Bearings Quotes

Nor had she missed when they zigzagged between levels, even though the building was a standard grid of hallways and stairwells. As if she'd lose her bearings that easily.
She might have been insulted if he wasn't trying so hard. ~ Sarah J. Maas

My life was definitely going into a nosedive. When my parents separated (and) divorced when I was fifteen, I definitely lost my bearings and was completely out of control. My grades were plummeting. I had no direction. I was a pretty angry teenager (and) somewhat destructive. So, I broke down in a church when I was 18 and turned my life over to God, thankfully. ~ Michael Landon, Jr.

When we're being grateful it means that we're acknowledging that life is a gift, that life is a blessing, that this body is only here for a short period of time and it really shifts the whole internal landscape of the mind and it puts things into perspective and it allows us to get our bearings. To get a firm footing in what's real, and then go from there. ~ MC Yogi

The river of his youth had been diverted and poured out broadly across the land to seep through dirt to the roots of crops instead of running in its bed. The river was no longer a river, and the desert was no longer a desert. Nothing was as it had been.
He knew what had happened to the sagelands. He himself had helped burn them. Then men like his father had seized the river without a trace of evil in their hearts, sure of themselves but ignorant, and children of their time entirely, with no other bearings to rely on. Irrigators and fruit-tree growers, they believed the river to be theirs. His own life spanned that time and this, and so he believed in the old fast river as much as he believed in apple orchards, and yet he saw that the two were at odds, the river defeated that apples might grow as far as Royal Slope. It made no more sense to love the river and at the same time kill it growing apples than it made sense to love small birds on the wing and shoot them over pointing dogs. But he'd come into the world in another time, a time immune to these contradictions and in the end he couldn't shake old ways any more than he could shake his name. ~ David Guterson

The phone conversations about a possible TV series of 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell' stretch back years, but now that the moment has come, now that I am actually here at Wentworth Woodhouse, I lose my bearings. ~ Susanna Clarke

The greatest gift a parent can give a child is unconditional love. As a child wanders and strays, finding his bearings, he needs a sense of absolute love from a parent. There's nothing wrong with tough love, as long as the love is unconditional. ~ George W. Bush

One year, I'd completely lost my bearings trying to follow potty training instruction from a psychiatric expert. I was stuck on step on, which stated without an atom of irony: "Before you begin, remove all stubbornness from the child." ... I knew it only could have been written by someone whose suit coat was still spotless at the end of the day, not someone who had any hands-on experience with an actual two-year-old. ~ Mary Blakely

To be conservative in politics is to take one's bearings not from the latest bright idea about how to make a better world, but by looking carefully at what the past reveals both about the kind of people we are and the problems that concern us. As we get older, we often become conservative in our habits, in our family practices, and in our recognition of the richness of our civilization, but this evolution of our character into a set of habits in no way blocks adventurousness. The old no less than the young may be found starting new enterprises, sailing around the world, and solving arcane academic questions. But it is in the ordinary business of life that we find our excitement, not in foolish collective dreams of political perfection. ~ Kenneth Minogue

I was profoundly impressed by my contact with these places which are and have always been, the wellsprings of your history. It makes one think that the men who created your country never lost sight of their moral bearings. They did not laugh at the absolute nature of the concepts of "good" and "evil." Their practical policies were checked against their moral compass. And how surprising it is that a practical policy computed on the basis of moral considerations turned out to be the most farsighted and the most salutary. This is true even though in the short term one may wonder: Why all this morality? Let's just get on with the immediate job. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

How many of us, myself included, have lost our bearings; we are no longer attentive to the world in which we live; we don't care; we don't protect what God created for everyone, and we end up unable even to care for one another. ~ Pope Francis

The bearings of this observation lays in the application of it. ~ Charles Dickens

When I opened my eyes again, five hours later, at seven o'clock on Saturday August 4th, I had trouble getting my bearings. The hardest day of the ordeal of my abandonment was about to begin, but I didn't know it yet. ~ Elena Ferrante

