145 Preparation Quotes

The first task of the Magician in every ceremony is therefore to render his Circle absolutely impregnable.

When you're talking about fighting, as it is, with no rules, well then, baby you'd better train every part of your body!

And we will be ready, at the end of every day will be ready, will not say no to anything, will try to stay awake while everyone is sleeping, will not sleep, will make the shoes with the elves, will breathe deeply all the time, breathe in all the air full of glass and nails and blood, will breathe it and drink it, so rich, so when it comes we will not be angry, will be content, tired enough to go, gratefully, will shake hands with everyone, bye, bye, and then pack a bag, some snacks, and go to the volcano.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.

No performer should attempt to bite off red-hot iron unless he has a good set of teeth.

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

Life doesn't give you all the practice races you need.

One chance is all you need.

When the sun shineth, make hay.

Chance generally favors the prudent.

Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.

Chance is always powerful. Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.

The lamp burns bright when wick and oil are clean.

You get recessions, you have stock market declines. If you don't understand that's going to happen, then you're not ready, you won't do well in the markets.

The student who would build his knowledge on solid foundations, and proceed by just degrees to the pinnacles of truth, is directed by the great philosopher of France to begin by doubting of his own existence. In like manner, whoever would complete any arduous and intricate enterprise, should, as soon as his imagination can cool after the first blaze of hope, place before his own eyes every possible embarrassment that may retard or defeat him. He should first question the probability of success, and then endeavour to remove the objections that he has raised.

You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them.

I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it.

When I was a fetus, I used to sneak out at night when my mother was sleeping. I figured I should start stealing stuff while I still had no fingerprints.

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young.

My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.

I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Book of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since.

The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.

The empire of Saturnus is gone by; Lord of the secret birth of things is he; Within the lap of earth, and in the depths Of the imagination dominates; And his are all things that eschew the light. The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance, For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now, And the dark work, complete of preparation, He draws by force into the realm of light. Now must we hasten on to action, ere The scheme, and most auspicious positure Parts o'er my head, and takes once more its flight, For the heaven's journey still, and adjourn not.

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, 'I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway.'

'The best research [for playing a drunk] is being a British actor for 20 years.'

I must say that acting was good training for the political life that lay ahead of us.

I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake- which I also keep handy.

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that is comes early.

I believe that the best way to prepare fore for a Future Life is to be kind, live one day at a time, and do the work you can do best, doing it as well as you can.

If man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively. For people to have more time to read, to take part in their civic obligations, to know more about how their government functions and who their officials are might mean in a democracy a great improvement in the democratic processes. Let's begin, then, to think how we can prepare old and young for these new opportunities. Let's not wait until they come upon us suddenly and we have a crisis that we will be ill prepared to meet. (5 November 1958)

The only thing a commander ever truly controls is his own army - training, morale, trust, initiative, command and, to a lesser degree, supply, placement, movement, loyalty, and courage in battle. The commander must be able to change his plans abruptly when obstacles or opportunities appear. If his army isn't ready and willing to respond to his will, his cleverness comes to nothing

Brace yo'self foo!

Fields reloading!

I dressed up for the CD

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

'One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.'

'The ideal attitude is to be physically loose and mentally tight.'

We should always be prepared for future technologies, because otherwise they will come along and clobber us.

I am prepared for the worst, but hope the best.

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.

All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call 'chicken shit drilling'. That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come.

From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

Before I speak, I have something important to say.

The challenge was to capture the stillness of him. I have kind of semi-frantic, nervous energy. Harnessing that was something I thought I'd have to work out. Shooting in the wilderness, the stillness became like this innate quality.

'Harpists spend 90% of their time tuning their harps and 10% playing out of tune.'

Rochester: [checking his equipment] Shaving cream, brush, razor, smelling salts.

Bob Hope: Let's not do any jokes we didn't plan on, eh.

This is an issue couples have to be straight on and agree on before they walk down that aisle; otherwise there is no way their marriage will survive.

Since I am coming to that holy room, Where, with thy choir of saints forevermore, I shall be made thy music; as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before.

Man needs to suffer. When he does not have real griefs he creates them. Griefs purify and prepare him.

General Kurt Student was a German of the almost obsessively meticulous order and was determined to ensure that every unit involved in the forthcoming operation was kept fully briefed.

Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares.

As for extraordinary things, all the provision in the world would not suffice.

I accept I might be defeated, but caught in surprise, never.

I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

If I always appear prepared, it is because before entering an undertaking, I have meditated long and have foreseen what might occur. It is not genius where reveals to me suddenly and secretly what I should do in circumstances unexpected by others; it is thought and preparation.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

He's engaged to be married to Stiffy Byng, and his long years of football should prove an excellent preparation for setting up house with her. The way I look at it is that when a fellow has had plug-uglies in cleated boots doing a Shuffle-off-to-Buffalo on his face Saturday after Saturday since he was a slip of a boy, he must get to fear nothing, not even marriage with a girl like Stiffy, who from early childhood has seldom let the sun go down without starting some loony enterprise calculated to bleach the hair of one and all.

In tranquillo esse quisque gubernator potest.

Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

Avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry. N.B.: Circumstances can force your hand. So think ahead!

'Tain't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.

Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and cultivate it well.

The gunslinger waited for the time of the drawing and dreamed his long dreams of the Dark Tower, to which he would someday come at dusk and approach, winding his horn, to do some unimaginable final battle.

I know we have still done very little, and that the main tasks still lie ahead of us. I would say that we have just completed a year of preparation in which the conditions for a new environment have been created.

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

Proper preparation prevents poor performance

...why did we wait for any thing?--why not seize the pleasure at once?--How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

Suppose you wanted to kill people. You would need to know ahead of time how to do it. That part is not too difficult. There are many ways. Some of them are better than others. Most of them have drawbacks. So you use what knowledge you've got, and you invent a new way. You think, and you think, and you think, and you come up with the perfect method. You pay a lot of attention to the setup. Because the perfect method is not an easy method, and careful preparation is very important. But that stuff is meat and potatoes to you. You have no problem with careful preparation. No problem at all. How could you, with your intelligence? After all your training? You know the big problems will come afterward. How do you make sure you get away with it? You use your knowledge. You know more than most people about how the cops work. You've seen them on duty many times, sometimes close-up. You know what they look for. So you don't leave anything for them to find. You go through it all in your head, very precisely and very exactly and very carefully. Just as carefully as you would mark the play card you knew for sure was going to win you a fortune.

We should provide in peace what we need in war

Mozart wrote everything with such ease and speed as might at first be taken for carelessness or haste. His imagination held before him the whole work clear and lively once it was conceived. One seldom finds in his scores improved or erased passages. ~ Franz Niemetschek

Train hard, fight easy.