Quotes About Change Being Hard

“Men cannot be men-much less good or heroic men-unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors”

— Jack Donovan

“I wish I knew all the answers, how to be perfect, attractive and witty. But I'm just a human being with all the regular faults and it seems no matter how hard I try, I can't change that.”

— Rebekah Joy Anast

“He's not perfect. You aren't either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can. He isn't going to quote poetry, he's not thinking about you every moment, but he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break. Don't hurt him, don't change him, and don't expect for more than he can give. Don't analyze. Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he's not there. Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don't exist, but there's always one guy that is perfect for you.”

— Bob Marley

“Drug companies do not want us to dream this dream. But many people who are ill reject it as well. The responsibility of being your own cure is too much. Historically, people have been willing to subject themselves to the most poisonous of treatments rather than change themselves. In other words, meditation is hard, but pills are easy, and they feel reassuringly more like science.”

— Magnus Flyte

“When you believe without knowing you believe that you are damaged at your core, you also believe that you need to hide that damage for anyone to love you. You walk around ashamed of being yourself. You try hard to make up for the way you look, walk, feel. Decisions are agonizing because if you, the person who makes the decision, is damaged, then how can you trust what you decide? You doubt your own impulses so you become masterful at looking outside yourself for comfort. You become an expert at finding experts and programs, at striving and trying hard and then harder to change yourself, but this process only reaffirms what you already believe about yourself
that your needs and choices cannot be trusted, and left to your own devices you are out of control (p.82-83)”

— Geneen Roth

“I have discovered there are only a handful of good ideas in the whole world. You already know them. You have heard them your entire life. Here are some of the main keys to being more successful:
Take personal responsibility.
Things change, so be flexible.
Work smart and work hard.
Serve others well.
Be nice to others.
Be optimistic.
Have goals; want something big for yourself.
Stay focused.
Keep learning.
Become excellent at what you do.
Trust your gut.
When in doubt, take action.
Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.
Enjoy all you've got.
Above all keep it simple.”

— Larry Winget

“Being transgender guarantees you will upset someone. People get upset with transgender people who choose to inhabit a third gender space rather than "pick a side." Some get upset at transgender people who do not eschew their birth histories. Others get up in arms with those who opted out of surgical options, instead living with their original equipment. Ire is raised at those who transition, then transition again when they decide that their initial change was not the right answer for them. Heck, some get their dander up simply because this or that transgender person simply is not "trying hard enough" to be a particular gender, whatever that means. Some are irked that the Logo program RuPaul's Drag Race shows a version of transgender life different from their own. Meanwhile, all around are those who have decided they aren't comfortable with the lot of us, because we dared to change from one gender expression or identity to some other.”

— Kate Bornstein

“I settled back on the bed with my own heavy sigh. The point of this reluctant outpouring of all my crap isn't to make you feel guilty. I don't need anyone to be concerned for me. That's my point. Will that change one day? I don't know. I'm not asking it to. But Rhian, when you trusted James with all you baggage you decided that day that you were asking someone to be concerned. You were tired of being alone. Will staying with him be hard? Yes. Will fighting your fears every day be difficult? Yes. But how he feels for you ... jeez, Rhian ... that's worth it. And telling yourself that it's okay to run way from him to be alone just because I'm alone and okay with it, is bullshit. I'm alone because I just am. You're alone because you made a choice. And it's the wrong fucking choice.”

— Samantha Young

“We ask the great masses of India to be patient a short time longer, while the cause of freedom is being fought out, not because we want to delay, but because the hard facts of war make a complete change impossible at the moment.”

— Stafford Cripps

“The idea of not being able to control my own fertility genuinely terrifies me. That one mistake might change your life. That everything I am, and do, could be ended by the repeal of laws our mothers fought so hard for, that women had waited for the entire span of humanity to come about.”

— Caitlin Moran

“But how to be present to another? Our hearts are so hard. We are so insensitive to the suffering of others. We must pray the Holy Spirit to change our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh so that we may give life, for love is giving of life and liberty. By our confidence in another we can bring forth new aspirations and a taste for life in him. We can help the miserable person to live, to progress and to grow. And he will only begin to want to live when he has been told by our gestures, words, the tone of our voice, our look, our whole being that it is important that he live.”

