Abano Grand Quotes

No matter where you went - no matter how ancient the traditions, no matter how grand the history, no matter how awe-inspiring the landscape - there was always a market for a cheap Happy Meal. The Lotus Way might lead to nirvana, but it was a long trip, and when you had a lot of miles to cover, it was just natural to want some drive-thru along the road. ~ Joe Hill

A person cannot exert absolute control over a capricious environment. A wise person concentrates on serenely adjusting to variable permutations in the environs. A personal journey is less anxious if a person resolves to serve as a conscious witness to the natural world and the unfolding lives of family and friends. It is emotionally stabilizing when we no longer delude ourselves with grand fantasies about living and dying, experience life for what it is and stop wishing for a different existence, an altered universe. Nothing good comes from resisting reality. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

This core concept is so fundamental to her life that she even had a custom grand piano made where the keys aren't black and white - they're green and red. As a side note, do you think it's a coincidence that Christmas' colors are red and green? Christmas, as the consumer holiday, is the epitome of that point where fear meets greed. December 25th is the high holy day of chaos. ~ Jarod Kintz

Grand telegraphic discovery today ... Transmitted vocal sounds for the first time ... With some further modification I hope we may be enabled to distinguish ... the "timbre" of the sound. Should this be so, conversation viva voce by telegraph will be a fait accompli. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

I want a cigarette. I want a cigarette. I want to kill the woman my husband loves. This is all her fault. I got pregnant to secure the man that I had already married. A woman shouldn't have to do that. She should feel safe in her marriage. That's why you got married - to feel safe from all the men who were trying to siphon your soul. I'd yielded my soul to Caleb willingly. Offered it up like a sacrificial lamb. Now, I was not only going to have to compete with the memory of another woman, but a shriveled up baby. He was already staring into her eyes like he could see the Grand Canyon tucked away in her irises. I ~ Tarryn Fisher

Margaret's attention was thus called to her host; his whole manner as master of the house, and entertainer of his friends, was so straightforward, yet simple and modest, as to be thoroughly dignified. Margaret thought she had never seen him to so much advantage. When he had come to their house, there had been always something, either of over-eagerness or of that kind of vexed annoyance which seemed ready to pre-suppose that he was unjustly judged, and yet felt too proud to try and make himself better understood. But now, among his fellows, there was no uncertainty as to his position. He was regarded by them as a man of great force of character; of power in many ways. There was no need to struggle for their respect. He had it, and he knew it; and the security of this gave a fine grand quietness to his voice and ways, which Margaret had missed before. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

I want to return to the epic idea of the grand, big Western, in the sense that 'The Searchers' was. ~ Ridley Scott

[S]tatism is but socialized dishonesty; it is feathering the nests of some with feathers coercively plucked from others - on the grand scale. There is no moral difference between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax or any other social program. ~ Leonard Read

What were the relations between the Jews and the secret societies? That is not easy to elucidate, for we lack reliable evidence. Obviously they did not dominate in these associations, as the writers, whom I have just mentioned, pretended; they were not necessarily the soul, the head, the grand master of masonry as Gougenot des Mousseaux affirms. It is certain however that there were Jews in the very cradle of masonry, kabbalist Jews, as some of the rites which have been preserved prove. ~ Bernard Lazare

Whenever you give up an apartment in New York and move to another city, New York turns into the worst version of itself. Someone I know once wisely said that the expression "It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there" is completely wrong where New York is concerned; the opposite is true. New York is a very livable city. But when you move away and become a vistor, the city seems to turn against you. It's much more expensive (because you need to eat all your meals out and pay for a place to sleep) and much more unfriendly. Things change in New York; things change all the time. You don't mind this when you live here; when you live here, it's part of the caffeinated romance to this city that never sleeps. But when you move away, your experience change as a betrayal. You walk up Third Avenue planning to buy a brownie at a bakery you've always been loyal to, and the bakery's gone. Your dry cleaner move to Florida; your dentist retires; the lady who made the pies on West Fourth Street vanishes; the maitre d' at P.J. Clarke's quits, and you realize you're going to have to start from scratch tipping your way into the heart of the cold, chic young woman now at the down. You've turned your back from only a moment, and suddenly everything's different. You were an insider, a native, a subway traveler, a purveyor of inside tips into the good stuff, and now you're just another frequent flyer, stuck in a taxi on Grand Central Parkway as you wing in and out of La Guardia. M ~ Nora Ephron

