Abandoning Quotes

You can't help noticing that since abandoning its faith in the unseen world Europe seems also to have lost its faith in the seen one. Consider this poll taken in 2002 for the first anniversary of September 11: 61 percent of Americans said they were optimistic about the future, as opposed to 43 percent of Canadians, 42 percent of Britons, 29 percent of the French, 23 percent of Russians, and 15 percent of Germans. I wouldn't reckon those numbers will get any cheerier over the years. ~ Mark Steyn

Growth and fulfillment come from abandoning old practices and embracing new ones. ~ Brian Tracy

Who doesn't love a compliment? But every compliment comes with a warning: Beware - Do Not Overuse. Go ahead, sniff your compliment. Take a little sip. But don't chew, don't swallow. If you do, you risk abandoning the good work that inspired the compliment in the first place. If that happens, maybe it was the compliment and not the job well done that you were aiming for all along. ~ Jerry Spinelli

That's because women are paying an even higher price than men for their participation in a work culture fueled by stress, sleep deprivation, and burnout. That is one reason why so many talented women, with impressive degrees working in high-powered jobs, end up abandoning their careers when they can afford ~ Arianna Huffington

In any case, it is difficult not to think that if Serena lost context by abandoning all rules of civility, it could be because her body, trapped in a racial imaginary, trapped in disbelief - code for being black in America - is being governed not by the tennis match she is participating in but by a collapsed relationship that had promised to play by the rules. Perhaps this is how racism feels no matter the context - randomly the rules everyone else gets to play by no longer apply to you, and to call this out by calling out "I swear to God!" is to be called insane, crass, crazy. Bad sportsmanship. Two ~ Claudia Rankine

Abandoning who people think you are and becoming who you really are is a simple concept, but sometimes it is very hard to do. It isn't easy to give up others' ideas of who you are. Yet the key to success is to discover your uniqueness and to exploit it. Your authentic persona, either personal or corporate, is the key to your prosperity. ~ Larry Winget

Hey Americans," he screamed furiously at the drones.
"Brothers of the wolf, sisters of the wind, children of the Sun! Send the Choctaw warrior a quick and merciful death, instead of abandoning us into slavery or shameful capture. ~ George Sorbane

It is comforting when one has a sorrow to lie in the warmth of one's bed and there, abandoning all effort and all resistance, to bury even one's head under the cover, giving one's self up to it completely, moaning like branches in the autumn wind. But there is still a better bed, full of divine odors. It is our sweet, our profound, our impenetrable friendship. ~ Marcel Proust

What is wrong with you?" He glared at me.


"I'm somewhat sure I'm suddenly gay," I shrugged, "My father and mother are hypocritical abandoning homophobic assholes. The former defending my chief suspect in the biggest case of my life - something I'm sure you had a hand in. I'm obsessed with your freckles, your bunny slippers and your lips - which I should be getting points for not kissing while you're incapacitated, by the way. I'm dating a whore while working on the vice squad - points to me again for not arresting your ass for that - and I'm ridiculously horny. Oh, and my fiancée won't talk to me. ~ Dani Alexander

To be a warrior a man has to be, first of all, and rightfully so, keenly aware of his own death. But to be concerned with death would force any one of us to focus on the self and that would be debilitating. So the next thing one needs to be a warrior is detachment. The idea of imminent death, instead of becoming an obsession, becomes an indifference.
Now you must detach yourself; detach yourself from everything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he is incapable of abandoning himself to anything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he can't deny himself anything. A man of that sort, however, does not crave, for he has acquired a silent lust for life and for all things of life. He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything. ~ Carlos Castaneda

It seems that rather than abandon their worldview, many young people are abandoning their lives altogether. I am disturbed to see the number of suicides and suicide attempts by those between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. Many of their suicide notes report they had lost meaning, purpose and a sense that life held any value.

This is no longer just about philosophy. This is about the very real lives we are all trying to make sense of here on Earth. ~ Jon Morrison

Never reward writing with not writing. Rewarding writing by abandoning your schedule is like rewarding yourself for quitting smoking by having a cigarette. ~ Paul J. Silvia

As it was a time of war between the Catholics and the Huguenots, and as he saw the Catholics exterminate the Huguenots and the Huguenots exterminate the Catholics--all in the name of religion--he adopted a mixed belief which permitted him to be sometimes Catholic, sometimes a Huguenot. Now, he was accustomed to walk with his fowling piece on his shoulder, behind the hedges which border the roads, and when he saw a Catholic coming alone, the Protestant religion immediately prevailed in his mind. He lowered his gun in the direction of the traveler; then, when he was within ten paces of him, he commenced a conversation which almost always ended by the traveler's abandoning his purse to save his life. It goes without saying that when he saw a Huguenot coming, he felt himself filled with such ardent Catholic zeal that he could not understand how, a quarter of an hour before, he had been able to have any doubts upon the superiority of our holy religion. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us. ~ Dan Quayle

Ulis, he prayed, abandoning the set words, let my anger die with him. Let both of us be freed from the burden of his actions. Even if I cannot forgive him, help me not to hate him. Ulis was a cold god, a god of night and shadows and dust. His love was found in emptiness, his kindness in silence. And that was what Maia needed. Silence, coldness, kindness. He focused his thoughts carefully on the familiar iconography, the image of Ulis's open hands; the god of letting go was surely the god who would listen to an unwilling emperor. Help me not to feel hatred, he prayed, and after a while it became easier to ask that Dazhis find peace, that Maia's anger not be added to the weight against his soul. ~ Katherine Addison

Psychoanalysis is an attempt to examine a person's self-justifications. Hence it can be undertaken only with the patient's cooperation and can succeed only when the patient has something to gain by abandoning or modifying his system of self-justification. ~ Thomas Szasz

[French Revolution rejected] the sacred foundation both of history and of the state. History was no longer measured on the basis of an idea of God that had preceded it and given it shape. The state came to be understood in purely secular terms, based on rationalism and the will of citizens.
The secular state arose for the first time, abandoning and excluding any divine guarantee or legitimation of the political element as a mythological vision of the world and declaring that God is a private question that does not belong to the public sphere or to the democratic formation of the public will. Public life was now considered the realm of reason alone, which had no place for a seemingly unknowable God. From this perspective, religion and faith in God belonged to the realm of sentiment, not of reason. God and His will therefore ceased to be relevant to public life. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

EVERY WEDNESDAY, I teach an introductory fiction workshop at Harvard University, and on the first day of class I pass out a bullet-pointed list of things the students should try hard to avoid. Don't start a story with an alarm clock going off. Don't end a story with the whole shebang having been a suicide note. Don't use flashy dialogue tags like intoned or queried or, God forbid, ejaculated. Twelve unbearably gifted students are sitting around the table, and they appreciate having such perimeters established. With each variable the list isolates, their imaginations soar higher. They smile and nod. The mood in the room is congenial, almost festive with learning. I feel like a very effective teacher; I can practically hear my course-evaluation scores hitting the roof. Then, when the students reach the last point on the list, the mood shifts. Some of them squint at the words as if their vision has gone blurry; others ask their neighbors for clarification. The neighbor will shake her head, looking pale and dejected, as if the last point confirms that she should have opted for that aseptic-surgery class where you operate on a fetal pig. The last point is: Don't Write What You Know.

The idea panics them for two reasons. First, like all writers, the students have been encouraged, explicitly or implicitly, for as long as they can remember, to write what they know, so the prospect of abandoning that approach now is disorienting. Second, they know an awful lot. In recent wo ~ Bret Anthony Johnston

Lovers and mystics are familiar with this sense of grandeur, this taste of joy - in abandoning oneself to the will of others. ~ Anne Desclos

Letting go - abandoning, relinquishing - is actually the same mind state as generosity. So the practice of giving deeply influences the feeling tone of our meditation practice, and vice versa. ~ Sharon Salzberg

I know what you are thinking. You can't now fathom ever forgetting to think about me. You're afraid that if you move forward, it will take you further away from me. This is a common misconception shared by many people and it delays their healing... It keeps you stuck in you grief and it's only because you are still clinging to me. You think if you stop grieving that you will lose me. Maybe you even feel if you let go of me that you are abandoning me; maybe you feel that you will hurt my feelings because if it were the other way around you would not ever want me to forget about you. You are afraid that if you love again that you will grow away from me.
I am Here! I am here, waiting to run to you when the time comes. It's unconditional. It's forever. ~ Kate McGahan

