Arresting Ends Quotes

Dead Butterfly
By Ellen Bass
For months my daughter carried
a dead monarch in a quart mason jar.
To and from school in her backpack,
to her only friend's house. At the dinner table
it sat like a guest alongside the pot roast.
She took it to bed, propped by her pillow.
Was it the year her brother was born?
Was this her own too-fragile baby
that had lived - so briefly - in its glassed world?
Or the year she refused to go to her father's house?
Was this the holding-her-breath girl she became there?
This plump child in her rolled-down socks
I sometimes wanted to haul back inside me
and carry safe again. What was her fierce
commitment? I never understood.
We just lived with the dead winged thing
as part of her, as part of us,
weightless in its heavy jar. ~ Ellen Bass

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I remember that throughout history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always ... whenever you are in doubt that that is God's way - the way the world is meant to be. Think of that and then try to do His way. ~ Jean Vanier

Today barbarism has taken over many city streets, or people fear it has, which comes to much the same thing in the end. ~ Jane Jacobs

As much as thinking this upsets me, I'm starting to see that I need the merry-go-round much more than it needs me, and in the end my choice is to hop back on or get left in the dust. ~ Wendelin Van Draanen

I would never jeopardize classified information to be brought out to the public. This information is all open source. There is no reason to worry about classification. It is simply an attempt by bureaucrats to cover their rear ends. ~ Curt Weldon

But the same in the plural in ia must be. E, or i, are the ablative's ends, - mark my song, While or to the nominative case doth belong; For the neuter aforesaid we settle it thus: The plural is ora; the singular us. ~ Percival Leigh

The difference between the masculine and feminine spiritual constitution is represented by their respective roles in reproduction. The man is the giver while the woman is the receiver. The man gives to the woman, but she, in turn, produces much more than the man initiated. She receives but ultimately ends up creating and developing something complete. If masculinity is giving, femininity is receiving, developing, and completing. ~ Chana Weisberg

Knowledge is power, as some say. But on some days it is just as much pain and confusion as it is power; and any wise man worth his salt as a wise man at least understands this. One may be able to comprehend all the human perspectives in the universe, but this gives more to decipher regarding what is actually true; and even after discovering the truth, the challenge is in maintaining a patience for the infinite number of opinions that do not reflect that truth. Its consistency in man is challenge. A worldly knowledge ends at the former challenge of confusion, but the knowledge of Christ ends at the latter challenge of patience. ~ Criss Jami

I used to refer to myself as a 'theoretical anorexic,' just as crazy when it came to body image, but saved by a lack of self-discipline. My daughters do everything better than I do - they're smarter, more beautiful, happier. What if they end up better at anorexia, too? ~ Ayelet Waldman

So he had passed beyond the challenge of the sentries who had stood as guardians of his boyhood and had sought to keep him among them that he might be subject to them and serve their ends. Pride after satisfaction uplifted him like long slow waves. ~ James Joyce

My family history begins with me, but yours ends with you. ~ Iphicrates

No one wants growth, constant expansion, physical swelling. Growth is not a human value; it's a means to the ends of sufficiency and security. Once we have enough, no one wants more, unless it is sold to us as a cheap substitute for something else, something non-material. ~ Donella Meadows

Time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore. ~ Bob Dylan

Music, at the end of the day, is communicating something - emotion, a feeling, a rite of passage, where you are in life. ~ Ed O'Brien

At the very end, what is going to happen is that immigration will be reduced considerably. And how can we get to that stage? By agreements on sectors. ~ Vicente Fox

And also, one is a mother in order to understand the inexplicable. One is a mother to lighten the darkness. One is a mother to shield when lightning streaks the night, when thunder shakes the earth, when mud bogs one down. One is a mother in order to love without beginning or end. ~ Mariama Ba

There is nothing wrong with our country, there is something wrong with our politics ... When this country is operating off a common ground, nobody can stop us. But when we're divided, then we end up having a whole lot of self-inflicted problems. ~ Barack Obama

Toads are conservative animals, I think, and not much given to expecting the best from fortune. Some weeks ago, well before the end of October, I accidentally dug up one while turning over some garden earth. I was surprised, naturally, when one of the clods heaved over on its die and there, in some annoyance, sat at toad. ~ Henry Mitchell

May each of you live lives of immersion. They won't necessarily be easy lives. But in the end, it is all that will sustain us. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

We're all learning here; the best listeners will end up the smartest. ~ Charlene Li

There is a rope that stretches from Infinity to Infinity, passing over a razor which is the Present. If the rope is cut, both ends fall away from the middle and the rope is no more. If the man alive now dies without heir, the whole continuum of ancestors and unborn descendants dies with him... His existence as an individual is necessary but insignificant beside his existence as the representative of the whole ~ Hugh Baker

And that damned man in the White House doesn't help things any. He represents the type of political hatred I'm talking about. Guys like him play to the worst fears of white men. Are you having a bad time of it right now? Lost your job? Having difficulty making ends meet? It's not my fault or your fault. It's the black man's fault. It's the Muslims' fault. Blame a Mexican immigrant. Man's got everyone lining up, taking sides, white people versus people of color,
different religions arguing their way is the right way. This is a bad time in America. It's an especially terrible time for a black woman to be taking on a white cop or the white establishment. ~ Mark M. Bello

The end of all is death and man's life passeth away suddenly as a shadow. ~ Thomas A Kempis

Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. If all economists were laid end to end they would not reach a conclusion. ~ George Bernard Shaw

All I ever wanted was a Virginia farm, no end of cream and fresh butter and fried chicken - not one fried chicken, or two, but unlimited fried chicken. ~ Robert E.Lee

When he speaks into your ear so that
no one can hear, he will say he is your slave, that he's passed to you from Deirdre. But it's a lie, my dear,
a vicious lie. He'll make you his and drive you mad if you refuse to do his will. That is what he's done to
them all.' She stopped, her wrinkled brows tightening, her eyes drifting off across the dusty surface of the
table. 'Except for those who were strong enough to rein him in and make him the slave he claimed to be,
and use him for their own ends… ' Her voice trailed off. 'Their own endless wickedness. ~ Anne Rice

There is a sense in which I am pretty sure this makes no sense. I don't know where this is going. I don't know how it ends. ~ Charles Yu

I'm not technically adept at music, but I'd love to be part of a discussion of where progressive rock ends and country music begins. ~ William Shatner

I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done ... in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done! ~ John Brown

In good times, we all want to drop anchor, to stop in time! But man is condemned to move till the far end of the precipice! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Marriage is like a long conversation that always ends too soon. ~ Cassandra Clare

There's some end at last for the man who follows a path; mere rambling is interminable. ~ Seneca The Elder

Life starts from a white hole and ends in a black hole. ~ Santosh Kalwar

Physical love must end up as a creative love. And creative love must end up as a divine love. And divine love must end up as a unison love. And unison love must become God Itself. These are the known stages of love. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi