Quotes About Just Going Through The Motions

#1. I don't want to be overly dramatic about it, but I think people more and more wonder, is this living, or are we just going through the motions? What's happening? Is everything being leached out of life? Is the whole texture and values and everything kind of draining away?

John Zerzan

#2. Obviously there are times with acting when exactly what is required is just going through the motions, and when doing nothing is the best thing. But at other times, you have to make that leap beyond the immediate environment of people putting up lights on the set.

Christian Bale

#3. If we put our soul into our work, if, rather than just going through the motions, what we do flows from the deepest part of our being, then after a burst of creativity, we need to replenish our souls.

Harold S. Kushner

#4. 'The Count' wasn't a real stretch. I was doing pretty generic Bela Lugosi bad vampire on purpose. It was supposed to be lame. I didn't put fangs on; it was a guy who was just going through the motions. I drew on the widow's peak with eyebrow pencil and wore a turtleneck, not a tux.

Joe Flaherty

#5. Most injuries happen when you're not motivated, too, and you're forcing yourself to do something. Your mind's not aligned with your body and you're just going through the motions. That's when you're most likely to get injured.

Chris Sharma

#6. One thing I cannot stand is when people say, 'Hi, how are you?' and they don't wait to hear how I am. They're just going through the motions. I say to people: 'Keep it human. Keep it alive. Don't turn into a robot.' You have to hear what the other person is saying clearly.

Judith Jamison

#7. When I was practicing psychology, I used to tell myself if I ever get to where I'm just doing this for the money or I'm just going through the motions, I'll quit.

Phil McGraw

#8. I tried synchronized swimming, but felt, over time, I was just going through the motions.

Dana Gould

#9. I feel like I'm living my life instead of just getting by. I'm doing something, being somebody. Before this ... I was just going through the motions. Now I am the motion.

Karina Halle

#10. Generally, I think people are just going through the motions now. There's so much stuff that people are doing today that has already been done. I kind of like that new Savages record, but I don't know why they take themselves so seriously.

Zachary Cole Smith

#11. When I go to a show, all I really want is to hear a performance that sounds legitimate, and not just going through the motions. I'm not sure any amount of jumping up and down really persuades me in either direction.

Dan Bejar

#12. I am very aware now that music is a business, but there is also a way to go about making music that is true to yourself as opposed to doing, you know, just going through the motions and making things that would just be commercially successful.

Ronnie Montrose

#13. There is no doubt in the sanctity of Mecca, but a donkey won't become a Hajj pilgrim by just going through the motions.

Rahman Baba

#14. Existing is going through the motions of life with no zeal and feeling you have no control; living means embracing all that this large world has to offer and not being afraid to take chances. The beauty of living is knowing you can always start over and there's always a chance for something better.

J'son M. Lee

#15. The short time we actually focus on today's journey is often wasted on complaining, grumbling, wishing to be in a different place, or simply and mindlessly going through the motions of life.

Lysa TerKeurst

#16. Thus thou must use to keep thyself to the first motions and apprehensions of things, as they present themselves outwardly; and add not unto them from within thyself through mere conceit and opinion.

Marcus Aurelius

#17. Beavers bred in captivity, inhabiting a concrete pool, will, if given the timber, fatuously go through all the motions of damming an ancestral stream.

Evelyn Waugh

#18. We belittle God when we go through the outward motions of worship and take no pleasure in His person.

John Piper

#19. For a long time, there was grief. It pulled me down into suffocating darkness, and kept me anchored there. I went through the motions. I turned up at school. I ate food and watched TV and took algebra tests. But I didn't feel anything. It was easier that way.

Lili Wilkinson

#20. Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.

Tom Robbins

#21. I worry about getting work, and then when I get it, I worry about doing it well. I don't want to just go through the motions and give people stuff. This stuff is really important to me.