Gentleman," I purr smoothly in greeting.
Ezra and Cort circle me like sharks scenting blood. I know who they are, but not who is who since they're wearing black hoods over their heads. It covers them to the shoulder and has holes for the eyes and mouth. Their clothing is identical Italian designer label suits. Even their shoes are the same. Their eyes glow like steel ball-bearings from the safety of their masks. The mouths are different- one serious, one snarky- both ruby-red and kissable.
While they circle Fate and me several times taking our measure, the other Master stands in a sphere of his own confidence. He's older and I don't mean just in age, but knowledge. Ezra and Cortez feel like babies compared to this man. I bet he's who I really have to impress.
I wait, always meeting their eyes when their path moves them back to my face. I don't follow them with my gaze- I wait.
"Hello," the hood with the serious lips speaks in a smooth deep tone. I know it's not his true voice, but the one Kris calls The Boss. His eyes are kind and assessing.
No one pays Fate any mind as she cowers at my thigh. I hold their undivided attention. Curly-locks is quiet- watchful- a predator sighting its quarry. Snarky mouth is leering at my chest and I smirk. Caught ya, Cortez Abernathy.
"I seem to be at a disadvantage conversing with you while you're hooded. I can't see you, but you can see me." I try to get them to out themselves. It's a longshot.
"And who are ~ Erica Chilson

I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study, and the passionate possession of all Texans. ~ John Steinbeck

I would not have done anything differently. All of the moments in my life, everyone I have met, every trip I have taken, every success I have enjoyed, every blunder I have made, every loss I have endured has been just right. I am not saying that they were all good or that they happened for a reason...but they have been right. They have been okay. As far as revelations go its pretty lame, I know. Okay is not bliss or even happiness. Okay is not the basis for a new religion or self help movement. Okay won't get me on Oprah, but okay is a start and for that I am grateful. Can I thank Bhutan for this breakthrough? It's hard to say […] It is a strange place, peculiar in ways large and small. You lose your bearings here and when that happens a crack forms in your armor. A crack large enough, if you're lucky, to let in a few shafts of light. ~ Eric Weiner

It stands to reason that he who would cure a moral ailment must be practically acquainted with it in all its bearings. ~ Samuel Butler

People suit their star sign. If someone is annoying me over and over, and I know they're a Sagittarius, say, I'm more likely to forgive them. It comes down to my need for structure as a way of finding my bearings with people. ~ Jessie Cave

I'm like a machine being run over its RPM limit: The bearings are overheating - a minute longer, and the metal is going to melt and start dripping and that'll be the end of everything. I need a quick splash of cold water, logic. I pour it on in buckets, but the logic hisses on the hot bearings and dissipates in the air as a fleeting white mist.
Well, of course, it's clear that you can't establish a function without taking into account what its limit is. And it's also clear that what I felt yesterday, that stupid "dissolving in the universe," if you take it to its limit, is death. Because that's exactly what death is - the fullest possible dissolving of myself into the universe. Hence, if we let L stand for love and D for death, then L = f (D), i.e., love and death ... ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

None of the locals seemed to notice the huge Greek warship hovering over the piazza, or the fact that Jason and Leo had just flown down, Jason wielding a gold sword, and Leo ... well, Leo pretty much empty-handed. "Where to?" Jason asked. Leo stared at him. "Well, I dunno. Let me pull my dwarf-tracking GPS out of my tool belt. ... Oh, wait! I don't have a dwarf-tracking GPS - or my tool belt!" "Fine," Jason grumbled. He glanced up at the ship as if to get his bearings, then pointed across the piazza. "The ballista fired the first dwarf in that direction, I think. ~ Rick Riordan

Serafim now had the liberty to go anywhere in the world, do anything. He had no land, no ties, no home to return to. He was unbound, floating illimitable; yet he had never felt so burdened in his life. What if we choose confinement, he contemplated; what if we actually seek to settle into the security of some type of bondage? A person certainly never has to worry about their bearings, or who and what they are, when held in place by a few simple, even token, chains. Rendering oneself a captive liberates one from all the squeamish dilemmas of free will. ~ Mark Lavorato

contact points are larger and instead of the current being led through the bearings as in an ordinary ~ Archie Frederick Collins

You live like this long enough, a life without chances, you lose your bearings. A life without danger. A life without the risk of Now. In any event, what do I need with Now? Now, I think, is overrated. Now hasn't been working out so great for me. Now never has. ~ Charles Yu

Yes, it struck her now that this whole business of the bull was like a life; the important birth, the fair chance, the tentative, then assured, then half-dispairing circulations of the ring, an obstacle negotiated - a feat improperly recognized - boredom, resignation, collapse: then another, more convulsive birth, a new start; the circumspect endeavours to obtain one's bearings in a world now frankly hostile, the apparent but deceptive encouragement of one's judges, half of whom were asleep, the swervings into the beginnings of disaster because of that same negligible obstacle one had surely taken before at a stride, the final enmeshment in the toils of enemies one was never quite certain weren't friends more clumsy than actively ill-disposed, followed by disaster, capitulation, disintegration. ~ Malcolm Lowry

Whenever I go to a new city, whether visiting or vacationing, I would always make that a point to get to the record store early on, just to get my bearings and see what was going on around town. ~ Gary Calamar

Things were changing; I was changing. All swelling limbs and sweating brain, suddenly I had more body than I knew what to do with. Arms and legs became the prey of low desktops and narrow corridors, were ambushed by sharp corners. Mr Baxter ignored my plight. Bodies were inimical to mathematics, or so we were led to believe. Bad hair, acrid breath, lumpy skin, all vanished for an hour every Tuesday and Thursday. Young minds in the buff soared into the sphere of pure reason. Pages turned to parallelograms; cities, circumferences; recipes, ratios. Shorn of our bearings, we groped our way around in this rarefied air. ~ Daniel Tammet

Sometimes good countries are so traumatized by events that they lose their bearings and embrace bad leaders. ~ David Ignatius

Once I had gotten my bearings and turned back to the room in front of me, I found myself staring directly into the eyes of Queen Julia. Well, her and about twenty Hunters who seemed only too happy to display their bouncing balls of crackling orange magic and wicked stares. ~ Stormy Smith

There is no way of steering successfully between a failed situation and a failed self except by stopping and taking our bearings. ~ Jo Coudert

... you don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings ... serendipitously.
The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor ~ John Barth

A man must abide somewhere, a physical roof over his head is not enough; his mind needs its bearings, its points of reference, vertically as well as horizontally. Do we not speak of edifying readings? ~ Stephen McNeilly

He pointed out to him the bearings of the coast, explained to him the variations of the compass, and taught him to read in that vast book opened over our heads which they call heaven, and where God writes in azure with letters of diamonds. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Finally, if you're as exasperated as I am by the parts problem and have some money to invest, you can take up the really fascinating hobby of machining your own parts. [ ... ] With the welding equipment you can build up worn surfaces with better than original metal and then machine it back to tolerance with carbide tools. [ ... ] If you can't do the job directly you can always make something that will do it. The work of machining a part is very slow, and some parts, such as ball bearings, you're never going to machine, but you'd be amazed at how you can modify parts designs so that you can make them with your equipment, and the work isn't nearly a slow or frustrating as a wait for some smirking parts man to send away to the factory. And the work is gumption building, not gumption destroying. To run a cycle with parts in it you've made yourself gives you a special feeling you can't possibly get from strictly store-bought parts. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Woods are not like other spaces. To begin with, they are cubic. Their trees surround you, loom over you, press in from all sides. Woods choke off views & leave you muddled & without bearings. They make you feel small & confused & vulnerable, like a small child lost in a crowd of strange legs. Stand in a desert or prairie & you know you are in a big space. Stand in the woods and you only sense it. They are vast, featureless nowhere. And they are alive. ~ Bill Bryson

... family men, Claude."