Kepler's discovery would not have been possible without the doctrine of conics. Now contemporaries of Kepler - such penetrating minds as Descartes and Pascal - were abandoning the study of geometry ... because they said it was so UTTERLY USELESS. There was the future of the human race almost trembling in the balance; for had not the geometry of conic sections already been worked out in large measure, and had their opinion that only sciences apparently useful ought to be pursued, the nineteenth century would have had none of those characters which distinguish it from the ancien régime. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

In the old parts of Nice, the family tables are out in the cobbled streets so that you can't drive past. They insist you join them at midnight on a hot July evening. So that's just what you do, abandoning the car. ~ Mary Quant

Going after a dream has a price. It may mean abandoning our habits, it may make us go through hardships, or it may lead us to disappointment, et cetera. But however costly it may be, it is never as high as the price paid by people who didn't live. Because one day they will look back and hear their own heart say: 'I wasted my life.' " He is not making things any easier. Let's suppose ~ Paulo Coelho

As soon as the words presented themselves, Gabriel knew that they were perfect for him. Perfect for what he was contemplating doing to her. Perfect for his own self-justification.
Tasting. Taking. Sucking. Sinning. Draining. Abandoning.
She was pure. She was innocent. He wanted her.
Facilis descensus Averni.
But he would not be the one to make her bleed. He could not, would not, make another girl bleed for the rest of his life. All thoughts of seduction and mad, passionate f*cking on desks and chairs, against walls and bookshelves and windows, immediately gave way. He would not take her. He would not mark her and claim what he had no right to claim. ~ Sylvain Reynard

Gerald, through an act of silent will, imposed on his father the pressing obligation to perform his final acts of expiation for abandoning the family. You will not know, the child silently said, what these acts are until you have performed them all. And after you have performed them you will not understand that they were expiatory any more than you have understood all the other expiation that has kept you in such prolonged humiliation. Then, when these final acts are complete, you will stop trying to die because of me. ~ William Kennedy

The library in summer is the most wonderful thing because there you get books on any subject and read them each for only as long as they hold your interest, abandoning any that don't, halfway or a quarter of the way through if you like, and store up all that knowledge in the happy corners of your mind for your own self and not to show off how much you know or spit it back at your teacher on a test paper. ~ Polly Horvath

Western intellectual Islamologists have totally failed in their duties as intellectuals. They have betrayed their calling by abandoning their critical faculties when it comes to Islam. ~ Wafa Sultan

Ask anyone with a big book collection, and they'll tell you moving them was the hardest part of the move. Take down a bookshelf and there's often no less than four, possibly up to eight, good Lord if it's over ten, boxes of dense material. This is the single greatest argument for welcoming ebooks. Abandoning print and having your Kindle on display instead doesn't sound like such a bad idea while carrying book box number seven to the car. ~ Lauren Leto

As miserable as Gregor felt about being dumped with a rat, his heart ached for Vikus. He wanted to scream at Luxa, "Say something! Don't let your granpa fly off like this! Four of us aren't coming back!" But the words caught in his throat. Part of him wasn't ready to forgive Vikus for abandoning them, either.
"Fly you high, Gregor the Overlander," said Vikus.
Gregor struggled with how to respond. Should he ignore Vikus? Let him know that none of them, not even an Overlander, could forgive him? Just as he had steeled himself against replying, Gregor thought of the last two years, seven months, and was it fifteen days now? There were so many things he wished he'd said to his dad when he'd had the chance. Things like how special it was when they went on the roof at night and tried to find the stars. Or how much he loved it when they took the subway out to the stadium to watch a baseball game. Or just that he felt lucky that out of all the people in the world, his dad was his dad.
He didn't have room inside him for any more unspoken words. The bats were rising into the air. He only had a second. "Fly you high, Vikus!" he yelled. "Fly you high!"
Vikus turned back, and Gregor could see tears shining on his cheeks. He lifted up a hand to Gregor in thanks.
And then they were gone. ~ Suzanne Collins

As soon as you start asking what education is for, what the use of it is, you're abandoning the basic assumption of any true culture, that education is worth while for its own sake. ~ Ann Bridge

From all that urges and admonishes, the romantic turns away. He wants to dream, enjoy, immerse himself, instead of clearing his way by striving and wrestling. That which has been and rises out of what is past occupies him far more than what is to become and also more than what wants to become; for the word of the future would always be command. Experiences with their many echoes and their billows stand higher in his estimation than life with its tasks; for tasks always establish a bond with harsh reality. And from this he is in flight. He does not want to struggles against fate, but rather to receive it with an ardent and devout soul; he does not want to wrestle for the blessing, but to experience it, abandoning himself, devoid of will, to what spells salvation and bliss. ~ Leo Baeck

