Quotes About Givens

#1. The task is not primarily to have a story, but to penetrate the story, to discard the elements of it that are merely shell, or husk, that give apparent form to the story, but actually obscure the essence. In other words, the problem is to transcend the givens of a narrative.

Deborah Eisenberg

#2. Who gave of their time: Joe Files, MD, Rod Givens, MD,

Greg Iles

#3. 'Boomerang!' I love that movie just because of Halle Berry, Robin Givens, Eddie Murphy, Grace Jones and Eartha Kitt. There were so many characters. As an actress, to see African-American actors be so diverse was different from what I was used to seeing.

Drew Sidora

#4. Four givens are particularly relevant for psycho-therapy: the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love; the freedom to make our lives as we will; our ultimate aloneness; and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life.

Irvin D. Yalom

#5. The aspirations of most people
security, pleasure, leisure, meaningful work, creative and intellectual pursuits
are to be supported. These desires and dreams are not shameful. In supporting them, we are showing solidarity with working people, for whom these are luxuries and not givens.

Irena Klepfisz

#6. Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens.

Albert Einstein

#7. I know the game, it's old and lame:
You're holdin' a flame for my name and my fame.
Livin' like Givens schemin' on Tyson,
But she got lucky 'cause he was a nice one.
But I ain't nice and I don't play that,
If it ain't tax, I don't pay that.

Kool Moe Dee

#8. There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power.

Frances McDormand

#9. There is a need today for what I call prophetic simplicity. We need voices of dissent that point to another way, creative models that take exception to the givens of society.

Richard J. Foster

#10. One does, after all, take on many of the givens of a society when one takes on its language.

Alma Guillermoprieto

#11. The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.

Salman Rushdie

#12. Love won't allow you to bear burdens alone. - Tina Givens -

Gary Chapman

#13. In acting class, teachers talk about how the 'givens' of a situation help define a character.

Hill Harper

#14. What we are worshipping we are becoming. Every moment of every day our choices enact our loves, our desires, and our aspirations. And we are molding ourselves into the God or gods we thereby worship.

Terryl L. Givens

#15. Dante thought a state of eternal, rapturous contemplation, and few have proffered more specifics than that. Post-redemption theology seems an oxymoron.

Terryl L. Givens

#16. I thought I explained it to you. Boyd and I dug coal together.

Elmore Leonard

#17. A supreme deity would no more gift us with intellect and expect us to forsake it in moments of bafflement, than He would fashion us eyes to see and bid us shut them to the stars

Terryl L. Givens

#18. If we linger in indecision, as does Buridan's beast, we will not perish. We will simply miss an opportunity to act decisively in the absence of certainty, and show that our fear of error is greater than our love of truth.

Terryl Givens

#19. Wherefore I dare not, I, put forth my hand To hold the Ark, although it seem to shake Through th' old sinnes and new doctrines of our land. Onely, since God doth often vessels make Of lowly matter for high uses meet, I throw me at his feet. - George Herbert1

Terryl L. Givens

#20. A God without body or parts is conceivable. But a God without passions would engender in our hearts neither love nor interest.

Terryl Givens

#21. When we create an artifact such as a tool, we leave a physical trace of our thoughts" (Hauser 2000:22)

David B. Givens

#22. Holiness is found in how we treat others, not in how we contemplate the cosmos.

Terryl L. Givens

#23. Voltaire, To believe in God is impossible; but not to believe is absurd.

Terryl L. Givens

#24. I wanted it more than enough. I wanted it with every fiber of my being, and I had the power to make it happen - to make it so I was the one Drew wanted, not Lizzie

Michelle Madow

#25. While you're alive, the IRS will attempt to take what you've made. When you're not, the IRS will attempt to take what it missed.

Charles J. Givens

#26. There are many kinds of silences and not all signify absence or vacancy....Those moments are but temporary ebbs before the flow of meaning rushes in to fill the space....God may be speaking 'in ways we have yet to recognize as speech.

Terryl L. Givens

#27. Make choices-not excuses.

Charles J. Givens

#28. The scriptures, said Paul to Timothy, are given for "correction" and "instruction in righteousness."3 They are likened by the Psalmist to a lamp that illuminates, that lights our path.4 Scriptures beckon, inspire, and edify.