— Jean Vanier

“A lot of directors say, 'Do whatever you want, and I'll just change it on set.' But I love being involved in every part of production. It's very exciting. It's like an empire of creation: Everybody is working so hard to respect a vision and an idea, and it's very weird and inspiring at the same time.”

— Xavier Dolan

“You have had many and great sadnesses, which passed. And you say that even this passing was hard for you and put you out of sorts. But, please, consider whether these great sadnesses have not rather gone right through the center of yourself? Whether much in you has not altered, whether you have not somewhere, at some point of your being, undergone a change when you were sad?”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

“Women collect grievances, hold grudges and change shape. They pass hard, legitimate judgments, unlike the purblind guesses of men, fogged with romanticism and ignorance and bias and wish. Women know too much, they can neither be deceived nor trusted. I can understand why men are afraid of them, as they are frequently accused of being.”

— Margaret Atwood

“I'm a very happy, content member of David Cameron's team. I fought very hard to get my friend elected as leader of the Conservative party, then elected as the prime minister of this country, and I'm very happy being part of that team that is bringing change to this country.”

— George Osborne

“It's hard to change someone's ideas when they might not even really consciously know that they're being racist, or have racist ideas, just because ballet has been this way for hundreds of years.”

— Misty Copeland

“It's really hard to imagine there ever being the kind of impact there was when punk rock happened in the late 70's. I wish there would be one big change like that again, but I don't know if that'll ever happen.”

— Penelope Spheeris

“This principle - that your spouse should be capable of becoming your best friend - is a game changer when you address the question of compatibility in a prospective spouse. If you think of marriage largely in terms of erotic love, then compatibility means sexual chemistry and appeal. If you think of marriage largely as a way to move into the kind of social status in life you desire, then compatibility means being part of the desired social class, and perhaps common tastes and aspirations for lifestyle. The problem with these factors is that they are not durable. Physical attractivess will wane, no matter how hard you work to delay its departure. And socio-economic status unfortunately can change almost overnight. When people think they have found compatibility based on these things, they often make the painful discovery that they have built their relationship on unstable ground. A woman "lets herself go" or a man loses his job, and the compatibility foundation falls apart.”

— Timothy Keller

“TRY: During the day, see if you can detect the bloom of the present moment in every moment, the ordinary ones, the "in-between" ones, even the hard ones. Work at allowing more things to unfold in your life without forcing them to happen and without rejecting the ones that don't fit your idea of what "should" be happening. See if you can sense the "spaces" through which you might move with no effort in the spirit of Chuang Tzu's cook. Notice how if you can make some time early in the day for being, with no agenda, it can change the quality of the rest of your day. By affirming first what is primary in your own being, see if you don't get a mindful jump on the whole day and wind up more capable of sensing, appreciating, and responding to the bloom of each moment.”

— Jon Kabat-Zinn

“Now that mine is almost over, I can say that the one thing that struck me most about life is the capacity for change. One day you're a person and the next day they tell you you're a dog. At first it's hard to bear, but after a while you learn not to look at it as a loss. There's even a moment when it becomes exhilarating to realize just how little needs to stay the same for you to continue the effort they call, for lack of a better word, being human.”

— Nicole Krauss

“If you stop pushing so hard? Or if you don't try to escape? What horrible outcome makes game playing an attractive and sensible option? "What I don't want is to have a useless and heated conversation that creates bad feelings and doesn't lead to change." Third, present your brain with a more complex problem. Finally, combine the two into an and question that forces you to search for more creative and productive options than silence and violence. "How can I have a candid conversation with my husband about being more dependable and”

— Kerry Patterson

“I think sometimes it's too hard to believe in yourself. You just do the things you're not sure you can do. You just act, in spite of not being certain. I don't believe I can change the world-it sounds stupid to even talk about it-but I'm going to try.”

— Cassandra Clare

“The art of the novel, however, has fallen into such a state of stagnation - a lassitude acknowledged and discussed by the whole of critical opinion - that it is hard to imagine such an art can survive for long without some radical change. To many, the solution seems simple enough: such a change being impossible, the art of the novel is dying.”

