Jean Rostand Quotes

The only reason I'm coming out here tomorrow is the schedule says I have to.

I don't do what I do willingly, but I have to do it.

Fighting is not something that I enjoy doing. It's something that I do that I feel that I have to do.

It is not a matter of desire, but of coercion and duty.

I didn't want to write a book. They made me do it.

I am conscious each time I ask a question that there is a deep resentment in the heart of the railroad official at being compelled to answer; but that he is compelled to, he recognizes.

It is never easy to cleanly distinguish freedom and duty, consent and bondage, choice and compulsion.

My father and brother always forced me to work out, and I never liked doing it.

I don't like dragging people.

I did not want to write, but I had to resign myself to it in the end.

All life is the struggle, the effort to be itself.

Chacun peut e prouver en soi ce double mouvement: de s ir de s'inte grer a' la socie te , besoin de se re aliser par soi-me" me en dehors d'elle. We all have this double impulse within ourselves: the desire to integrate into society, and the need to fulfil ourselves outside of it, through our own efforts.

Obligation is thraldom, and thraldom is hateful.

That least pleases us which is most urged on us.

I have moments that aren't too bad, but there's always something I'm struggling with, or feeling guilty about. I just figured I needed to try harder, but I find it difficult to sustain that motivation.

It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were. When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows.

What's worth doing even if you fail?

I would stare at the grains of light suspended in that silent space, struggling to see into my own heart. What did I want? And what did others want from me? But I could never find the answers. Sometimes I would reach out and try to grasp the grains of light, but my fingers touched nothing.

Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else.

I will guarantee you that the day you step outside your comfort zone by making success your goal is the day you discover that adversity, risk, and daring will make life sweeter than you ever imagined.

Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

Ironically, gratitude's most powerful mysteries are often revealed when we are struggling in the midst of personal turmoil.

If there is no destiny, there is no design. There's only life and death. My goal is to learn about life by living it, not by trying to figure out a cryptic plan that the Creator had in store for me.

I'm one of the people that when I wake up I have to do what I do. It's not like I want to do it. I kind of have to do it.

Where does the ego get its energy? The ego feeds off your desire to be something else. You are poor and you want to be rich - the ego is absorbing energy, its life-breath. You are ignorant and you want to become a wise one - the ego is absorbing energy. You are a wretched nobody and you want to become powerful - the ego is absorbing energy.