Terryl L. Givens

#29. As the brain and body were shaped by natural selection, consumer goods adapted to the mind through a parallel process of product selection, which has rendered them ever more fluent, expressive, and fascinating to our senses.

David B. Givens

#30. But that's hindsight for you: never there when you need it.

Janet Givens

#31. God resides most strongly and evidently where science has not yet progressed to go ... And if this is true then it follows that God resides everywhere and in everything.

Terryl L. Givens

#32. Relationships are the core of our existence because they are the core of God's and we are in His image.

Terryl L. Givens

#33. The Atonement is not a backup plan in case we happen to fall short in the process; it is the ordained means whereby we gradually become complete and whole, in a sin-strewn process of sanctification through which our Father patiently guides us.

Terryl L. Givens

#34. His desires are set upon the whole human family, not upon a select few. He is not predisposed to just the fast learners, the naturally inclined, or the morally gifted.

Terryl L. Givens

#35. Doing more of what doesn't work won't make it work any better.

Charles J. Givens

#36. I want someone who can handle me. And I'm not the easiest person to handle.

Robin Givens

#37. Beauty, he found, comes with the exercise of freedom within

Terryl L. Givens

#38. I want you to understand," Raylan said, "I don't pull my sidearm 'less I'm gonna shoot to kill. That's its purpose, huh, to kill. So it's how I use it.

Elmore Leonard

#39. As Flannery O'Connor wrote, "Religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it's a cross."13

Terryl L. Givens

#40. I SHALL know why, when time is over, And I have ceased to wonder why; Christ will explain each separate anguish In the fair schoolroom of the sky. He will tell me what Peter promised, And I, for wonder at his woe, I shall forget the drop of anguish That scalds me now, that scalds me now.

Terryl L. Givens

#41. If you want to learn about money, learn from somebody who has a lot of it.

Charles J. Givens

#42. Joseph Smith, and this is not always fully appreciated within the tradition he initiated, did not feel that direct communication from God, gifts of seership, and an open, continuously expanding canon in any way obviated the need for theology.

Terryl L. Givens

#43. Sex and love are inseparable, like life and consciousness. - D. H. LAWRENCE

David Givens

#44. The English historian Thomas Carlyle defined a person's religion as the set of values evident in his or her actions, regardless of what the individual would claim to believe when asked.

Terryl L. Givens

#45. God is not exempt from emotional pain ... One the contrary, God's pain is as infinite as His love.

Terryl L. Givens

#46. The strength was always in you. All you had to do was find it.

Katherine Givens

#47. Heaven is not a club we enter. Heaven is a state we attain, in accordance with our "capacity to receive" a blessed and sanctified nature.

Terryl L. Givens

#48. Boyd looked at him now like he was trying to decide something in his mind.
"You'd shoot me, you get the chance?"
"You make me pull," Raylan said, "I'll put you down.

Elmore Leonard

#49. I'm one of the nicest, most fair people I know.

Robin Givens

#50. His lips were approaching hers, but she could not taste sin. Not yet. Not
until she knew the name of this golden haired man, so her soul could sing
his name for the rest of eternity.

Katherine Givens

#51. Thinking back on the outing to the theatre, she added, 'I want a man, not a preening peacock!

Katherine Givens

#52. Matter and spirit are of equal duration; both are self-existent, - they never began to exist.

Terryl L. Givens

#53. Women are superior to men in decoding nonverbal cues (Rosenthal and DePaulo 1979).

David B. Givens

#54. I was hit for the first time before I was married.

Robin Givens

#55. Success is the progressive, timely achievement of your stated goals.

Charles J. Givens

#56. In God's garden, we will continue to blossom differently. And in that difference, we find a chemistry and a harmony, a spark across the gap, that consumes us all.

Terryl L. Givens

#57. Honor to our ancestors.

Tyrone Givens

#58. To design the future effectively, you must first let go of your past.

Charles J. Givens

#59. Use the losses and failures of the past as a reason for action, not inaction.

Charles J. Givens

#60. What is always at stake in any decision we make is what that choice turns us into.