Harvey Pekar

#22. What gets me upset about with the newer players is their lack of intensity. They tend to go through the motions a little bit. They don't understand that you've got to practice the way you play.

Al Kaline

#23. He went through the old motions of his life, taking care of what needed caring for, keeping mostly quiet about what was on his mind. But his hard waiting changed him; you could see it in his face.

Wendell Berry

#24. The thing that most people didn't understand, if they weren't in his line if work, was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone forever. The difference was that the rape victim still had to go through the motions of being alive.

Jodi Picoult

#25. I don't want people to remember me going through the motions.

Bobby Rahal

#26. No one ever got ahead by going through the motions. You have to constantly be improving yourself. Make your life the masterpiece you want it to be.

Queen Latifah

#27. It is essential to learn to enjoy life. It really does not make sense to go through the motions of existence if one does not appreciate as much of it as possible.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#28. I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat.

Pierre Trudeau

#29. Life is full of what-ifs. You can't let it hold you back. If you do, you're not really living at all . . . just kind of going through the motions with no meaning.

Bethany Hamilton

#30. I also could see myself as a stand-up comedian, a fashion designer (for people of all sizes), a hairdresser, an earnest and eventually burnt-out politician, or the owner of a small bistro. But I fear that, without poetry, I would have simply been going through the motions.

Denise Duhamel

#31. Too many sit at the banquet table of the gospel of Jesus Christ and merely nibble at the feast placed before them. They go through the motions - attending their meetings perhaps, glancing at scriptures, repeating familiar prayers - but their hearts are far away.

Joseph B. Wirthlin

#32. Sometimes Chris wished he could sneak a peek at the back of the book, so to speak, and see how it was all going to turn out, so that he wouldn't have to bother going through the motions.

Jodi Picoult

#33. This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at work - they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting strength into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night, perhaps.

Frederick Law Olmsted

#34. We cannot keep our eyes focused on Jesus while our greed lusts for worldly security. We may go through the motions, but eventually the misplaced priority of worldliness will corrode the soul's joy.

Tony Reinke

#35. But the frat boys were all frivolous and idiotic in our minds now, a bunch of conformist fools going through the motions of hip.

Bill Ayers

#36. I felt wrapped in a fog of dull pain that hurt only enough to remind me that it, too, was without purpose, and there seemed no point to going through the empty motions of breakfast, the long slow drive to work, no reason at all beyond the slavery of habit. But

Jeff Lindsay

#37. Attempting to write vocal oriented songs to me felt like going through the motions and if you are going to go through the motions you might as well just do any gig that caused you to do repetitive motions like banging a hammer or serving fries.

Ronnie Montrose

#38. But what I found out that summer ... was that I could swallow whatever hit me and let it sink as if nothing had happened. So I mimicked a game that meant nothing to me now, I was going through the motions, and then it looked as if what I was doing had a purpose, but it did not.

Per Petterson

#39. In Hollywood, you're always playing roles ... It's like going through the motions. But in real life, it's like, you gotta take care of business. It's not just the movies.

Mickey Rourke

#40. I just get a feeling sometimes that everything is predetermined, and I am going through the motions of tracing an existence that will be what it will already be.

Reif Larsen

#41. You did the best you could," and she seemed to believe I had.
I said, "I've just been going through the motions," using the expression my father had after he'd watched my first tennis lesson.
"Sweetie," she said, "that's what a lot of life is.

Melissa Bank

#42. I don't see her anymore. We don't even go through the motions. Ozren had been right about one thing: some stories just don't have happy endings.

Geraldine Brooks

#43. I still felt we had some really good music on that record, but it's a shame that we couldn't make it better. And the tour was a total mess. We just had no life, no energy, and I felt we were going through the motions.

Matt Cameron

#44. Go through the proper motions each day and you'll soon begin to feel the corresponding emotions!

George W. Crane

#45. In a sense, touring is crazy. You go city to city playing the show over and over again. But there's something magic about being in front of people, so it's not like going through the motions every night. It's a different experience.

