Ends Quotes

“Ends are not bad things, they just mean that something else is about to begin. And there are many things that don't really end, anyway, they just begin again in a new way. Ends are not bad and many ends aren't really an ending; some things are never-ending.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Death doesn't exist. It never did, it never will. But we've drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we've got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“Your heart’s strength is measured by how hard it holds on. Your self worth and faith is measured by finally letting go. However, your peace is measured by how long you don’t look back.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“I will see you in the stars.”
― Amie Kaufman, Aurora's End

“Reader: Will you not admit that you are arguing against yourself? You know that what the English obtained in their own country they obtained by using brute force. I know you have argued that what they have obtained is useless, but that does not affect my argument. They wanted useless things and they got them. My point is that their desire was fulfilled. What does it matter what means they adopted? Why should we not obtain our goal, which is good, by any means whatsoever, even by using violence? Shall I think of the means when I have to deal with a thief in the house? My duty is to drive him out anyhow. You seem to admit that we have received nothing, and that we shall receive nothing by petitioning. Why, then, may we do not so by using brute force? And, to retain what we may receive we shall keep up the fear by using the same force to the extent that it may be necessary. You will not find fault with a continuance of force to prevent a child from thrusting its foot into fire. Somehow or other we have to gain our end.

Editor: Your reasoning is plausible. It has deluded many. I have used similar arguments before now. But I think I know better now, and I shall endeavour to undeceive you. Let us first take the argument that we are justified in gaining our end by using brute force because the English gained theirs by using similar means. It is perfectly true that they used brute force and that it is possible for us to do likewise, but by using similar means we can get only the same thing that they got. You will admit that we do not want that. Your belief that there is no connection between the means and the end is a great mistake. Through that mistake even men who have been considered religious have committed grievous crimes. Your reasoning is the same as saying that we can get a rose through planting a noxious weed. If I want to cross the ocean, I can do so only by means of a vessel; if I were to use a cart for that purpose, both the cart and I would soon find the bottom. "As is the God, so is the votary", is a maxim worth considering. Its meaning has been distorted and men have gone astray. The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree; and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree. I am not likely to obtain the result flowing from the worship of God by laying myself prostrate before Satan. If, therefore, anyone were to say : "I want to worship God; it does not matter that I do so by means of Satan," it would be set down as ignorant folly. We reap exactly as we sow. The English in 1833 obtained greater voting power by violence. Did they by using brute force better appreciate their duty? They wanted the right of voting, which they obtained by using physical force. But real rights are a result of performance of duty; these rights they have not obtained. We, therefore, have before us in English the force of everybody wanting and insisting on his rights, nobody thinking of his duty. And, where everybody wants rights, who shall give them to whom? I do not wish to imply that they do no duties. They don't perform the duties corresponding to those rights; and as they do not perform that particular duty, namely, acquire fitness, their rights have proved a burden to them. In other words, what they have obtained is an exact result of the means they adapted. They used the means corresponding to the end. If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to fight for it; if I want to buy your watch, I shall have to pay you for it; and if I want a gift, I shall have to plead for it; and, according to the means I employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation. Thus we see three different results from three different means. Will you still say that means do not matter?”
― Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas K

“Do not grieve when something good ends, be glad that it happened.”
― Jeffrey Fry

“Thus, you see, he arrived at the same end, via supposed duty, that he was previously pledged to via interest. I fancy a good number of us, when any line of action will promote our own interest, can make ourselves believe that reasons exist which compel us to it as a duty.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, My Lady Ludlow and Other Stories

“You are still adrift while you still think that a means is an end.”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

“I am dust and my story ends here.”
― Hanif Kureishi, The Nothing

“Endings are beginnings in disguise, dear Tru. They signify one door closing and another one opening. They mark the point where the heroine transforms from a person who's been beaten and badgered and bolstered by life into someone who's about to shed her past and metamorphose into an entirely new creature.”
― Cat Winters, Odd & True

“Smart people stay home when the COVID-19 lock-down ends.”
― Steven Magee

“An end is only an end because we haven’t taken the time to find the door in the wall.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“COME HOME, TENAR! COME HOME!”
In the deep valley, in the twilight, the apple trees were on the eve of blossoming; here and there among the shadowed boughs one flower had opened early, rose and white, like a faint star. Down the orchard aisles, in the thick, new, wet grass, the little girl ran for the joy of running; hearing the call she did not come at once, but made a long circle before she turned her face toward home. The mother waiting in the doorway of the hut, with the firelight behind her, watched the tiny figure running and bobbing like a bit of thistledown blown over the darkening grass beneath the trees.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“Enzo thought ends were disappointing. He said when you were really immersed in a story, you started to have expectations. And the end was never as great as you imagined it could have been. Even though I mostly agreed with him, I couldn't help wanting to know everything. I was always looking for more.”
― Chelsea Sedoti, The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

“A good story never truly ends, it stays with you for the rest of your life.”
― A.B. Alexander, The Voss Coin: A Killer's Currency

“time turned into years, dreams turned into nightmares.”
― Jordan Hoechlin

“The only end some things have is the end you give em.”
― Tim Winton, The Riders

“A relationship that starts fast, ends even faster.”
― Nitya Prakash

“There is in human nature a distinct drive to know, a distinguishable theoretical impulse or urge to understand. It is at work at every level of cognition, from the simplest impersonal judgment, like ‘it is hot’, to the most comprehensive mathematical or metaphysical system. But like other fundamental drives, the moral, for example, and the aesthetic, what it is seeking - what will ultimately satisfy it - is far from apparent at its lower levels and is defined only gradually in the course of a long advance. But that advance is not simply a matter of blind trial and error. Its direction is set by its end, which works as an immanent ideal within the process of thought. The pressure exerted by this ideal increases as intelligence rises in the scale. …

As thought matures and realizes in fuller measure the end it is seeking, that end lays its movement under increasingly firm constraint. … The higher our altitude on the long ascent of intelligence, the better is our position to discern what lies at the summit. To be sure we never see this clearly. In no human activity do we ever fully know what we are about. We are aware of the end, or we could do nothing but wander aimlessly. We never see it clearly, so we are condemned to much groping.”
― Brand Blanshard, Reason & Analysis

“In many if not most cases we truly believe that what is merely a means is really an end.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, On Friendship: A Satirical Essay

“Relationships are the Ends, Not the Means.”
― Swen Nater, You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned: John Wooden's Teaching Principles And Practices

“There's a certain sadness that comes to one who falls in love, the same sadness which is echoed once that love ends.”
― Paul Kellie

“Ends and origins are not inherent in the world. It is you, not the world, who calls the shots in this respect. Wherever you make a start, however, you may be sure that an enormous amount will have happend already. And whenever you call a halt, a great deal will carry on regardless.”
― Terry Eagleton, How to Read Literature

“Life stops when my universe ends.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Ever 'habiting' and never 'inhabiting' is a bad habit.

…no way to live.

Habits are means, not ends.

Don’t allow habits to become ends unto themselves.

Get beyond habits, not behind.”
― Richie Norton, Anti-Time Management: Reclaim Your Time and Revolutionize Your Results with the Power of Time Tipping

“If a work has started with negativity from the beginning, it ends negatively.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“Remember, words have meaning until they don’t. Love ends.”
― Bernardo Moya, A Man Evolving: Confessions about monogamy, passion and broken hearts.

“After the war ends, Ukraine will be a predominantly female country for a long time.”
― Steven Magee