Terryl L. Givens

#61. The most terrifying specter that haunts the modern psyche is not death or disease or nuclear annihilation. It is loneliness.

Terryl L. Givens

#62. our present relationships are both the laboratory in which we labor to perfect ourselves and the source of that enjoyment that will constitute our true heaven.

Terryl L. Givens

#63. The more specific and measurable your goal, the more quickly you will be able to identify, locate, create, and implement the use of the necessary resources for its achievement.

Charles J. Givens

#64. In private life, human beings spend a great deal of time in seclusion behind closed doors (e.g., in bathrooms and bedrooms) and other partitions designed to shield their bodies from prying eyes. Scientists have determined that too much visual monitoring can be harmful to human health.

David B. Givens

#65. Achieve success in any area of life by identifying the optimum strategies and repeating them until they become habits.

Charles J. Givens

#66. Faith is lived, not thought.

Terryl L. Givens

#67. As surely as the dark gives meaning to the dawn, so does pain give meaning to pleasure, and sorrow to joy. All that we love, all that we strive for, all that we relish, we know only by contrast.

Terryl Givens

#68. Life's most wrenching choices are not between right and wrong but between competing demands on our time, our resources, our love and loyalty.

Terryl L. Givens

#69. It is only with hindsight that we can see the paradigms of the past for the intellectual straitjackets they were.

Terryl L. Givens

#70. She wondered what he looked like with his hat off and wondered again if he knew he was funny.

Elmore Leonard

#71. Angela turned in her chair. Resting her chin on folded hands, the
mirror reflected the look of a girl in love. 'Oh, what a blessing fate has
bestowed on me.

Katherine Givens

#72. Heaven is a condition and a sanctified nature toward which all godly striving tends; it is not a place to be found by walking through the right door with a heavenly hall pass.

Terryl L. Givens

#73. God is part of the universe, master architect but not master magician. In this conception, miracles do not represent, as they traditionally have, "the intervention of God in the natural order" or "the suspension of the natural order."10

Terryl L. Givens

#74. Time is simply the measurement of human progression against that of existence.

Gerald M. Givens

#75. The first and fundamental principle of our holy religion" to be free "to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men, or by the dominations of one another.

Terryl L. Givens

#76. Our minds are driven to answer questions that far transcend the bounds of our own lives.

Terryl L. Givens

#77. We decide ourselves whether to do right or wrong, whether to be good or evil. For some, it is fear that keeps them within the law, but for others it is a greater sense of good. I do not think any religion can make a person good, or protect a good person from bad happening to him.

Kathleen Givens

#78. We humans have a lamentable tendency to spend more time theorizing the reasons behind human suffering, than working to alleviate human suffering.

Terryl L. Givens

#79. You thinkin bout the time I shot you and you rose from the dead? It only happens once in your life." He turned to Carol again and she said:
"Were you actually aiming at his hat?"
"I hit it didn't I?

Elmore Leonard

#80. Those mortals who operate in the grey area between conviction and incredulity are in a position to choose most meaningfully, and with most meaningful consequences [ ... ] Perhaps only a doubter can appreciate the miracle of life without end.

Terryl L. Givens

#81. What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love.

Terryl L. Givens

#82. In the vision of Enoch, we find ourselves drawn to a God who prevents all the pain He can, assumes all the suffering He can, and weeps over the misery He can neither prevent nor assume.

Terryl L. Givens

#83. Success requires first expending ten units of effort to produce one unit of results. Your momentum will then produce ten units of results with each unit of effort.

Charles J. Givens

#84. led. On one occasion, he said emphatically, "I don't want you

Terryl L. Givens

#85. The gospel Christ taught was spectacularly designed to unsettle and disturb, not lull into pleasant serenity.

Terryl L. Givens

#86. If we are co-eternal with God, then it is not God's creation of the human out of nothing that defines our essential relationship to him. It is His freely made choice to inaugurate and sustain loving relationships, and our choice to reciprocate, that are at the core of our relationship to the Divine.

Terryl L. Givens

#87. Unlike most other facial signs of emotion, the smile is subject to learning and conscious control. In the U.S., Japan, and many other societies, children are taught to smile on purpose, e.g., in a courteous greeting, whether or not they actually feel happy.

David B. Givens