Priorities Quotes

“The will of God is not something you add to your life. It’s a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God…or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world.”
― Elisabeth Elliot

“When someone you love makes compassion, kindness, forgiveness, respect and God an option, you can be sure they have made you an option, as well.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The most important thing in life is knowing the most important things in life.”
― David F. Jakielo

“The only thing a cat worries about is what's happening right now. As we tell the kittens, you can only wash one paw at a time.”
― Lloyd Alexander, Time Cat

“Good for you and be proud of yourself because you have your priorities in order. Be proud of yourself if you are responsible, reliable, persistent, and take your job and education seriously.”
― Ana Monnar, Express Yourself 101 For Your Eyes Only

“I do not understand people who will lustily throw $40,000 at the shiny red automobile of their choice, but well up with tears and become outraged when they are asked to pay $5 for a damaged videotape. Either they are fucked up and their priorities are fucked up or I am fucked up and my priorities are fucked up. Because I am me, I think it is them.”
― Don Borchert, Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library

“Your behavior reflects your actual purposes.”
― Ronald Heifetz, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World

“Those East Coast rich kids are a different breed, on a fast track to nowhere. Your friends in Seattle are downright Canadian in their niceness. None of you has a cell phone. The girls wear hoodies and big cotton underpants and walk around with tangled hair and smiling, adorned backpacks. Do you know how absolutely exotic it is that you haven’t been corrupted by fashion and pop culture? A month ago I mentioned Ben Stiller, and do you remember how you responded? ‘Who’s that?’ I loved you all over again.”
― Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette

“We don’t drift in good directions. We discipline and prioritize ourselves there.”
― andy Stanley, The Principle of the Path: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

“Life is as simple as these three questions: What do I want? Why do I want it? And, how will I achieve it?”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Why hunt the sea whip if you only meant to turn it over to Alina?”
“I wasn’t hunting the sea whip. I was hunting you.”
“That’s why you raised a mutiny against the Darkling?” I asked. “To get at me?”
“You can’t very well mutiny on your own ship.”
“Call it what you like,” I said, exasperated. “Just explain yourself.”
Sturmhond leaned back and rested his elbows on the rail, surveying the deck. “As I would have explained to the Darkling had he bothered to ask—which, thankfully, he didn’t—the problem with hiring a man who sells his honor is that you can always be outbid.”
I gaped at him. “You betrayed the Darkling for money?”
“‘Betrayed’ seems a strong word. I hardly know the fellow.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Siege and Storm

“If you truly feel that self esteem and motivation have to happen first before you can make changes in your life, then we’ll probably be sharing walkers at a retirement home as we talk over what might have been.”
― Shannon Alder

“Real relationships are the product of time spent, which is why so many of us have so few of them.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Don’t waste your breath, lovely.”
“But you don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You were about to plead your case, tell me you need my help, you can’t pay me but your heart is true, the usual thing.”
I blinked. That was exactly what I’d been about to do. “But—”
“Waste of breath, waste of time, waste of a fine afternoon,” he said. “I don’t like to see prisoners mistreated, but that’s as far as my interest goes.”
“You—”
He shook his head. “And I’m notoriously immune to tales of woe. So unless your story involves a talking dog, I don’t want to hear it. Does it?”
“Does it what?”
“Involve a talking dog.”
“No,” I snapped. “It involves the future of a kingdom and everyone in it.”
“A pity,” he said, and took me by the arm, leading me to the aft hatch.
“I thought you worked for Ravka,” I said angrily.
“I work for the fattest purse.”
“So you’d sell your country to the Darkling for a little gold?”
“No, for a lot of gold,” he said. “I assure you, I don’t come cheap.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Siege and Storm

“Refrain to-night;
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence, the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either master the devil or throw him out
With wondrous potency.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“We must try again to be alive to what the people of our country really long for in our national life: forgiveness and grace, maturity and wisdom.

...Our political leaders will know our priorities only if we tell them, again and again, and if those priorities begin to show up in the polls.”
― Peggy Noonan, Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now

“Prioritizing hurt, a reminder that the clock was ticking, that some things would be left undone.”
― Lisa Genova, Still Alice

“ليس كافيًا أن تكون مشغولًا. فكذلك النمل. السؤال هو: بماذا نحن مشغولون ؟”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I haven’t got time for a love life and that’s usually frustrating to the would-be lovers. Care to make a run for it?”
― Benjamin R. Smith, Atlas

“At the end of the day, you should try to remember that it's not about the number of followers you have or the numbers of likes, comments, and shares your posts are getting.
It's the number of people who will be present in the hospital room when you fall terribly sick.
It's the number of people who will remember your birthday like they remember their first name.
It's the number of people who will invite you to celebrate Christmas or new year's eve.
It's the number of people who will actually show up to look at your newborn child or to bless your newly bought house.
It's the number of people who will actually cross an ocean to see your face.
It's the number of people who will wipe your tears when one of your parents passes away.
It's the number of people who will make a slightly larger than a thumb effort to be there for you.”
― Malak El Halabi

“Our hopes rest with you, Mister Brekker. If you fail, all the world will suffer for it.”
“Oh, it’s worse than that, Van Eck. If I fail, I don’t get paid.”
The look of disgust on the merch’s face was something that deserved its own DeKappel oil to commemorate it.
“Don’t look so disappointed. Just think how miserable you would have been to discover this canal rat had a patriotic streak. You might actually have had to uncurl that lip and treat me with something closer to respect.”
“Thank you for sparing me that discomfort”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“That second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? For you, O broker! there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. Let me live onward; you shall find that, though slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts without injustice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not this be injustice? Does he owe no debt but money? And are all claims on him to be postponed to a landlord's or a banker's?”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“And the second [thing about the CBS EVENING NEWS that stands out in the mind of Michael J. Fox] was something Katie did later in the interview, as the drugs kicked in and the tremors segued into the jerkiness of dyskinesias. Somewhere in the contortions of making a point, my left arm detached the microphone clip from my jacket lapel. With no fuss and hardly a break in conversation or eye contact, she calmly leaned over and refastened it. Neither of us commented on it, but it was such an empathetic gesture, so far from anything patronizing or pitying, a simple kindness that allowed me the dignity to carry on making a point more important than the superficiality of my physical circumstance...

...One thing was abundantly clear though, whether or not she was able to forget how much she liked me: with that single act of consideration, she made it abundantly clear how much she loved her father.”
― Michael J. Fox

“Of course it was a terrible thing, and the world would be a much better place without someone in it who could do that, but did that mean we had to miss lunch?”
― Jeff Lindsay, Dearly Devoted Dexter

“Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.”
― Peter Drucker

“All of your precious resources - time, energy, talent, passion, and money - should only go to the areas of your life or your business that are best, are fixable, and are indespensable. Otherwise, average sets in and [your life] does not become what it was designed to be.”
― Henry Cloud, Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward

“Subtracting from your list of priorities is as important as adding to it.”
― Frank Sonnenberg, Soul Food: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

“If everything’s a priority, then nothing’s a priority.”
― Frank Sonnenberg, Soul Food: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

“Courageous people know that saying ‘no’ to one idea enables them to say ‘yes’ to another.”
― Frank Sonnenberg, Follow Your Conscience: Make a Difference in Your Life & in the Lives of Others

“I’m too busy’ is another way of saying, ‘It’s not a priority.”
― Frank Sonnenberg, Listen to Your Conscience: That's Why You Have One