Defining Moments Quotes

The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It's our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.

It is said that history turns on small hinges. A human career, too, results from an accumulating series of decisions about large and small matters over a period of years. But the catch is that you can never know when a seemingly small decision may prove to be, from the vantage of later years, the big decision of your life.

I think you only see experiences as defining moments with distance.

The measure of a man comes down to moments, spread out like dots of pain on the canvas on life. Everything you were, everything you'll someday be, resides in the small, seemingly ordinary choices of everyday life.....Each decision seems as insignificant as a left turn on an unfamiliar road when you have no destination in mind. But the decisions accumulate until you realize one day that they've made you the man that you are.

Everyone's got a moment or two in their life where something happens and you make a decision and then your entire life changes.

It's hard to define somebody by one movie. I mean, unfortunately, my entire life was basically made by Billy Elliot. It was kind of created by that one catalytic moment.

Life is not a continuous process, there's some sort of finite number of achievements that defines your life.

It's not what you achieve, it's what you overcome. That's what defines your career.

It's in the struggle itself that you define yourself.

As you go through life, there are thousands of little forks in the road, and there are a few really big forks-those moments of reckoning, moments of truth.

It's a legacy thing, and when it's all said and done, I want to leave a legacy in whatever way. If not, if it's helping the division, if it's fighting big names, I just want to be remembered as one of the greatest all-time to ever do this in the sport. That's just what I want to do.

Tommy Hearns seemed like an indestructible machine, so to beat him, I think that was my defining moment, the pinnacle.

What you do, what you say, how you react to critical situations defines not just the moment, but it defines and shapes you.

Some of the choices in life will choose you. How you face those choices, these turns in the road, with what kind of attitude, more than the choices themselves, is what will define the context of your life.

I am very interested in the small decisions people make that do set you on a different road in your life. As much as we have influence over what kind of person we're going to become, there are little tests along the way.

There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul.

My life comes down to three moments: the death of my father, meeting my husband, and the birth of my daughter. Everything I did previous to that just doesn't seem to add up to very much.

People tend to think that big things only happen to big people ... I think that is not true. The small decisions we make every day define who we are and define the world around us. ... But I bet to you there is a decision every day in your life where you affect somebody else.

Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.

Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.

There are defining moments in one's life when you learn about yourself, and you deposit that knowledge in the experience account, so you can draw on it at some later date.

by now you've already formed your own impression. you believe that an act committed a lifetime ago defines a man, or you believe that a person's past has nothing to do with his future. you think i am either a hero, or a monster. maybe knowning more about circumstances will make you think differently about me, but it won't change what happened twenty-eight years ago.

Every decision you make - every decision - is not a decision about what to do. It's a decision about Who You Are. When you see this, when you understand it, everything changes. You begin to see life in a new way. All events, occurrences, and situations turn into opportunities to do what you came here to do.

There are moments that define a person's whole life. Moments in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become balance on a single decision. Life and death, hope and despair, victory and failure teeter precariously on the decision made at that moment. These are moments ungoverned by happenstance, untroubled by luck. These are the moments in which a person earns the right to live, or not.

There has been one defining production for me in each decade.