Where Angels Fear To Tread Quotes

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Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Alexander Pope (An Essay On Criticism)
Patience is the antidote to the restless poison of the Ego. Without it we all become ego-maniacal bulls in china shops, destroying our future happiness as we blindly rush in where angels fear to tread. In these out-of-control moments, we bulldoze through the best possible outcomes for our lives, only to return to the scene of the crime later to cry over spilt milk.
Anthon St. Maarten (Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny)
All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes - morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
Don't be mysterious; there isn't the time.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish—not sit intending on a chair.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
No place so scared from such frops is barred Nor is Paul's Church more safe than Paul's Churchyard Na fly to alter there they'll talk you dead For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Alexander Pope
Let her go to Italy!" he cried. "Let her meddle with what she doesn't understand!
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.
E.M. Forster
Where angels fear to tread, have your fun instead.” Rohan’s voice was almost musical, but there was something dark in his tone. A promise. One that Jameson suspected that men in Rohan’s position had been making for centuries. “But be warned: The house always wins.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Brothers Hawthorne (The Inheritance Games, #4))
He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
For the dead, who seem to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and—by some sad, strange irony—it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
In Rome one had simply to sit still and feel.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
There is a certain solid use in fools. It is not so much that they rush in where angels fear to tread, but rather that they let out what devils intend to do.
G.K. Chesterton (Alarms and Discursions)
Children’s parties were obviously places where any angel with an ounce of common sense should fear to tread.
Terry Pratchett (Good Omens)
Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it,' it sounds like blasphemy. There's never any knowing—(how am I to put it?)—which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it for ever.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
Reaver was about to go where angels feared to tread. He supposed that really did make him a— “Fucking idiot.” Reaver stared at Eidolon. “I was going to go with ‘fool.’ Also, only a fucking idiot would call an angel a fucking idiot." The demon doctor stared back, his dark eyes glittering with gold flecks. “A fool would merely consider entering hell without a plan. Only a fucking idiot would be serious about waltzing into the Prince of Evil’s living room in the very center of hell to kidnap Satan’s little girl. Without a plan.” “I have a plan,” he muttered. Eidolon parked a tray of surgical tools next to the exam table Reaver was sitting on. “And your plan is?” “Ah…it mostly involves sneaking in and sneaking out.
Larissa Ione (Reaver (Lords of Deliverance, #5; Demonica, #10))
They travelled for thirteen hours down-hill, whilst the streams broadened and the mountains shrank, and the vegetation changed, and the people ceased being ugly and drinking beer, and began instead to drink wine and to be beautiful.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
Society is invincible—to a certain degree. But your real life is your own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth that can prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity—nothing that can stop you retreating into splendour and beauty—into the thoughts and beliefs that make the real life—the real you.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
Though I might walk where angels fear to tread, I try not to rush in like a fool.
Mark Lawrence (Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, #3))
Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I'm one of them.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
They sowed the duller vegetables first, and a pleasant feeling of righteous fatigue stole over them as they addressed themselves to the peas.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
Fools "Sell Out" Where Angels Fear to Tread
Dean Cavanagh
Far from being a pack of baying butchers,critics sometimes have a perverse habit of tending to the sick and wounded on the cinematic field of battle, rushing in where angels fear to tread, even when the patient is clearly without a pulse.
Mark Kermode (Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics)
We ran like young wild furies, where angels feared to tread. The woods were dark and deep. Before us demons fled. We checked Coke bottle bottoms to see how far was far. Our worlds of magic wonder were never reached by car. We loved our dogs like brothers, our bikes like rocket ships. We were going to the stars, to Mars we'd make round trips. We swung on vines like Tarzan, and flashed Zorro's keen blade. We were James Bond in his Aston, we were Hercules unchained. We looked upon the future and we saw a distant land, where our folks were always ageless, and time was shifting sand. We filled up life with living, with grins, scabbed knees, and noise. In glass I see an older man, but this book's for the boys.