Our choice of a reform framework dictated that we looked at the fundamental assumptions that had driven Nigeria's economy, society and policy hitherto and to seek ways of either abandoning or transcending those assumptions and their supporting institutions. ~ Ibrahim Babangida

You cannot throw words like heroism and sacrifice and nobility and honor away without abandoning the qualities they express. ~ Marya Mannes

Men cannot confront the naked truth of their own violence without the risk of abandoning themselves to it entirely. They have never had a very clear idea of this violence, and it is possible that the survival of all human societies of the past was dependent on this fundamental lack of
understanding. ~ Rene Girard

What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can't be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who're solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning 'square' rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

When Jesus looked down from the cross, he didn't think "I am giving myself to you because you are so attractive to me." No, he was in agony, and he looked down at us - denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him - and in the greatest act of love in history, he STAYED. He said, "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing." He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely. ~ Timothy Keller

We can recognize that instead of lashing back, the best answer is turning the other cheek. This may be easy for some, but for others - especially those who have been deeply hurt - abandoning the urge to inflict injury will require spiritual strength, prayer, and self-control. ~ Anonymous

The king sent word, at odd intervals, inquiring as to Meralda's progress. She would scrawl hasty replies in return, often suppressing the impulse to add notes such as "Abandoning spellwork to continue this fascinating correspondence," or "Slept late, long breakfast, taking the day off for a stroll in the park. ~ Frank Tuttle

You absurd boy! Oh, Evelyn, I'm so thankful you've come, but what in the world has detained you? I've been sick with apprehension!"
There was a quizzical gleam in the gentleman's eyes, but he said in accents of deep reproach: "Come, come, Mama - !"
"It may be very well for you to say Come, come, Mama," she retorted, "but when you faithfully promised to return not a day later than -" She broke off, staring down at him in sudden doubt.
Abandoning the portmanteau, the gentleman shrugged the greatcoat from his shoulder, pulled off his hat, and mounted the remaining stairs two at a time, saying still more reproachfully: "No, really, Mama! How can you be so unnatural a parent?"
"Kit!" uttered his unnatural parent, in a smothered shriek. "Oh, my darling, my dearest son! ~ Georgette Heyer

You wouldn't be abandoning me if you stopped to get a Band-Aid, you know. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made, and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer 'Tomorrow,' his name is today. ~ Gabriela Mistral

Practice unfettered living from the heart, abandoning all self-imposed limitations to emerge a new, creativity unleashed, giving of yourself like never before. ~ Pooja Ruprell

Mormonism is the house whose walls I know best. It is the story I am not abandoning because it is the story I choose-and in many ways gas chosen me-again and again to grapple with. Mormonism is my native spiritual language and many of the threads with which my life's tapestry is woven. ~ Ashley Mae Hoiland

In short, the history of thought, of knowledge, of philosophy, of literature seems to be seeking, and discovering, more and more discontinuities, whereas history itself appears to be abandoning the interruption of events in favour of stable structures. ~ Michel Foucault

All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. ~ Neal Stephenson

It's not reckless, because when we leap, when we dive in, when we begin, only begin, we bring our true nature to the project, we make it personal and urgent. And it's not abandon, not in the sense that we've abandoned our senses or our responsibility. In fact, abandoning the fear of fear that is holding us back is the single best way not to abandon the work, the pure execution of the work. Later, there's time to backpedal and water down. But right now, reckless please. ~ Seth Godin

Strangely, the subsequent AIDS works that have become iconic in our culture rarely mention the movement, or the engaged community of lovers, but both formations were inseparable from the crisis itself. Now, looking back, I fear that the story of the isolated helpless homosexual was one far more palatable to the corporations who control the reward system in the arts.The more truthful story of the American mass - abandoning families, criminal governments, indifferent neighbors - is too uncomfortable and inconvenient to recall. The story of how gay people who were despised, had no rights, and carried the burden of a terrible disease came together to force the country to change against its will, is apparently too implicating to tell. Fake tales of individual heterosexuals heroically overcoming their prejudices to rescue helpless dying men with AIDS was a lot more appealing to the powers that be, but not at all true. ~ Sarah Schulman