No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly on so grand a scale, took a paper that was marginal in qualities and brought it to excellence as Otis Chandler did. ~ David Halberstam

In my opinion it is a grand book ... Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement ... What we need therefore, in my opinion, is not a change in our economic programmes, which would only lead in practice to disillusion with the results of your philosophy; but perhaps even the contrary, namely, an enlargement of them. Your greatest danger is the probable practical failure of the application of your philosophy in the United States. ~ John Maynard Keynes

It's a soulful Sunday, somehow I found myself pulling out my journal and started writing a letter to Sensuality. And it goes like this: Sensuality...

You've opened me up to a world of possibilities and set me on an adventure that has never ceased to amaze me. You have led me through unfounded territories. Through the highest highs and lowest lows I've felt your current, sometimes raging like an angry sea and at times blowing as gentle as a cool summer breeze.

You've filled me with such an insatiable desire, which has been both a curse and a blessing. You've sensitized my soul, made it to feel even the most gentle touch of the lightest feather. You daily seduce me into your deep waters, waters so deep I find myself drowning, yet not losing my breath.

Sensuality... I love how you soothe me when I'm hurting. I love how you comfort and put me back together when I'm feeling broken. I love how you whisper in my ear and say 'do not despair, I'm here.' You uncover my deepest desires and set my soul on fire. You light me up and make me shine like the brightest star on a clear summer night.

There's never a dull moment with you. Just when I think there can't possibly be more, you show me again and again that there's always another level... another layer... another blessing. Your mysteries never run out. I've come know you like God's very own presence. Indeed, you are His very own favour to my soul. His divine beauty, passion and wisdom have I ~ Lebo Grand

Love is not about grand intentions. It is about small attentions. ~ Robert Breault

Steve's throat swelled with tension as the intimacy of the moment became more tangible. He moved his eyes from the dark, reflective river, to the dark, reflective pupils in Diane's eyes. They seemed to quiver with tenderness - but then they would grow distant. He found himself continually surprised at the "aliveness" of the person standing just a foot away from him now. She wasn't inanimate: she would flinch if he pinched her, and answer if he asked her. And she was beautiful."
From "The Grand Unified Story"
a short story in Zack Love's Stories and Scripts: an Anthology ~ Zack Love

Each and every prayer is a tiny piece of a great cosmic puzzle, which when fitted together will allow for the completion of the grand picture of the Almighty Lord's plan for humanity and the universe. ~ Jason Mandryk

Even my great grand-mother did impressions. ~ Julia Louis-Dreyfus

She has a litany of names by you and in her constant bulb of longing, she whispers them into her bent elbow, into this grand imagination that you wouldn't cause her pain, that you think of her, too, but dare not erase her fantastic yearning. ~ Farrah Field

I sometimes wish my childhood had been less obsessed with the question of why we are here. But that must be the question of any childhood. To write about your mother and father is to tell the story of your own close call, to count all the ways you never should have existed. To write about home is to write about how you dropped from space, dragging ellipses behind you like a comet, and how you entered your country and state and city, and finally your four-cornered house, and finally your mother's body and finally your own. From the galaxy to the grain and back again. From the fingerprint to the grand design. Despite all the conspiracies of the universe, we are here; every moment we are here we arrive. ~ Patricia Lockwood