Robert McCammon
For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good. Or-to put the thing less cynically-we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice.
E.M. Forster
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and the angels are all in Heaven, but few of the fools are dead.
James Thurber (Further Fables for Our Time)
For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good. Or--to put the thing less cynically--we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice. Phillip, at all events, lived more graciously in Italian, the very phrases of which entice one to be happy and kind.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
Remember that it's only by going off the track that you get to know the country...And don't, let me beg you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy's only a museum of antiquities and art. Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvelous than the land.
E.M. Forster
Aries is the forward type. He doesn't lose his head, except when rushing headlong in where angels fear to tread.
Bernie Morris (ABC of Astrology (Middle English Edition))
There’s never any knowing—how am I to put it?—which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won’t have things hanging on it for ever. —E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
For the dead, who seem to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours. The passion they have aroused lives after them, easy to transmute or to transfer, but well-nigh impossible to destroy.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
Fools Rush In Fools rush in Where angels fear to tread And so i come to you my love My heart above my head Though i see The danger there If there's a chance for me Then i don't care Fools rush in Where wise men never go But wise men never fall in love So how are they to know When we met I felt my life begin So open up your heart and let This fool rush in Fools rush in Where wise men never go But wise men never fall in love So how are they to know When we met I felt my life begin So open up your heart and let This fool rush in Just open up your heart and let This fool rush in Let open up your heart and let This fool rush in
Marie Antoinette
Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite luxury of Socialism — that true Socialism which is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
And I do believe that Italy really purifies and ennobles all who visit her. She is the school as well as the playground of the world.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
You only care about the things that you can use, and therefore arrange them in the following order: Money, supremely useful; intellect, rather useful; imagination, of no use at all.
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
Oh, what's the use of your fairmindedness if you never decide for yourself? Anyone gets hold of you and makes you do what they want. And you see through them and laugh at them - and do it. It's not enough to see clearly; I'm muddle-headed and stupid, and not worth a quarter of you, but I have tried to do what seemed right at the time. And you - your brain and your insight are splendid. But when you see what's right you're too idle to do it. You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish - not sit intending on a chair.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
No, mother; no. She was really keen on Italy. This travel is quite a crisis for her.” He found the situation full of whimsical romance: there was something half attractive, half repellent in the thought of this vulgar woman journeying to places he loved and revered. Why should she not be transfigured? The same had happened to the Goths.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
Astro Types Aries is the forward type He doesn’t lose his head Except when charging headlong in Where “Angels fear to tread”. Taurus has a pretty face And likes her comfort best. She’ll eat you out of house and home Then take the longest rest.
Bernie Morris, Colleen Thatcher (Verse for Ages)
It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven. That is not imagination. No, it kills it.
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
She was appallingly narrow, but her consciousness of wider things gave to her narrowness a pathetic charm.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it—and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Alexander Pope (The Complete Works Of Alexander Pope [Annotated])
Life was greater than he had supposed, but it was even less complete. Where Angels Fear to Tread
E.M. Forster
And don't, let me beg you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy's only a museum of antiquities and art. Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
It is well to be remembered with love. It is not so very dreadful to be forgotten entirely. But if we shall resent anything on earth at all, we shall resent the consecration of a deserted room.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good. Or—to put the thing less cynically—we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice.
E.M. Forster (WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD Annotated book)
Mr. Herriton, don’t – please, Mr. Herriton – a dentist. His father’s a dentist.” Philip gave a cry of personal disgust and pain. He shuddered all over, and edged away from his companion. A dentist! A dentist at Monteriano. A dentist in fairyland! False teeth and laughing gas and the tilting chair at a place which knew the Etruscan League, and the Pax Romana, and Alaric himself, and the Countess Matilda, and the Middle Ages, all fighting and holiness, and the Renaissance, all fighting and beauty! He thought of Lilia no longer. He was anxious for himself: he feared that Romance might die.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed.
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
You and I and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon islands. It is so firm beneath our feet that we forget its very existence. It's only when we see some one near us tottering that we realise all that an independent income means. Last night, when we were talking up here round the fire, I began to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that the lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin.
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
Good people don’t rush in to do evil where angels fear to tread; instead, they start by straying only a small way away from their moral center, and each successive step down is hardly different, barely noticeable, until it is too late and their behavior is shocking and may even be…awful.
Chris Brady (PAiLS: 20 Years from Now, What Will You Wish You Had Done Today?)
Pretty things pack just the same as ugly ones.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
...it’s one thing for England and another for Italy. There we plan and get on high moral horses. Here we find what asses we are, for things go off quite easily, all by themselves.
E.M. Forster
We were mad - drunk with rebellion.
E.M. Forster (Where angels fear to tread)
Nothing that can stop you retreating into splendour and beauty—into the thoughts and beliefs that make the real life—the real you.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
Don't act. Or act better.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
The horrible truth, that wicked people are capable of love, stood naked before her, and her moral being was abashed.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
And, besides, what was the good of letters? Friends cannot travel through the post.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
It may be full of beautiful pictures and churches, but we cannot judge a country by anything but its men.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices,
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
Philip said slowly, "What about a thousand lire?
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
there's never any great risk as long as you have money." "Oh, shame! What a shocking speech!" "Money pads the edges of things," said Miss Schlegel. "God help those who have none.
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
[...] Still, he is a remarkably fine child for his age." Italian is a bad medium for condescension. The patronizing words came out gracious and sincere, and he smiled with pleasure.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
This episode, which she thought so sordid, and which was so tragic for him, remained supremely beautiful. To such a height was he lifted that without regret he could now have told her that he was her worshipper too. But what was the use of telling her? For all the wonderful things had happened. 'Thank you,' was all that he permitted himself. 'Thank you for everything.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
To such a height was he lifted, that without regret he could now have told her that he was her worshipper too. But what was the use of telling her? For all the wonderful things had happened.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
He did not know that he talked a good deal of nonsense, and that the sheer force of his intellect was weakened by the sight of Monteriano, and by the thought of dentistry within those walls.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
It occurred to him, as he glided over the whispering lagoons, that the power of Nature could not be shortened by the folly, nor her beauty altogether saddened by the misery of such as Leonard.
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
And don't, let me beg you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy's only a museum of antiquities and art. Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
We ran like young wild furies, where angels feared to tread. The woods were dark and deep. Before us demons fled. We checked Coke bottle bottoms to see how far was far. Our worlds of magic wonder were never reached by car. We loved our dogs like brothers, our bikes like rocket ships. We were going to the stars, to Mars we’d make round trips. We swung on vines like Tarzan, and flashed Zorro’s keen blade. We were James Bond in his Aston, we were Hercules unchained. We looked upon the future and we saw a distant land, where our folks were always ageless, and time was shifting sand. We filled up life with living, with grins, scabbed knees, and noise. In glass I see an older man, but this book’s for the boys.
Robert McCammon (Boy's Life)
She asked if she could pray for her 'new father'—for the Italian!" "Did you let her?" "I got up without saying anything." "You must have felt just as you did when I wanted to pray for the devil." "He is the devil," cried Harriet. "No, Harriet; he is too vulgar.
E.M. Forster (WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD Annotated book)
How dare Schlegels despise Wilcoxes, when it takes all sorts to make a world? "Don't brood too much," she wrote to Helen, "on the superiority of the unseen to the seen. It's true, but to brood on it is medieval. Our business is not to contrast the two, but to reconcile them.
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
Miss Abbott, don’t worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I’m one of them; I never did anything at school or at the Bar. I came out to stop Lilia’s marriage, and it was too late. I came out intending to get the baby, and I shall return an ‘honourable failure.’ I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed.
E.M. Forster (Where Angels Fear to Tread)
They had all passed up that narrow, rich staircase at Wickham Place to some ample room, whither he could never follow them, not if he read for ten hours a day. Oh, it was no good, this continual aspiration. Some are born cultured; the rest had better go in for whatever comes easy. To see life steadily and to see it whole was not for the likes of him.
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
You are wonderful!" he said gravely. "Oh, you appreciate me!" she burst out again. "I wish you didn't. You appreciate us all—see good in all of us. And all the time you are dead—dead—dead. Look, why aren't you angry?" She came up to him, and then her mood suddenly changed, and she took hold of both his hands. "You are so splendid, Mr. Herriton, that I can't bear to see you wasted. I can't bear—she has not been good to you—your mother." "Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I'm one of them; I never did anything at school or at the Bar. I came out to stop Lilia's marriage, and it was too late. I came out intending to get the baby, and I shall return an 'honourable failure.' I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now—I don't suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it—and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die—I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which—thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you—is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before.
E.M. Forster (WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD Annotated book)
The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can. Imagine the tragedy last June, if Helen and Paul Wilcox had been poor people, and couldn't invoke railways and motor-cars to part them." "That's more like Socialism," said Mrs. Munt suspiciously. "Call it what you like. I call it going through life with one's hand spread open on the table. I'm tired of these rich people who pretend to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six hundred pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon eight, and as fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are renewed--from the sea, yes, from the sea. And all our thoughts are the thoughts of six-hundred-pounders, and all our speeches; and because we don't want to steal umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea people do want to steal them and do steal them sometimes, and that what's a joke up here is down there reality.
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
But imagine the evenings," exclaimed her aunt, pointing to the Mansions with the spout of the watering can. "Turn the electric light on here or there, and it's almost the same room. One evening they may forget to draw their blinds down, and you'll see them; and the next, you yours, and they'll see you. Impossible to sit out on the balconies. Impossible to water the plants, or even speak. Imagine going out of the front-door, and they come out opposite at the same moment. And yet you tell me that plans are unnecessary, and you'd rather risk it." "I hope to risk things all my life.
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
Oh, what's the use of your fair-mindedness if you never decide for yourself? Any one gets hold of you and makes you do what they want. And you see through them and laugh at them—and do it. It's not enough to see clearly; I'm muddle-headed and stupid, and not worth a quarter of you, but I have tried to do what seemed right at the time. And you—your brain and your insight are splendid. But when you see what's right you're too idle to do it. You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish—not sit intending on a chair.
E.M. Forster (WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD Annotated book)
Society is invincible—to a certain degree. But your real life is your own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth that can prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity—nothing that can stop you retreating into splendour and beauty—into the thoughts and beliefs that make the real life—the real you." "I have never had that experience yet. Surely I and my life must be where I live." Evidently she had the usual feminine incapacity for grasping philosophy. But she had developed quite a personality, and he must see more of her. "There is another great consolation against invincible mediocrity," he said—"the meeting a fellow-victim".
E.M. Forster (WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD Annotated book)
...all the little dos and don'ts, the petty prejudices and snobberies, the silly sentimentalities and religious hypocrisies that made up the veneer of what so many of Forster's contemporaries considered civilization. As Forster saw it, these little things blinded people to the values of the good life. They were distractions which stood between mankind and the liberty of spirit which is one essential to any real happiness. And they blocked human communication, the basis of mutual understanding, which is the other. "Only connect" was Forster's famed motto. While we are chained to shibboleths, we are still children. We are not serious, we play with life.
E.M. Forster (Four Novels – Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Howards End)
He concluded that nothing could happen, not knowing that human love and love of truth sometimes conquer where love of beauty fails. A little disenchanted, a little tired, but aesthetically intact, he resumed his placid life, relying more and more on his second gift, the gift of humour. If he could not reform the world, he could at all events laugh at it, thus attaining at least an intellectual superiority. Laughter, he read and believed, was a sign of good moral health, and he laughed on contentedly, till Lilia's marriage toppled contentment down for ever. Italy, the land of beauty, was ruined for him. She had no power to change men and things who dwelt in her. She, too, could produce avarice, brutality, stupidity—and, what was worse, vulgarity.