"Then why aren't they home with their families?"

"You haven't been listening to me, Claude. It takes lots of honey to raise a family these days..." No, it isn't even that, these teddy bears don't like honey as much as they think they do. They think they're supposed to like it, the way they're supposed to like women and children. They think they're supposed to act like real grizzlies, but they don't feel it. You can't blame them, they just don't have it inside them. What they have, what they love most, is their memories: how the Coach used to shout niceworkpal whenever they caught the big ball or somehow hit the little one, how Dad used to wink when they caught one of his jokes, how when they repeated them he almost died laughing, so they told them and told them - if they told one really well he might do it. They memorized all the conversations verbatim, that about the pussies and the coons, the homers and the balls, the cams and the bearings. They're still memorizing. You can see them almost anytime you're out driving, there in the slow car just ahead, the young man at the wheel, the old man talking, the young man leaning a little to the right in order to hear better, the old man pointing out the properties, the young man looking and listening earnestly, straining to catch the old man's last word, the last joke verbatim, the last bit of know-how about the deals and the properties and the honey. When he thinks he's learned all he ~ Douglas Woolf

…there is rarely any rhyme or reason in suicides. They can be a cry for help gone wrong, or a punishment to those you're leaving behind, or one fateful twenty-minute window when you lose your bearings and can't find the reasons to go on. ~ Mariel Hemingway

For him, to get one's bearings on the world meant to conceive all its contents as simultaneous, and to guess at their interrelationships in the cross-section of a single moment. This ~ Mikhail Bakhtin

A dream is nothing but a lucky idea that comes to us from the dark, all-unifying world of the psyche. What would be more natural, when we have lost ourselves amid the endless particulars and isolated details of the world's surface, than to knock at the door of dreams and inquire of them the bearings which would bring us closer to the basic facts of human existence? ~ C. G. Jung

Christian theism, to those who believe it, commends itself as fact, not theory, by the sheer multiplicity of its bearings. Were it a speculation, it would surely face a single field of enquiry: it would assign the cause of the world, or the principle of duty, or the aim of existence, or the means of spiritual regeneration. If an equal light falls from a single source in all these directions at once, that source must seem to have the richness of a reality, rather than the abstract poverty of an idea. ~ Jocelyn Gibb

What had happened was this: I fell out of my own map. It's an easy thing to do, especially in middle age, but really it can happen at any time. We all live by different lights - success, for some, desire for others - and take our bearings along different dreams. Some of us fly west with the night, into the unknown, urged on by adventure; others look only for the harbor lights, and stay safely in sight of home. But whichever way we choose, we come to rely on the sameness of our days, on the fact that for years at a time the road ahead looks much like the road behind, the horizon clear, the obstacles negotiable. And yet from time to time we stumble into wilderness. It can happen to anyone, at any age: the graduate putting away the cap and gown, the fifty-five-year-old rereading the layoff notice, the wife staring at the empty side of the still-warm bed. Now what? they whisper as they look ahead to a place where the landmarks disappear, and the map reads TERRA INCOGNITA. ~ Lynn Darling

My head was spinning. I felt like I'd been drifting, lost at sea all my life, and now that I'd found dry land, I couldn't quite get my bearings. ~ Carolee Dean

Below us lay a valley white with snow. It was criss-crossed with lines, like a great cupped palm. But not even an expert seer would have had time to read the story of our future. Before we could get our bearings, my feet had quit the ground. Suddenly we were airborne and flying fast, carving a path between the rolling snow below and the glittering galaxies above. ~ Bill Richardson

Into the cultural and technological system of the modern world, the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern mankind. ~ Thorstein Veblen

Very few women understand how great is the hunger in a man to be near femininity...(b)ut if a woman wishes to give a most precious gift to a man, if she would truly feed this masculine hunger (a hunger that he will seldom show but that is always there), she will be very, very feminine when her man is in a mood, so he can get his bearings and be a man again. ~ Robert A. Johnson