We have no intention of abandoning the American people to unproven theories and extreme positions. We're the people party and we're going to stick up for the people. ~ William J. Clinton

The warm, pulsing breath of the sweet grass surged through the open windows in a fashion to turn the head of a stone image. It was exotic, too sweet, exaggerated, like everything else in this climate! Cornelis turned over again, seeking a cool place on the broad bed. Then he sat up in bed, impatiently throwing off the sheet. A thin streak of moonlight edged the bed below his feet. He slipped out of bed, walked over to a window. He leaned out, looking down at the acres of undulating grass. There seemed to be some strange, hypnotic rhythm to it, some vague magic, as it swayed in the night wind. The scent poured over him in great, pulsing breaths. He shut his eves and drew it in, abandoning his senses to its effect.

("Sweet Grass") ~ Henry S. Whitehead

When I was a child I burnt the back of my right hand on a hot iron.

I can't recall the pain, but there's an eye-shaped scar as testament to it. As a teenager I used to think it was the all seeing eye of the anti-Christ and that I was the devil incarnate. Or at least a minion.

It was my right hand, innit?

What I do remember though is my father, or Dad as we called him, abandoning the polite Abbu, telling me not to cry and to be patient because the fires of hell were seventy times hotter than the fire of the iron. ~ Ruth Ahmed

It seemed that, after contact with a few human generations, sand hogs would begin to understand human speech. The irony was that after coming to understand their riders fully, the beasts often ended up abandoning them and heading off into the wilderness. ~ Neal Asher

I have no other passion to keep me in breath. What avarice, ambition, quarrels, law suits do for others who, like me, have no particular vocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to me vigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassure my countenance, so that the grimaces of old age, those deformed and dismal looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me upon sound and wise studies, by which I might render myself more loved and esteemed, clearing my mind of the despair of itself and of its use, and redintegrating it to itself; would divert me from a thousand troublesome thoughts, a thousand melancholic humours that idleness and the ill posture of our health loads us withal at such an age; would warm again, in dreams at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold up the chin, and a little stretch out the nerves, the vigour and gaiety of life of that poor man who is going full drive towards his ruin. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Early on, my abandoning father had set the pattern of my love life on the loom of my subconscious. ~ Jane Stanton Hitchcock

The Latin Church, which I constantly find myself admiring, despite its occasional astounding imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism, but a poem. It is accused by Protestant dervishes of withholding the Bible from the people. To some extent this is true; to some extent the church is wise; again to the same extent it is prosperous.
...
Rome indeed has not only preserved the original poetry of Christianity; it has also made capital additions to that poetry -- for example, the poetry of the saints, of Mary, and of the liturgy itself. A solemn high mass is a thousand times as impressive, to a man with any genuine religious sense in him, as the most powerful sermon ever roared under the big top by Presbyterian auctioneer of God. In the face of such overwhelming beauty it is not necessary to belabor the faithful with logic; they are better convinced by letting them alone.

Preaching is not an essential part of the Latin ceremonial. It was very little employed in the early church, and I am convinced that good effects would flow from abandoning it today, or, at all events, reducing it to a few sentences, more or less formal. In the United States the Latin brethren have been seduced by the example of the Protestants, who commonly transform an act of worship into a puerile intellectual exercise; instead of approaching God in fear and wonder these Protestants settle back in their pews, cross their legs, and listen t ~ H.L. Mencken

The Apotheosis of Washington - a 4,664-square-foot fresco that covers the canopy of the Capitol Rotunda - was completed in 1865 by Constantino Brumidi. Known as "The Michelangelo of the Capitol," Brumidi had laid claim to the Capitol Rotunda in the same way Michelangelo had laid claim to the Sistine Chapel, by painting a fresco on the room's most lofty canvas - the ceiling. Like Michelangelo, Brumidi had done some of his finest work inside the Vatican. Brumidi, however, immigrated to America in 1852, abandoning God's largest shrine in favor of a new shrine, the U.S. Capitol, which now glistened with examples of his mastery - from the trompe l'oeil of the Brumidi Corridors to the frieze ceiling of the Vice President's Room. And yet it was the enormous image hovering above the Capitol Rotunda that most historians considered to be Brumidi's masterwork. Robert ~ Dan Brown

Man could escape danger only by renouncing adventure, by abandoning that which has given to the human condition its unique character and genius among the rest of living things. ~ Rene Dubos

We are not statistics. We are the people from whom you took this land by force and blood and lies. We are the people to whom you promised to pay, in recompense for all this vast continent you stole, some small pitiful pittance to assure at least our bare survival. And we are the people from whom you now snatch away even that pittance, abandoning us and your own honor without a qualm, even launching military attacks on our women and children and Elders, and targeting - illegally even by your own self-serving laws - those of us, our remaining warriors, who would dare to stand up and try to defend them. You practice crimes against humanity at the same time that you piously speak to the rest of the world of human rights!

America, when will you live up to your own principles? ~ Leonard Peltier

Doing nothing while the middle class is hurting. That's not leadership. Loose regulations and lax enforcement. That's not leadership. That's abandoning our middle class. ~ Kamala Harris

Abandoning civil society will leave the enemy in control, not by victory but by default. ~ Mike Klepper

All writers of fiction will at some point find themselves abandoning a piece of work - or find themselves putting it aside, as we gently say. ~ Martin Amis

I have yet to find a rationale in evolutionary naturalism - the survival of the fittest - that suggests why we ought to care for the weak and suffering. Nature is stern: the herd advances by abandoning those who would hinder it. Lewis, however, understood that Christianity includes both an appreciation for quality (all good things are gifts of the Father in heaven) and compassion for those who lack it.

"How, then, can we honor both Miss Universe and Miss Nobody, Bill Gates and his garbageman? I believe Lewis would answer such a question by first acknowledging the image of God in every person. "There are no ordinary people," Lewis said in a sermon. "You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours." That startling truth applies equally to a caretaker and a scholar." Philip Yancey, What Good is God? ~ Eleanor Gustafson

I have abandoned the beggarly necessity of living. I live without it. ~ Antonio Porchia

One of the most important of life´s lessons is to learn independance, to understand freedom. This means independence from attachments, from results, from opinions, and from expectations. Breaking attachments leads to freedom, but breaking attachments does not mean abandoning a loving and meaningful relationship, a relationship that nourrishes your soul. It means ending dependency on any person or thing. Love is never a dependency. ~ Brian L. Weiss

How significant is Aristotle? Well, I wouldn't want to exaggerate, so let me put it this way: Abandoning Aristotelianism, as the founders of modern philosophy did, was the single greatest mistake ever made in the entire history of Western thought. ~ Edward Feser

Sins slowly suffocate the heart, and abandoning sins brings life to the heart. ~ Abdullah Ibn Mubarak

Abandoning the project was incredibly stressful after having gone through the process of building the room, installing the kiln, collecting the stones, sitting with the kiln day and night as it came to temperature, experiencing the failures. ~ Andy Goldsworthy

Some managers are able to let go of the past better than others. Those that have the greatest difficulty abandoning things are often those unable to face reality. ~ Henry Cloud

I think I have always had a pretty strong creative impulse. And that has probably saved me from abandoning myself completely. ~ Nick Cave

We can't fathom what God has in store for us when He makes all creation new. Believe it by faith and share with those who still doubt that they, too, can be perfected in Heaven by turning to Christ and abandoning their unobtainable satisfaction on earth. ~ Billy Graham

Choosing one path means abandoning others - if you try to follow every possible path you will end up following none. ~ Paulo Coelho

I tell you," he [Milosevic] continued, "Izetbegovic has earned Sarajevo by not abandoning it. He's one tough guy. It's his". These words were probably the most astonishing and unexpected of the conference. ~ Richard Holbrooke

The mermaid is an archetypal image that represents a woman who is at ease in the great waters of life, the waters of emotion and sexuality. She shows us how to embrace our instinctive sexuality and sensuality so that we can affirm the essence of our feminine nature, the wisdom of our bodies, and the playfulness of our spirits. She symbolizes our connection with our deepest instinctive feelings, our wild and untamed animal nature that exists below the surface of outward personalities. She is able to respond to her mysterious sexual impulses without abandoning her more human, conscious side. What happened to the girls who dreamed of being mermaids? ~ Anita Johnston

Hell had become, over the years, a wearisome speculation. Even its proselytizers have neglected it, abandoning the poor, but serviceable, human allusion which the ecclesiastic fires of the Holy Office once had in this world: a temporal torment, of course, but one that was not unworthy, within its terrestrial limitations, of being a metaphor for the immortal, for the perfect pain without destruction that the objects of divine wrath will forever endure. Whether or not this hypothesis is satisfactoy, an increasing lassitude in the propaganda of the institution is indisputable. (Do not be alarmed; I use propaganda here not in its commercial but rather in its Catholic genealogy: a congregation of cardinals.) ~ Jorge Luis Borges

When I've decided what I want. I take it. And right now, I want you. I need you. I'm not abandoning you, and you're not leaving me. Not ever." … "You're inked in my soul, branded on my flesh, and carved in my bones. So trust me when I say. You're worth it, Ahrianna. ~ Demi Vice

Trying to resolve family issues and abandoning God will not resolve the issues ~ Sunday Adelaja

You know what feels good to most of us when these obstacles, stresses and concerns consume us? Eating a dozen, warm chocolate chip cookies.

Sure, there's always a time for chocolate chip cookies, but they aren't a solution to our problems. Neither is skipping the gym. Abandoning yet another weight loss attempt because life got too hard shouldn't be an option. It's no doubt annoying to have to count calories and keep burning calories when the world is going to hell around us, but it's important to keep perspective if you're actually going to be successful in losing weight. The perspective is that even through the pain and discomfort from a death, move, job loss, or general stress might last weeks, months, or even years, it is all temporary. Good health is, too. ~ Shawn Weeks

Dear brothers and sisters ... The Lord is calling me to "climb the mountain", to devote myself even more to prayer and meditation. But this does not mean abandoning the Church, indeed, if God is asking me to do this, it is so I can continue to serve the Church with the same dedication and the same love with which I have done thus far, but in a way that is better suited to my age and my strength ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Taking an abolitionist stance does not mean refusing to engage in incremental change, nor does it mean abandoning efforts to improve conditions inside prisons. Rather, abolitionists engage in 'abolitionist reforms' or 'non-reformist reforms.' These are reforms that either directly undermine the prison industrial complex or provide support to prisoners through strategies that weaken, rather than strengthen, the prison system itself. For example, rather than lobbying for bigger prison health budgets to care for elderly prisoners, an abolitionist reform strategy would aim to get elderly prisoners out on compassionate release to obtain healthcare in the community. --S. Lamble ~ Eric A. Stanley

Where do you get your ideas?' people are always asking authors they admire, which I've always thought was another way of asking, 'How did you get my ideas, which I didn't know I had until you put words to them?' We are known, appreciated, even cherished by our favorite writers; every word of our favorite books seems to have been written for us. Within their sentences and paragraphs, those writers are forever available, forever patient, including us in their compassionate recognition of the impossible, exhausting complexity of being human (those "many thousand" selves), never ignoring us or abandoning us or finding us dull. It's you, they whisper, as we turn their pages, you are the one I've been waiting to tell everything to. ~ Suzanne Berne

Fear is present when we forget that we are a part of God's divine design. Learning to experience authentic love means abandoning ego's insistence that you have much to fear and that you are in an unfriendly world. You can make the decision to be free from fear and doubt and return to the brilliant light of love that is always with you. ~ Wayne Dyer

In every religion I can think of, there exists some variation on the theme of abandoning the settled life and walking one's way to godliness. The Hindu sadhu, the pilgrims of Compostela walking past their sins, the circumambulators of the Buddhist kora, the haj. ~ Robyn Davidson

We had been playing our assigned roles on the office stage, but stepping down from the stage, abandoning the images that we had been projecting there, we were both just unstable, awkward lumps of flesh, warm pieces of meat kitted out with digestive tracts and hearts and brains and reproductive organs. ~ Haruki Murakami

Ah, the Hand of Glory!" said Mr. Borgin, abandoning Mr. Malfoy's list and scurrying over to Draco. "Insert a candle and it gives light only to the holder! Best friend of thieves and plunderers! Your son has fine taste, sir." "I hope my son will amount to more than a thief or a plunderer, Borgin," said Mr. Malfoy coldly, and Mr. Borgin said quickly, "No offense, sir, no offense meant - " "Though if his grades don't pick up," said Mr. Malfoy, more coldly still, "that may indeed be all he is fit for - " "It's not my fault," retorted Draco. "The teachers all have favorites, that Hermione Granger - " "I would have thought you'd be ashamed that a girl of no wizard family beat you in every exam," snapped Mr. Malfoy. "Ha!" said Harry under his breath, pleased to see Draco looking both abashed and angry. ~ J.K. Rowling