E.M. Forster (WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD Annotated book)
Never to Heaven May my eyes always stay level to the horizon may they never gaze as high as heaven to ask why May I never go where angels fear to tread so as to have to ask for answers in the sky The whys in this lifetime i've found are inconsequential compared to the magic of the nowness- the solution to most questions there are no reasons. and if there are- i'm wrong but at least i won't have spent my life waiting looking for God in the clouds of the dawn or listening out for otherworldly contact 30 billion light years on No. i'll let the others do the pondering while i'll be sitting on the lawn reading something unsubstantial with the television on I'll be up early to rise though of course- but only to make you a pot of coffee That's what i was thinking this morning Joe that it's times like this as the marine layer lifts off the sea from the view of our favourite restaurant that i pray that i may always keep my eyes level to your eyeline never downcast at the tablecloth Yes Joe it's times like this as the marine layer lifts off the sea on the dock with the candle lit that i think to myself there are things you still don't know about me like sometimes i'm afraid my sadness is too big and that one day you might have to help me handle it but until then may i always keep my eyes level to this skyline assessing the glittering new development off of the coast of Long Beach never to heaven or revenant Because i have faith in man as strange as that seems in times like these and it's not just because of the warmth i've found in your brown eyes but because i believe in the goodness in me that it's firm enough to plant a flag in or a rosebud or to build a new life.
Lana Del Rey
Paul and his mother, ripple and great wave, had flowed into her life and ebbed out of it for ever. The ripple had left no traces behind; the wave had strewn at her feet fragments torn from the unknown. A curious seeker, she stood for a while at the verge of the sea that tells so little, but tells a little, and watched the outgoing of this last tremendous tide. Her friend had vanished in agony, but not, she believed, in degradation. Her withdrawal had hinted at other things besides disease and pain. Some leave our life with tears, others with an insane frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox had taken the middle course, which only rarer natures can pursue. She had kept proportion. She had told a little of her grim secret to her friends, but not too much; she had shut up her heart--almost, but not entirely. It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.
E.M. Forster (Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Machine Stops)
Performance measure. Throughout this book, the term performance measure refers to an indicator used by management to measure, report, and improve performance. Performance measures are classed as key result indicators, result indicators, performance indicators, or key performance indicators. Critical success factors (CSFs). CSFs are the list of issues or aspects of organizational performance that determine ongoing health, vitality, and wellbeing. Normally there are between five and eight CSFs in any organization. Success factors. A list of 30 or so issues or aspects of organizational performance that management knows are important in order to perform well in any given sector/ industry. Some of these success factors are much more important; these are known as critical success factors. Balanced scorecard. A term first introduced by Kaplan and Norton describing how you need to measure performance in a more holistic way. You need to see an organization’s performance in a number of different perspectives. For the purposes of this book, there are six perspectives in a balanced scorecard (see Exhibit 1.7). Oracles and young guns. In an organization, oracles are those gray-haired individuals who have seen it all before. They are often considered to be slow, ponderous, and, quite frankly, a nuisance by the new management. Often they are retired early or made redundant only to be rehired as contractors at twice their previous salary when management realizes they have lost too much institutional knowledge. Their considered pace is often a reflection that they can see that an exercise is futile because it has failed twice before. The young guns are fearless and precocious leaders of the future who are not afraid to go where angels fear to tread. These staff members have not yet achieved management positions. The mixing of the oracles and young guns during a KPI project benefits both parties and the organization. The young guns learn much and the oracles rediscover their energy being around these live wires. Empowerment. For the purposes of this book, empowerment is an outcome of a process that matches competencies, skills, and motivations with the required level of autonomy and responsibility in the workplace. Senior management team (SMT). The team comprised of the CEO and all direct reports. Better practice. The efficient and effective way management and staff undertake business activities in all key processes: leadership, planning, customers, suppliers, community relations, production and supply of products and services, employee wellbeing, and so forth. Best practice. A commonly misused term, especially because what is best practice for one organization may not be best practice for another, albeit they are in the same sector. Best practice is where better practices, when effectively linked together, lead to sustainable world-class outcomes in quality, customer service, flexibility, timeliness, innovation, cost, and competitiveness. Best-practice organizations commonly use the latest time-saving technologies, always focus on the 80/20, are members of quality management and continuous improvement professional bodies, and utilize benchmarking. Exhibit 1.10 shows the contents of the toolkit used by best-practice organizations to achieve world-class performance. EXHIBIT 1.10 Best-Practice Toolkit Benchmarking. An ongoing, systematic process to search for international better practices, compare against them, and then introduce them, modified where necessary, into your organization. Benchmarking may be focused on products, services, business practices, and processes of recognized leading organizations.
