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81 " The great minds, which from time to time have existed in this world, were like doors thrown wide to understanding. I don't mean just their brilliance or philosophy or even psychology. I mean that the spoken words that have endured are those uttered by men who understood with their hearts.No one on earth understands everything; that all-comprehensive function belongs to God alone. But we all try to understand a little. Most of us realize that too late. We look back and think: If only I'd tried to understand. Many failures in human relationships derive from this common failure.Watching the birds flock to discuss their travels among the brilliant leaves, listening to the slow turning of the earth upon her axis, meditating on Nature herself, never uncertain no matter how uncertain her manifestations may be, I think of the instinct that sends the birds from one locality to another, of the lengthening shadows as we face toward autumn, and of the marvelous system that encourages the leaf to fall and nurture the soil. In the single flame of October it begins the lullaby that will put the roots of grass and flowers to sleep. This system, in the four seasons of my little world, will cover the ground with silent snow, and at a later date will shout that spring is coming and awaken sleepers to new life.The sun in his glory, the moon in her phases, the stars in their courses, all these are part of the system; and Nature, turning the wheel of the seasons, understands what she must accomplish.Each in our own way, I suppose, we try to understand what we must accomplish. Perhaps the most important thing of all is the attempt to understand others. "
― Faith Baldwin , Evening Star
82 " The most important precept is to be aware of WHO WE ARE!“Who we are,” he said, underlining each word as he said it. “Who we are! Us! Right? What kind of people are we? What kind of person are you? Isn’t that the most important thing of all? Isn’t that the kind of question we should be asking ourselves all the time? “What kind of person am I?Learning who you are is what your are here to do. "
83 " Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved. "
― Michael Crichton , The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)
84 " There are heroes and schmucks in all worlds. The most important thing is whether you are willing to engage in moral struggle against yourself. "
― David Brooks , The Road to Character
85 " In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. " Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities, but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good. "
86 " A question wells up inside me, a question so big it blocks my throat and makes it hard to breathe. Somehow I swallow it back, finally choosing another. " Are memories such an important thing?" " It depends," she replies, and closes her eyes. " In some cases, they're the most important thing there is. "
87 " ... I'll tell her about Tia. I'll tell her how beautiful she was and how brave. And I'll tell her the most important thing of all: that her mother loved her better than her life. "
― Glenda Millard , A Small Free Kiss in the Dark
88 " At what age did I start to think that where I was going was more important than where I already was? When was it that I began to believe that the most important thing about what I was doing was getting it over with? Knowing how to live is not something we have to teach children. Knowing how to live is something we have to be careful not to take away from them. "
89 " A good mother loves fiercely but ultimately brings up her children to thrive without her. They must be the most important thing in her life, but if she is the most important thing in theirs, she has failed. "
― Erin Kelly , The Burning Air
90 " I think . . . you should have children, John." At least he's no longer talking about bugs." I'm too young, Dad." " It's the most important thing . . . I've done in . . . my life. "
91 " Perhaps the most important thing I came to understand during my decade at HoJo's was that Americans had extremely open palates compared to French diners. They were willing to try items that lay outside their normal range of tastes. If they liked the food, that was all that mattered. I wasn't constantly battling ingrained prejudices as I would have been in France, where doing something as simple as adding carrots to boeuf bourguignon could have gotten me guillotined, not because carrots make the dish taste bad (they are great), but because it wouldn't be the way a boeuf was supposed to be made. In France, unless a dish was prepared exactly " right," people would know and complain. In the States, if it tasted good, then fine, the customer was happy. A whole new world of culinary possibilities had opened up before me. "
92 " There is, however, one way of speaking that I've tried to avoid. Rather than refer to someone as " a homosexual," I've taken care always to make " gay" or " homosexual" the adjective, and never the noun, in a longer phrase, such as " gay Christian" or " homosexual person." In this way, I hope to send a subtle linguistic signal that being gay isn't the most important thing about my or any other gay person's identity. I am a Christian before I am anything else. My homosexuality is a part of my makeup, a facet of my personality. One day, I believe, whether in this life or in the resurrection, it will fade away. But my identity as a Christian - someone incorporated into Christ's body by his Spirit - will remain. "
93 " I don’t want to love him—this would be so much simpler if I didn’t. But I do.He’s funny, and passionate, and strong, and he believes in me more than I even believe in myself. When he looks at me, I feel like I could take on the whole world and come out standing tall. I like myself better when I’m with him, because of how he sees me. He makes me feel beautiful and powerful, like I’m the most important thing in the world, and I don’t know how to walk away from that. I don’t know how to walk away from him. "
― Rachel Vincent , Alpha (Shifters, #6)
94 " Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy. "
― Howard Zinn , You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
95 " Salvation is the most important thing that a person has and the devil knows very well what its value is. "
96 " people still fall in love, and out, yes, in and out, and out and in, and they please each other, and hurt each other, isn't that the truth, and they do these things in more or less conventionally dramatic fashion, unfashionable or not, go on, I'm going, and what goes on between them is still not only the most interesting but the most important thing in the bloody murderous world "
― John Barth , Lost in the Funhouse
97 " Always be ready for criticism for there shall always be people who shall be ready always to criticize you. The positive lesson you learn from your critics, is the most important thing which matter and not just the matter! "
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98 " So without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself, to express yourself freely as you are is the most important thing to make yourself happy, and to make others happy... So we should be concentrated with our full mind and body on what we do; and we should be faithful, subjectively and objectively, to ourselves, and especially to our feelings... it is better to express how you feel without any particular attachment or intention. "
― Shunryu Suzuki , Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice
99 " So that’s why I’m such a big fan of storytelling. I think the most important thing is empathy. And it’s less about ‘those people’. Because I think we’re all ‘those people’. "
― Jeannette Walls
100 " What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.' A. W. Tozer wrote that, talking about how people project their opinions about God onto the world. He was asking those of us who believe in God- which is most of us - what God it is we believe in. Good question....we project onto God our worst attitudes and feelings about ourselves. As someone famously remarked, 'God made us in his own image and we have more than returned the compliment.' If we feel hatred for ourselves, it only makes sense that God hates us. Right?No, not so much.It's no good assuming God feels about us the way we feel about ourselves intensely and freely with complete wisdom and never-ending compassion. If the Christian story is true, the God who shows his love for us everywhere, in everything, expresses that love completely and finally in what Jesus did for us. Deal done -- can't add to, can't subtract from it. Any questions?" (pp. 20-21) "