... and for the first time in his life the possibility of death presented itself, not in relation to the living world, or any effect it might have on other people, but purely in relation to himself and his own soul, and it seemed so vivid, almost a dependable certainty, stark and terrible. And from the heights of this vision everything that had once tormentingly preoccupied him seemed suddenly bathed in a cold, white light with no shadows, no perspective, no outline. His whole life seemed like a magic-lantern show that he had been staring at through glass by artificial light. Now suddenly the glass was gone, and he could see those awful daubings in the clear light of day. 'Yes, yes, here they are, these false images that I used to find so worrying, enthralling and agonizing,' he told himself, giving his imagination a free rein to run over the main pictures in the magic lantern of his life, looked anew in the cold, white daylight brought on by a clear vision of death. 'Here they are, these crudely daubed figures that used to seem so magnificent and mysterious. Honour and glory, philanthropy, love of a woman, love of Fatherland -- how grand these pictures used to seem, filled with such deep meanings! And now it all looks so simple, colourless and crude in the cold light of the morning I can feel coming upon me. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Ryogoku Kokugikan* Ryogoku, the largest sumo stadium in Japan with a capacity of 10,000 spectators, holds grand tournaments of basho in January, May and September. These magnificent 15-day long tournaments are filled with ceremonies and rituals that are as interesting as the wrestling matches themselves. The competition begins around 9am each day, with amateur matches, and progress in order of seniority as the day continues. ~ Wanderlust Pocket Guides

I'm not that good a player, and I'll be the first to admit that. I might be a three or four grand-slam winner; I might be a two grand-slam winner, I don't know. ~ Patrick Rafter

Playing along in the yard,
The blue sky sparkles against the earthly green,
Creating such harmony!
A pond, nearby.
Untroubled waters mirrors the ether's dreams.
A grand echo of my Divine Heart!
I am One ~ Arnaud Saint-Paul

I don't think I have grand visions that I will never achieve. ~ David Byrne

Sunrise offered a very beautiful spectacle; the water was quite unruffled, but the motion communicated by the tides was so great that, although there was not a breath of air stirring, the sea heaved slowly with a grand and majestic motion. ~ George Grey

By day it is filled with boat traffic - water
buses, delivery boats, gondolas - if something floats
and it's in Venice, it moves along the Grand Canal.
And by daylight it is one of the glories of the Earth.
But at night, especially when the moon is full
and the soft illumination reflects off the water and
onto the palaces - I don't know how to describe
it so I won't, but if you died and in your will you
asked for your ashes to be spread gently on the
Grand Canal at midnight with a full moon,
everyone would know this about you - you loved and understood beauty. ~ William Goldman

Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality, and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching, to love their neighbors, then they would put jealousy and frustration aside? ~ Mary Douglas

No person is so grand or wise or perfect as to be the master of another person. Teacher, perhaps. Setter of good example, perhaps. Genius, perhaps. But master, no. ~ Karl Hess

What's your point?" He spun around in his chair and took a brown file folder from a wire rack on the credenza behind him next to a couple of generic office plants. He opened it, took out a sheet of paper, and looked at it for a moment. Then he handed it to me. It was a fax from a bank in the Caymans called Transatlantic Bank & Trust (Cayman) Limited, located on Mary Street in George Town, Grand Cayman. A copy of a copy of a copy, festooned with smudges and photocopier artifacts. It was a letter from Roger, on Gifford Industries letterhead, to the bank's manager. A letter of instruction. ~ Joseph Finder

... we live in a purposeful world with a linear movement to a grand climax. Thousands of sub-plots unfold enroute to the great finale. Behind your life is an unseen and up fathomed blueprint where every experience is purposeful. Within this divine plan we are not robots, but responsible moral agents. We make choices and we are responsible for these choices. But God, in a way that you and I will never fathom, integrates into his plan our choices long before they are ever made. ~ Jim Andrews

The Supreme Court, the final arbiter of legal conflicts, reviews, acts of the executive and Congress. With this power, the Court is seen as a political institution as well. "Because the key provisions of the Constitution are couched in grand ambiguities and because the key provisions concern the larger issues of our life, of our liberties, and of our happiness, the Supreme Court, by the exercise of judicial review, wields tremendous political power," Joaquin Bernas, a Jesuit priest and constitutionalist, said. ~ Marites Dañguilan Vitug

Dear Friend, Just a line to show that I am alive & kicking and going grand. It's a treat. ~ Carl Sagan

I am not sure how much Dudley will feature just because of the grand scale of the film and the fact that there are so many stories and characters to tie up. I haven't seen the film yet but I think it will be a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but it was nice just to round it off and give it some closure. ~ Harry Melling