly recovering artist. Often, creativity is blocked by our falling in with other people's plans for us. We want to set aside time for our creative work, but we feel we should do something else instead. As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesn't. It makes us frustrated people.

Answered prayers are scary. They imply responsibility. You asked for it. Now that you've got it, what are you going to do? ... Answered prayers deliver us back to our own hand. This is not comfortable

She loved the dogs as you're supposed to love dogs: consistently

At least pretend we have a standing date, someday, for that mother-son field trip we never got to take, thanks to Sam's draconian call sheets. He should've stayed on to run Italy itself. They'd be a superpower!

responsible for their triumphs as well as their failures. She also told him, as if it were a well-known law of nature, like gravity or centripetal force, that creative thinking blossomed in what others might see as idleness.

No one belongs to us, and we belong to no one - not in that sense. This should free us, but it never quite does.

You're far too young for a governess,' mused Lizzie as she stirred cream into her tea. 'And the strain of behaving would probably kill you,' muttered Frank.

And if you say that's because you lot barged into her home like a herd of mentally deficient sheep, I'm disowning all three of you.

We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.

There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest.

If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty.

Strange how, when you are young, you owe no duty to the future; but when you are old, you owe a duty to the past. To the one thing you can't change.

But time...how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

You've got to be responsible for your own happiness - you can't expect it to come flopping through the door like a parcel.

Start with the notion that yours is the sole responsibility unless there's powerful evidence to the contrary

Did you leave me because of me? No, she said. I left you because of us.