Trying Quotes - Page 141

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

The word [jazz] never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos. In the 1920s I used to try to convince Fletcher Henderson that we ought to call what we were doing 'Negro music'. But it's too late for that now.

The harder you try to become the opposite of your parents, the more quickly you become them.

It's the ones you love the most who can lift you in an instant, and destroy you without trying.

No one is innocent in the tide of history. Everyone has kings and slaves in his past. Everyone has saints and sinners. We are not to blame for the actions of our ancestors. We can only try to be the best we can, no matter what our heritage, to strive for a better future for all.

You grow (and thrive!) by doing what excites you and what scares you everyday, not by trying to find your passion.

I think it's really important not to be so judgmental and not to be so fearful. Try to have confidence in yourself. Don't depend so much on what others say about you or want you to be.

Scholars do one of two things when they discover information that doesn't fit what they already know. Either they sweep it aside so it doesn't bring their cherished theories into question or they focus on it with laserlike intensity and try to get to the bottom of the mystery.

The greatest failure is not to try. Had I listened to all the people during the course of my life who said, "You can't. You'll fail. It won't work. You don't have...," I wouldn't be here today.

Ultimately when you have the perspective of why you're competing and what you're trying to pursue, the rest just falls into place.

The world will try to tell you that you need stuff to be somebody. Don't listen

I have the capacity to express what I feel needs to be expressed. And I try to do what I believe in.

Once you lose attachment to how you want things to be because you realize you don't control anything, there's a curiously liberating aspect of that. I've always been a control freak, I've always felt that if I try hard enough, everyone I love will be kept safe and everything will be okay. Being shown, in such brutal terms, that that's simply not the way it works, in someways, it messed me up. I've been through hell, but on another level, if you pile up so much tragedy, it either destroys you, or you just start laughing about it. Because at the end of the day, no one gets out alive.

My heroes are people who are working hard and trying to make a good living for their families. My heroes are people who put their families first.

A saint is a sinner who keeps on trying.

If you got it, ask yourself why and try to repeat the action. If you failed, ask yourself why and try to learn from the experience.

Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one's own rules-this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.

The task I'm trying to achieve, above all, is to make you see.

Try not to take pictures which simply show what something looks like. By the way you put the elements of an image together in a frame show us something we have never seen before and will never see again.

I don't try to knock 'em out, I just know I will

No woman will ever satisfy me. I know that now, and I would never try to deny it. But this is actually okay, because I will never satisfy a woman, either. Should I be writing such thoughts? Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s a bad idea. I can definitely foresee a scenario where that first paragraph could come back to haunt me, especially if I somehow became marginally famous.

I was in the Pritikin Center in Santa Monica once, trying to lose 30 or 40 pounds in a month. I'd work... on a treadmill and with the weights, but it was driving me nuts. So I escaped. Tom Arnold picked me up and we went to Le Dome and had tons of desserts.

Try not to associate bodily defect with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason

Failure is nothing but success trying to be born in a bigger way. Most seeming failures are just installments toward victory!

I remember when I was 26. My father died when I was young and my mother didn't have a lot of money, so I thought, 'I want to own a flat by the time I'm 26.' So I worked towards that, literally trying to scrimp and save. But sometimes those plans don't go as you expect.