— Alain Robbe-Grillet

“The second concerns the dangerous event of change, whether it's our house, job, or behavior. Here, everything is stable, everyone behaves as expected. Please don't try to be different or suddenly reinvent yourself, because you'll be threatening our whole society. This country worked hard to reach its "finished" state; we don't want to go back to being "under renovation.”

— Paulo Coelho

“The climate system is being pushed hard enough that change will become obvious to the man in the street in the next decade.”

— James Hansen

“At times one wanders, doubting the facts, even when one has discovered the secrets of the good life. To be sure, my solution is not the ideal.
But when you don't like your own life, when you know that you must change lives, you don't have any choice, do you? What can one do to become
another?Impossible. One would have to cease being anyone, forget oneself for someone else, at least once.But how? Don't bear down too hard on me.
I am like that old beggar who wouldn't let go of my hand one day on a cafe terrace: Oh, sir,he said, its not just that I am no good, but you lose
track of the light.Yes, we have lost track of the light, the mornings, the holy innocence of those who forgive themselves.”

— Albert Camus

“The thing about being an artist is that you evolve so quickly, you grow, you learn, you change, you find yourself hating work that you made months prior. That's the hard part about making an album, but every couple days I fall asleep listening to my album front to back and I lay there feeling so proud of what I did.”

— Halsey

“It is hard to change our point of view in a conflict. Most often, it is because we are not nearly as interested in resolving the conflict and possibly creating a new "pearl" as we are in being right.”

— Thomas Crum

“As a kid, I would do all of the plays at my school, and I was notorious for being in five numbers in one show. I'd go onstage, run backstage for a wardrobe change, and then go back out onstage. I'm always trying to do more than I should but when I got my lucky break (or whatever it's called), I was prepared because I studied and worked really hard for it.”

— Chrissie Fit

“Be patient and gentle with yourself as you continue to learn new ways of eating and living. There is no need for hard-and-fast rules or white-knuckle determination. Keep leaning forward into the positive changes you are making, and then apply that same gentleness to your family and community. There is no need to promote your ideals, but rather attract interest by being informed and interesting, healthy and robust-looking, and most of all, kind. After all, if we want to create change in the world, we have to embody the quality and character we'd like to see more of!”

— Kathy Freston

“Curiosity's primal. Our senses scan our surroundings, alerting us most urgently about sudden change. Useful, that. Change can mean opportunity. It can mean danger. Finding lunch or being lunch. We're hard-wired to notice the unexpected, then take action.”

— Julie Czerneda

“How much hope, expectation, and sheer hard work goes into the smallest success! There is no being sure of anything except that whatever has been created will change in time ...”

— May Sarton

“Jesus proclaimed, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.. He is saying that a whole new order is about to enter history, and if you want to be a part of it, you will need a change so fundamental that the Gospel of John would later refer to it as a "new birth". Being born again was not meant to be a private religious experience that is hard to communicate.. but rather the prerequisite for joining a new and very public movement - the Jesus and kingdom of God movement.”

— Jim Wallis

“If you think someone's trying too hard, that's the worst thing they can do. To me, it's just desperate, never funny and never witty. It's kind of really old hat because just being shocking isn't enough. It has to change how you think about something. It has to startle you. It has to make you look at something and reconsider whether you're right. That's the whole point.”

— John Waters

“I recalled how much time i had spent fighting for something i didn't even want. maybe because i had been too lazy to think of other avenues to follow. maybe because i had been afraid of what others would think. maybe because it was hard work to be different. perhaps, because a human being is condemned to repeat the steps taken by the previous generation until a certain number of people begin to behave in a different fashion. then the world changes, and we change with it.”

— Paulo Coelho

“We know story collections end when they end, as well - the pages serving as a countdown - but nevertheless the standard story anthology hews closer to what makes being human so hard: it reminds you with each story how quickly everything we are, everything we call our lives can change, can be upended, can disappear. Never to return.”

— Junot Diaz

“Breakthrough ideas look crazy, nuts. It's hard to think this way - I see it in other people's body language, and I can feel it in my own, where I sometimes feel like I don't even care if it's going to work, I can't take more change. O.K., Google, O.K., Twitter-but Airbnb? People staying in each other's houses without there being a lot of axe murders?”

— Marc Andreessen