G-Eazy

#46. We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become.

Lauren DeStefano

#47. I used to come to practice and go through the motions. I don't do that anymore. I look forward to practices. I even enjoy the windsprints.

Carson Palmer

#48. So Sona does what he has perfected: he becomes two persons, an outer one that goes through the motions required of him, and an inner one that is the true, pure he.

Neel Mukherjee

#49. You know your vote doesn't count, but you go through the motions, because it's been drummed into your head that you might be the one person who makes a difference.

Marshall Karp

#50. So many people never pause long enough to make up their minds about basic issues of life and death. It's quite possible to go through your whole life, making the mechanical motions of living, adopting as your own sets of ideas you've come to any conclusion for yourself as to what life is all about.

Catherine Marshall

#51. For it is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions through careful and expert study.

Nicolaus Copernicus

#52. I really try as hard as I can on the show. If people can't see my face, if they can't see my sweat beads or at least that I'm struggling, that I'm not just pretending or going through the motions, then who can blame them for thinking that it's some kind of ridiculous piss-take?

John Maus

#53. I've never been so empty in my life. You took my soul with you. You took my heart. I'm this empty shell who goes through the motions every day, waiting for you to call me. Waiting until you answer my calls.

Abbi Glines

#54. Hey, Wait a Minute!
The best way to control a people is to create
a fascist system of government
that goes through the motions of democracy.
Hey, wait a minute!
That's called America.

Beryl Dov

#55. I go through the motions of living in society

Wendy Rose

#56. True education is limited to those people who would die without knowing, whereas the masses in the institutions are merely going through the motions, for education is a way of living.

Bryant H. McGill

#57. There are certain things that can be asked that get me excited. It's never a thing where I think I'm too good, I'm just the type of person who likes to be enlightened. I don't like to go through the motions.

Wale

#58. Spirit, faith, and positive energy are the core of human life, without them you lose your way. You live without Zest. You go through the motions but there's no passion

Lee Bolman

#59. Against filling the Heavens with fluid Mediums, unless they be exceeding rare, a great Objection arises from the regular and very lasting Motions of the Planets and Comets in all manner of Courses through the Heavens.

Isaac Newton

#60. There is a feeling of disbelief that comes over you, that takes over, and you kind of go through the motions. You do what you're supposed to do, but in fact you're not there at all.

Frederick Barthelme

#61. It's as if they'd heard that there are values one is supposed to honor and this is what one does to honor them
so they went through the motions, like ghosts pulled by some sort of distant echoes from a better age.

Ayn Rand

#62. You weren't created to simply exist, to endure, or to go through the motions; you were created to be really alive.

Joel Osteen

#63. Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?

John Donne

#64. She thought the jimster (Jack Daniels) would cure whatever was wrong with her- whatever made her feel like she was in a hall of mirrors, watching herself go through the motions of having a riotous good time

Lucinda Rosenfeld

#65. There is an inner perfection
the same for everyone.
The psyche may go through the motions,
but it's journey is done.

Ivan M. Granger

#66. The last thing I want is for people to go through the motions in life. We're all meant to do different things, but there's a lot of opportunity for us to do some great things.

Apolo Ohno

#67. As we do at such times I turned on my automatic pilot and went through the motions of normalcy on the outside, so that I could concentrate all my powers on surviving the near-mortal wound inside.

Sonia Johnson

#68. I don't wanna go throught the motions
I don't wanna go one more day
Without your all-consuming
Passion inside of me
I don't wanna spend my whole life asking
What if I had given everything?
Instead of going through the motions.

Matthew West

#69. People can't change. We're pre-programmed robots going through the motions. We're the same at death as we are at birth.

J. Matthew Nespoli

#70. The universe is full of men going through the same motions in the same surroundings, but carrying within themselves, and projecting around them, universes as mutually remote as the constellations.

Emmanuel Mounier