Abandoning a boat to get into a life raft is perhaps the biggest and most difficult decision a captain can make, and choosing what to do all depends upon each individual situation. ~ Michael J. Tougias

Christ redeems. Even our struggles, our failures, and our suffering are redemptive in Christ. But there is blood involved. There is a cutting off and a cutting away that redemption demands. Stepping into God's story means abandoning a deeply held desire to make meaning of our own lives on our own terms based on the preciousness of our own feelings. We leave and we cleave. Or we never really understand what it means that Christ died in our place. ~ Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

The thing about working in Hollywood is that, at some point, you really get tired of hearing how godless you are, and how if you and the rest of the heathens in Tinsel town would put more God-centric shows on TV, people wouldn't be abandoning prime time in favor of their Bible study classes. ~ John Ridley

But if you do not find an intelligent companion, a wise and well-behaved person going the same way as yourself, then go on your way alone, like a king abandoning a conquered kingdom, or like a great elephant in the deep forest. ~ Gautama Buddha

Once I had been jerked back to reality, like I was in a log on Splash Mountain and someone quickly applied the brakes, I knew this had been a terrible choice, but I was in it now. There was no getting out; there was no abandoning the mission. ~ Laurie Notaro

People don't show up here (at the courtroom) because they believe evolution is bad science. They show up because they believe that if they accept evolution, then they are abandoning their religious beliefs. They see it as an either/or proposition: Either evolution happened, or God loves you. ~ Eugenie Scott

Part of abandoning the all-or-nothing mentality is allowing yourself room for setbacks. We are bound to have lapses on the road to health and wellness, but it is critical that we learn how to handle small failures positively so that we can minimize their long-term destructive effects. One setback is one setback - it is not the end of the world, nor is it the end of your journey toward a better you. ~ Jillian Michaels

I am a bad feminist and a good woman. I am trying to become better in how I think and say and do - without abandoning what makes me human. ~ Roxane Gay

The majority of our polities, as Aristotle says, are like the Cyclops, abandoning the guidance of the women and children to each individual man according to his mad and injudicious ideas: hardly any, except the polities of Sparta and of Crete, have entrusted the education of children to their laws. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Crime is the price society pays for abandoning character. ~ James Q. Wilson

This time I look at him longer, properly, scanning his face for some sign of what he is thinking - some judgment, some hint of blame or guilt that I'm standing there, talking about leaving his people and mine, about abandoning our whole lives. About running away. But he only smiles at me, his fingers sliding from my cheek to twine around a floating lock of hair, making it spiral in midair. ~ Amie Kaufman

I am not going to advocate ... the abandoning of the improved modes of travel; but I am going to brag as lustily as I can on behalf of the pedestrian, and show how all the shining angels second and accompany the man who goes afoot, while all the dark spirits are ever looking out for a chance to ride. ~ John Burroughs

Valetta," he said, thinking she still looked good, then abandoning his Spidey sense long enough to let her take him in her arms, the skin of her bare shoulder in a halter top cool against his shoulder, the lady most definitely giving off that heavy 1978 Spencer's smell of love candles and sandlewood incense but, laid over top of it, the stink of cigarette, the instant-potatoes smell you might find in the interior of a beat-to-shit Toronado. "Damn. ~ Michael Chabon

It's way too long and I gave up on it. Abandoning forever an innocent child to a hostile and unforgiving land. Sometimes I still hear him crying late at night. He sounds exactly like a malfunctioning air conditioner. ~ Yahtzee Croshaw

In our need for more and more rapid replacement of the worldly things around us, we can no longer afford to use them, to respect and preserve their inherent durability; we must consume, devour, as it were, our houses and furniture and cars as though they were the "good things" of nature which spoil uselessly if they are not drawn swiftly into the never-ending cycle of man's metabolism with nature. It is as though we had forced open the distinguishing boundaries which protected the world, the human artifice, from nature, the biological process which goes on in its very midst as well as the natural cyclical processes which surround it, delivering and abandoning to them the always threatened stability of a human world. ~ Hannah Arendt

In time, we will have to recognise that it is not 'nature' that we need to protect, but ourselves, and we can only do this by abandoning the old, grandiose, profit-seeking schemes so beloved of our masters and learning to till the soil, live to scale, and live within our means. ~ John Burnside