Deserving It Quotes

• No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it.

  Richard Bach

  Inspirational, Matter, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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• Accept yourself as you are. Otherwise you will never see opportunity. You will not feel free to move toward it; you will feel you are not deserving.

  Maxwell Maltz

  Self Esteem, Moving, Opportunity

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• For much of the female half of the world, food is the first signal of our inferiority. It lets us know that our own families may consider female bodies to be less deserving, less needy, less valuable.

  Gloria Steinem

  Food, Feminist, May

  Gloria Steinem (2017). “Passion, Politics, and Everyday Activism: Collected Essays: Moving Beyond Words; Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions; and Revolution from Within”, p.855, Open Road Media

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• Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face - for me that would be deserving of an award.

  Elfriede Jelinek

  Awards, Expression, Would Be

  Interview with Marika Griehsel, www.nobelprize.org. November, 2004.

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• Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.

  Hermann Hesse

  Hate, People, Helping

  Hermann Hesse (1969). “Gertrude”

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• I was asked the other day if I would be interested in the Nobel Prize, but I think that for me it would be an absolute catastrophe. I would certainly be interested in deserving it, but to
  receive it would be terrible. It would just complicate even more the problems of fame. The only thing I really regret in life is not having a daughter.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Daughter, Regret, Thinking

  "Gabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69". Interviewed with Peter H. Stone. Issue 82, p. 339, www.theparisreview.org. Winter 1981.

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• Among the writers of all ages, some deserve fame, and have it; others neither have nor deserve it; some have it, not deserving it; others, though deserving it, yet totally miss it, or have it not equal to their deserts.

  John Milton

  Missing, Age, Desert

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• To speak evil of any one, unless there is unequivocal proofs of their deserving it, is an injury for which there is no adequate reparation.

  George Washington

  Evil, Gossip, Adequate

  George Washington (1860). “Recollections and private memoirs of Washington by his adopted son George Washington with a memoir of the author by his daughter; and illustrative and explanatory notes by Benson J. Loosing: With illustrations”, p.76

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• Do it the hard way! Think ahead of your job. Then nothing in the world can keep the job ahead from reaching out for you. Do it better than it need be done. Next time doing it will be child's play. Let no one or anything stand between you and the difficult task, let nothing deny you this rich chance to gain strength by adversity, confidence by mastery, success by deserving it. Do it better each time. Do it better than anyone else can do it. I know this sounds old-fashioned. It is, but it has built the world.

  Harlow Curtice

  Jobs, Children, Adversity

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• Nobody knows what you want except you. And nobody will be as sorry as you if you don't get it. Wanting some other way to live is proof enough of deserving it. Having it is hard work, but not having it is sheer hell.

  Lillian Hellman

  Sorry, Hard Work, Way To Live

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• Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. If it follow them it is well, but they will not deviate to follow it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Greatness, Mind, Applause

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.15

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• Better to deserve praise without having it, than to have it without deserving it.

  Ivan Panin

  Praise, Deserve, Deserving

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• The way to secure success is to be more anxious about obtaining than about deserving it.

  William Hazlitt

  Success, Achievement, Way

  William Hazlitt (1857). “The Miscellaneous Works of William Hazlitt”, p.223

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• They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)

  John Steinbeck

  Dark, Past, People

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.143, Penguin

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• Fear of success is far more dangerous than fear of failure, because the subconscious mind works to prevent that which it fears. People may fear success because of low self-esteem and feeling of not deserving it; because it will increase what others expect of them. Fear of success shows up as anxiety, indecision, avoidance, procrastination or acceptance of mediocrity.

  Joe Tye

  Self Esteem, Procrastination, Acceptance

  Joe Tye (2000). “Personal Best: 1001 Great Ideas for Achieving Success in Your Career”, Mjf Books

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