I Promise To Do Better Quotes

“Nick? Have you ever ... "
"No." He lifted his head again, studied me. "I've thought about it, but it never seemed right."
The idea of him making love to anyone else sent a shaft of pain straight through my middle. "You better wait on me, damn it."
"I don't think I have much choice." He brushed my hair back. "You're the only one I've ever wanted, Alix, the only one I'll ever want. That's a promise.”

— Katherine Allred

“She smoothed her fingertips down his cheeks and cupped his face in her hands. "I'm not sure it can get any better."
He sucked in a ragged breath. "Oh, darlin'," he said, sliding his finger beneath one of the straps of her sundress and guiding it off of her shoulder. "I promise you it can." He kissed the spot where the strap had been and drew his fingers up her thighs with a light, feathery touch. "And I'm a man who keeps his promises.”

— Tracy March

“I do promise that you will survive this. Faith, my own heart is so scattered round the country now, I marvel that it has the strength each day to keep me standing. But it does,' she said, and drawing in a steady breath she pulled back just enough to raise a hand to wipe Sophia's tears. 'It does. And so will yours.'
'How can you be so sure?'
'Because it is a heart, and knows no better.”

— Susanna Kearsley

“Speak quietly to yourself & promise there will be better days. whisper gently to yourself and provide assurance that you really are extending your best effort. console your bruised and tender spirit with reminders of many other successes. offer comfort in practical and tangible ways - as if you were encouraging your dearest friend. recognize that on certain days the greatest grace is that the day is over and you get to close your eyes. tomorrow comes more brightly ...”

— Mary Anne Radmacher

“No beating yourself up. That's not allowed. Be patient with yourself. It took you years to form the bad habits of thought that you no longer want. It will take a little
time to form new and better ones. But I promise you this: Even a slight move in this direction will bring you some peace. The more effort you apply to it, the faster you'll find your bliss, but you'll experience rewards immediately.”

— Holly Mosier

“If you promise you will get better instead of dying, I promise I will, too.”

— Jordan Sonnenblick

“But I know I didn't love school for school's sake. I had never really been what people call an 'academic' person, nor did I see myself becoming one. Instead, I took pleasure in the fact that my work existed in a social setting, one that was based on the promise of a brighter future. I knew that what I adored about school was that each of my assignments - readings, essays, or in-class presentations - was inseparable from my relationships [ ... ] If I loved school at all, I loved it for what it provided me access to: bonds with people I grew to cherish. And nothing was better than working toward my dreams alongside people I loved who were doing the same.”

— Liz Murray

“Incidentally, I really agree with those who say that the capacity to forgive says something about the essential quality of a person. I'm the lowest grade.'
'I didn't mean to criticize you.'
'I promise to be better in my next life ...”

— Jo Nesbø

“We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”

— Barack Obama

“That morning, lying with the woman I loved, a silent promise was formed in my head. I was going to be a better man for her, someone she deserved. No more flying off the handle. No more temper tantrums, or violent outbursts.”

— Jamie McGuire

“When you're on the road, there is awlays the promise of the next stop being better than the last”

— Gayle Forman

“The promise of aspiration is that it is evolutionary. The human condition is such that we are always aspiring to be something more, something better, something nobler. It starts as a thought, a want, a need, or a desire and then grows and evolves with intention and direction, upward with lust and hunger. The continued drive feeds the rise.”

— Lorii Myers

“We are hours and minutes reaching for the same second, holding hands as we spin forward into new days and the promise of something better.”

— Tahereh Mafi

“You may think this a strange story, but it is not. There are people whose lives are every bit as unusual as Bobby Box's
I can promise you that. Not all of them end as well, of course. For many people, the world is a place of sadness and sorrow, which is a great pity, as we have only one chance at life, and it is very bad luck if things do not go well.
But even if you think they are not going well, you can still wish, as Bobby Box did. And sometimes those wishes will come true, as his did, and the world will seem filled with light and happiness. That can happen, you know. So never give up hope; never think things are so bad that they can never get better. They can get better, and they do. And if you have the chance to make things easier for another person, never miss it. Stretch out your hand to help them, to cheer them up, to wipe away their tears. Stretch out your hand as that man and that woman did to Bobby Box. Stretch out your hand and see what happens.”

— Alexander McCall Smith

“Or that one person whom you rarely speak with, who can always be found right where you left them. You carry their smile with you like a talisman-for whatever reason, their presence in your life will always bring the promise of better days.”

— Lang Leav

“Is that we can fix our mistakes sometimes. We learn from them. We get better. I never made a mistake like the one I made with Tourteau again, not with anyone in my life. And I have had a very, very long life. You will learn from your mistake, too. You must promise yourself that you will never behave like that with anyone else again. One mistake does not define you, Julian. Do you understand me? You must simply act better next time. I nodded, but I still cried for a long, long time after that.”

— R.J. Palacio

“I can promise that even having an imperfect one who loves you is better than having none at all.”

— Sabrina Jeffries

“Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have their 'Giving Pledge,' where billionaires promise to give away the majority of their wealth when they die. My Social Security Pledge is better - to give money to good causes when you are alive. Besides, more Americans can participate.”

