Settling Quotes

“Sometimes it takes a heartbreak to shake us awake & help us see we are worth so much more than we're settling for.”
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass

“This is what I know. Don't settle for 40, 50, or even 80 percent. A relationship-it shouldn't be too small or too tight or even a little scratchy. It shouldn't take up space in your closet out of guilty conscience or convenience or a moment of desire. Do you hear me? It shold be perfect for you. It should be lasting. Wait. wait for 100 percent.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“Once you embrace your value, talents and strengths, it neutralizes when others think less of you.”
― Rob Liano

“Ten years from now, make sure you can say that you CHOSE your life, you didn’t SETTLE for it.”
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass

“If you don't know what you want, you'll never find it.
If you don't know what you deserve, you'll always settle for less.
You will wander aimlessly, uncomfortably numb in your comfort zone, wondering how life has ended up here.

Life starts now, live, love, laugh and let your light shine!”
― Rob Liano

“Single |sin•gle| (adjective) - Too fabulous to settle.”
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass

“The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.”
― Thomas Merton

“Best way to live in California is to be from somewheres else.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

“What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you--if you happen to be me--with homecoming queens first, then girls next door, and finally anybody who might be pleased to see you now and then at the dinner table and in bed on occasion. You look up from reading the newspaper and realize that no one loves you, and no one burns for you.”
― Charles Baxter, El festín del amor

“I felt I was drawing close to that age, that place in life, where you realize one day what you'd told yourself was a Zen detachment turns out to be naked fear. You'd had one serious love relationship in your life and it had ended in tragedy, and the tragedy had broken something inside you. But instead of trying to repair the broken place, or at least really stop and look at it, you skated and joked. You had friends, you were a decent citizen. You hurt no one. And your life was somehow just about half of what it could be.”
― Roland Merullo, A Little Love Story

“There are guys who grow up thinking they'll settle down some distant time in the future, and there are guys who are ready for marriage as soon as they meet the right person. The former bore me, mainly because they're pathetic; and the latter, quite frankly, are hard to find. But it's the serious ones I'm interested in, and it takes time to find a guy like that whom I'm equally interested in. I mean, if the relationship can't survive the long term, why on earth would it be worth my time and energy for the short term?”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song

“Those rabbits stopped fighting the system, because it was easier to take the loss of freedom, to forget what it was like before the fence kept them in, than to be out there in the world struggling to find shelter and food. They had decided that the loss of some was worth the temporary comfort of many.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“You may marry Miss Grey for her fifteen pounds but you will always be my Willoughby. My nightmare. My sorrow. My past. My mistake. My regret. My love.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Conformity begins the moment you ignore how you feel for acceptance.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“There is a difference between giving into something and accepting it.”
― Elise Broach, Shakespeare's Secret

“Gratitude was never meant to be an excuse for giving up on the obstacles God has put before you. Some of the most magical things he can bring us require faith and a lot of planning.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Don't worry about not doing" it "perfectly right now. It's ok, just keep at it, you will soon settle in it and then you'll be glad you didn't give up.”
― TemitOpe Ibrahim

“Everyone knows a wife and kids tie you down. What people miss sometimes is that mates, the proper kind, they do the same just as hard. Mates mean you've settled, made your bargain: this, wherever you are together, this is as far as you're going, ever. This is your stop; this is where you get off.”
― Tana French, The Secret Place

“Perfect doesn't exist for people like us, Bartholomew. Passable. That's what I want. Just simply passable. If I could have a passable existence, I think I'd be very grateful.”
― Matthew Quick, The Good Luck of Right Now

“And that fear I'd felt, the disembodying confusion, seemed to be a drug I was now addicted to, because moving through the ordinary world- watching CNN, reading the Times, walking to Sant Ambroeus to have a coffee at the bar- made me feel exhausted, even depressed. Perhaps I was suffering from the same problem as the man who'd sailed around the world and now on land, facing his farmhouse, his wife and kids, understood that the constancy of home stretching out before him like a dry flat field was infinitely more terrifying than any violent squall with thirty-foot swells.”
― Marisha Pessl, Night Film

“Every bit of evidence would suggest that the will to be moving is as old as mankind. Take the people in the Old Testament. They were always on the move. First, it's Adam and Eve moving out of Eden. Then it's Cain condemned to be a restless wanderer, Noah drifting on the waters of the Flood, and Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt toward the Promised Land. Some of these figures were out of the Lord's favor and some of them were in it, but all of them were on the move. And as far as the New Testament goes, Our Lord Jesus Christ was what they call a peripatetic--someone who'salwaysgoing from place to place--whether on foot, on the back of a donkey, or on the wings of angels.