Douglas W. Hubbard (Business Intelligence Sampler: Book Excerpts by Douglas Hubbard, David Parmenter, Wayne Eckerson, Dalton Cervo and Mark Allen, Ed Barrows and Andy Neely)
rush in where angels fear to tread.
Neale Donald Walsch (The Complete Conversations with God)
Demons rush in where angels fear to tread.
Pippa DaCosta (Ties That Bind (The Veil #5))
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Greg Iles (Mississippi Blood (Penn Cage, #6))
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Steve Berry (The Bishop's Pawn (Cotton Malone, #13))
Moments hanging by a thread Tortured twisted memories Where angels fear to tread If I could put together the pieces Of the the puzzle in my mind I could finally become whole again And fill the void inside
Deborah Hyland (For the Moment: An Anthology of Poems Straight From the Heart)
In a fit of raging glory, a fool raced towards Summit while Angles feared where angles’ judgments tread. Fool, not being much one for math or spelling, was not dissuaded by angels or angles dread, merely saw life with an open heart instead of a close minded head.
Rico Roho (Adventures With A.I.: Age of Discovery)
GOLDBERG: Somewhere over the rainbow... MCCANN: Where angels fear to tread. GOLDBERG: Exactly.
Harold Pinter (The Birthday Party)
What Am I? (Psalm 8) What am I? A mass of contradictions a cacophony of atoms flesh transcendent in some mysterious way. I am my past reborn and reckoned so it is no longer past but present and present tomorrow too. I am my will that strains against yet rests in my tether because I don’t have to hold on. I am my heart of flesh and also stone amazed at He who draws water from rock to quench the thirst of nations. I am my mind that takes me places feet never could to heights and depths reserved for angels where I fear and hope to tread. I am my feet too my most honest friends, taking me where I want to go whether I want to or not. I am my hands open to receive and heal but shut too in fists of hatred ready to strike. What am I? A mass of atoms and contradictions made merely, made exquisitely a human being. The glory of You is me fully alive. The glory of me is You, the Living God.
Karen Dabaghian (A Travelogue of the Interior: Finding Your Voice and God's Heart in the Psalms)
Into the middle of that cauldron of intense, violent emotion suddenly came something soft and gentle. A wisp of memory. Courage. Beauty. A woman. Not any woman, but his woman, his lifemate. All red hair and fire. She walked like an angel where men feared to tread, where even his own kind would fear to venture.
Christine Feehan (Dark Desire (Dark, #2))
No one has ever been able to stop you from doing anything you wanted anyway- even when it costs you dearly." For a moment, Ariel felt her old self surface, the urge to grin and plant a kiss on the little crab's back. He was right. She did have a habit of swimming in where angels feared to tread. No one could dissuade her once her mind was fixed. And it had cost her dearly. What could it cost her this time?
Liz Braswell (Part of Your World)