— Mark Skousen

“I stared at our hands. "Am I ever going to see you again?"
"You better believe it," he said. "Didn't I promise you we could make out in a castle?"
Chuckling, I drew my hand back. "You did. And to take me on dates. Real dates with no swords or ghouls or angst."
"Well, there you go," he said. "As soon as we've saved the world from a demon invasion, it's you, me, and Applebee's."
I rolled my eyes, but I was grinning now. "Oh, the romance."
His smile slowly faded. "I will see you again," he said, serious this time. "I promise." He moved closer to me so that his translucent legs disappeared into the bed. "Mercer, I-"
And then, just like that, be blinked out and was gone.”

— Rachel Hawkins

“That was a fine story," I told her, "one of the best that I've ever heard." "I had to live it," she replied, "and it is far better to hear such stories than to live them, I promise you, though it ended so happily.”

— Gene Wolfe

“In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the altar, a couple would speak thus: We accept not to panic when, some years from now, what we are doing today will seem like the worst decision of our lives. Yet we promise not to look around, either, fro we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species.”

— Alain De Botton

“Yet there is no avoiding time, the sea of time, the sea of memory and forgetfulness, the years of promise, gone and unrecoverable, of the land almost allowed to claim its better destiny, only to the claim jumped by evildoers known all too well, and taken instead and held hostage to the future we must live in now forever.”

— Thomas Pynchon

“Chronosophy does involve ethics. Because our sense of time involves our ability to separate cause and effect, means and end. The baby, again, the animal, they don't see the difference between what they do now and what will happen because of it. They can't make a pulley, or a promise. We can. Seeing the difference between now and not now, we can make the connection. And there morality enters in. Responsibility. To say that a good end will follow from a bad means is just like saying that if I pull a rope on this pulley it will lift the weight on that one. To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past; therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future.
If time and reason are functions of each other, if we are creatures of time, then we had better know it, and try to make the best of it. To act responsibly.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin

“It's Will who ought to be sorry." Jem's eyes darkened. "We shall throw him out onto the streets," he proclaimed. "I promise you he'll be gone by morning."
Tessa started and sat upright. "Oh - no, you can't mean that -"
He grinned. "Of course I don't. But you felt better for a moment there, didn't you?"
"It was like a beautiful dream," Tessa said gravely.”

— Cassandra Clare

“You deserve someone better than me. Someone young and idealistic ... someone who can experience things for the first time along with you. I'm not always kind, and I have more faults than I'd care to name. All I can promise is that I'll want you until my last breath.”

— Lisa Kleypas

“Of one thing the executive may be sure: that the majority want more of the good things of life, and if they can get them without undue personal effort, so much the better. So the executive naturally tends to promise material gain, contingent of course on his remaining in power. The impetus to personal rule is obvious.”

— Felix Morley

“Each arc of color may be lovely to behold, but it is the full spectrum of our woman rainbow that glows with the brightest promise of better things to come.”

— Merlin Stone

“The fact that you have government-guaranteed student loans has created a whole new sector in the American economy that didn't really exist before - private for-profit universities that sell junk degrees that don't help the students. They promise the students, "We'll help you get a better job. We'll arrange a loan so that you don't have to pay a penny for this education." Their pet bank gets them the government-guaranteed loan, and the student may get the junk degree, but doesn't get a job, so they don't pay the loan.”

— Michael Hudson

“A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you've been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it's going to be okay.”

— Michael Rapaport

“Led by long years to my last hours, too late, O world, I know your joys for what they are. You promise a peace which is not yours to give and the repose that dies before it is born. The years of fear and shame to which Heaven now set a term, renew nothing in me but the old sweet error in which, living overlong a man kills his soul with no gain to his body. I say and I know having put it to the proof, that he has the better part in Heaven whose death falls nearest his birth.”

— Michelangelo

“Everybody's playing the game but nobody's rules are the same ... Never make a promise or plan. Take a little love where you can ... Never stay too long in your bed. Never lose your heart, use your head ... Never take a stranger's advice. Never let a friend fool you twice ... Never be the first to believe. Never be the last to deceive ... Never leave a moment too soon. Never waste a hot afternoon ... Never stay a minute too long. Don't forget the best will go wrong ... Better learn to go it alone. Recognise you're out on your own. Nobody's on nobody's side.”

— Tim Rice

“The hardest thing to get right is to figure out how to bring all those characters together, and to fulfill the promise of The Avengers. They really set a very high bar for themselves because you've been setting this coalition up, for these five movies, and they better deliver. And in my opinion, they thoroughly deliver.”

— Clark Gregg

“If we are to make significant progress on meeting these Goals and stay true to the promise the world made to build a better, fairer world for all, there is no time to lose in putting in place the necessary policies and resources needed to achieve these aims.”

— Kemal Dervis

“Always in the black spirituals there's that promise that things are going to be better, by and by.”

— Maya Angelou

“It is better to be as low as hell with a promise, than in Paradise without one.”

— John Flavel

“Many other means there be, that promise the foreknowledge of things to come: besides the raising up and conjuring of ghosts departed, the conference also with familiars and spirits infernal. And all these were found out in our days, to be no better than vanities and false illusions ...”

— Pliny The Elder

“I promise you, the next time there is attack on - an attack on this country, the first thing people are going to want to know is, why didn't we know about it and why didn't we stop it? And the answer better not be because we didn't have access to records or information that would have allowed us to identify these killers before they attacked.”

— Marco Rubio