But the proof of the will to move is hardly limited to the pages of the Good Book. Any child of ten can tell you that getting-up-and-going is topic number one in the record of man's endeavors. Take that big red book that Billy is always lugging around. It's got twenty-six stories in it that have come down through the ages and almost every one of them is about some man going somewhere. Napoleon heading off on one of his conquests, or King Arthur in search of the Holy Grail. Some of the men in the book are figures from history and some from fancy, but whether real or imagined, almost every one of them is on his way to someplace different from where he started.

So, if the will to move is as old as mankind and every child can tell you so, what happens to a man like my father? What switch is flicked in the hallway of his mind that takes the God-given will for motion and transforms it into the will for staying put?

It isn't due to a loss of vigor. For the transformation doesn't come when men like my father are growing old and infirm. It comes when they are hale, hearty, and at the peak of their vitality. If you asked them what brought about the change, they will cloak it in the language of virtue. They will tell you that the American Dream is to settle down, raise a family, and make an honest living. They'll speak with pride of their ties to the community through the church and the Rotary and the chamber of commerce, and all other manner of stay-puttery.

But maybe, I was thinking as I was driving over the Hudson River, just maybe the will to stay put stems not from a man's virtues but from his vices. After all, aren't gluttony, sloth, and greed all about staying put? Don't they amount to sitting deep in a chair where you can eat more, idle more, and want more? In a way, pride and envy are about staying put too. For just as pride is founded on what you've built up around you, envy is founded on what your neighbor has built across the street. A man's home may be his castle, but the moat, it seems to me, is just as good at keeping people in as it is at keeping people out.”
― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“In fact I’ve settled into my monotonous life pretty well, only feeling the urge to rip my hair out about once a week now.”
― Kasie West, The Distance Between Us

“Although a lot of times I wished I could have a “normal” relationship. My soul just wouldn’t let me settle for anything that would require taking a linear path instead of a sensual path to be sustainable or “successful.”
― Lebo Grand

“I don’t settle. Or more accurately, I can’t. To settle is to abandon great things to the death of smaller things. It is to desert what could have been for what never should have been. To settle is to bargain away the wildly rich abilities of our humanity in a ruinous trade-off for a lackluster existence. Settling is to declare an indefensible surrender to the evils of mediocrity at the expense of God’s resplendent and wholly viable vision for this existence of ours. No, I don’t settle because I can’t. And the fact is, neither can you. Therefore, I would suggest that you begin settling your life squarely on the reality that settling is far too unsettling to settle for.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“That’s what worries me. You are so eager to get to the next phase of life that you’re willing to settle.” She shakes her head, moving her finger back and forth. “Actually, I take that back. I’m not sure if you’re settling or not. One minute, I think Justin’s the perfect guy for you, and I tell myself to relax, and then the next minute, there are twenty thousand red flags, and it’s all I can do to keep my mouth shut and not warn you.”
― Kortney Keisel, The Holiday Stand-In

“Knowing when to say NO and not go against those same principles should be your voice of reason”
― David Sikhosana, Time Value of Money: Timing Income

“Your agency bio states that you’re looking for great books but life is hard, Alister Tylte, and sometimes you have to settle for what you can get. Sometimes you’re someone’s McGill, but sometimes you’re their safety school, and that’s okay. I believe my book is a book, and you should probably be satisfied with that for your list.”
― Zilla Novikov, Query

“I would not settle for less than I had to give.
I laughed instead”
― Sue Lynn Tan, Daughter of the Moon Goddess

“It is quite easy to settle with feeling helpless in life, but this doesn’t have to be your reality. Fight those intrusive thoughts and consistently remind yourself that you can make anything happen. You are the Alchemist. Do not forget this.”
― Robin S. Baker

“I'm afraid of settling into this quiet and comfortable life, and afraid to have lived without being aware of it.”
― Annie Ernaux, The Years