It wasn't so much all the sex that robbed me of my moral bearings, but all the narcotics. I must say, there's something about opium that goes very well with lesbianism. ~ Alan Moore

When he put the old-fashioned mechanical toy on her palm, she stopped breathing. It was a tiny representation of an atom, complete with colored ball bearings standing in for neutrons, protons, and on the outside, arranged on arcs of fine wire, electrons. Turning the key on the side made the electrons move, what she'd thought were ball bearings actually finely crafted spheres of glass that sparked with color. A brilliant, thoughtful, wonderful gift for a physics major.
"Why magnesium?" she asked, identifying the atomic number of the light metal. His hand on her jaw, his mouth on her own. "Because it's beautifully explosive, just like my X. ~ Nalini Singh

Machiavelli, however, took his bearings from people as they are. He defined the political project as making the best of this flawed material. He knew (in words Kant would write almost three centuries later) that nothing straight would be made from the crooked timber of humanity. ~ George Will

I awake with a start, shaking the cobwebs of sleep from my mind. It's pitch-dark out, the wind howling. It takes a couple seconds to get my bearings, to realize I'm in my parents' bed, Ryder beside me, on his side, facing me. Our hands are still joined, though our fingers are slack now.
"Hey, you," he says sleepily. "That one was loud, huh?"
"What was?"
"Thunder. Rattled the windows pretty bad."
"What time is it?"
"Middle of the night, I'd say."
I could check my phone, but that would require sitting up and letting go of his hand. Right now, I don't want to do that. I'm too comfortable. "Have you gotten any sleep at all?" I ask him, my mouth dry and cottony.
"I think I drifted off for a little bit. Till…you know…the thunder started up again."
"Oh. Sorry."
"It should calm down some when the eye moves through."
"If there's still an eye by the time it gets here. The center of circulation usually starts breaking up once it goes inland." Yeah, all those hours watching the Weather Channel occasionally come in handy.
He gives my hand a gentle squeeze. "Wow, maybe you should consider studying meteorology. You know, if the whole film-school thing doesn't work out for you."
"I could double major," I shoot back.
"I bet you could."
"What are you going to study?" I ask, curious now. "I mean, besides football. You've got to major in something, don't you?"
He doesn't answer right away. I wonder what's going through hi ~ Kristi Cook

Humans never outgrow their need to connect with others, nor should they, but mature, truly individual people are not controlled by these needs. Becoming such a separate being takes the whole of a childhood, which in our times stretches to at least the end of the teenage years and perhaps beyond. We need to release a child from preoccupation with attachment so he can pursue the natural agenda of independent maturation. The secret to doing so is to make sure that the child does not need to work to get his needs met for contact and closeness, to find his bearings, to orient.

Children need to have their attachment needs satiated; only then can a shift of energy occur toward individuation, the process of becoming a truly individual person. Only then is the child freed to venture forward, to grow emotionally. Attachment hunger is very much like physical hunger. The need for food never goes away, just as the child's need for attachment never ends. As parents we free the child from the pursuit of physical nurturance. We assume responsibility for feeding the child as well as providing a sense of security about the provision. No matter how much food a child has at the moment, if there is no sense of confidence in the supply, getting food will continue to be the top priority.

A child is not free to proceed with his learning and his life until the food issues are taken care of, and we parents do that as a matter of course. Our duty ought to be equally transparent ~ Gabor Mate

America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that's 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We're in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good. ~ Thomas McGuane

Communists should set an example in being practical as well as far-sighted. For only by being practical can they fulfil the appointed tasks, and only far-sightedness can prevent them from losing their bearings in the march forward. ~ Mao Zedong

I have better use for my brain than to poison it with alcohol. To put alcohol in the human brain is like putting sand in the bearings of an engine. ~ Thomas A. Edison

Novels and stories are renderings of life; they cannot only keep us company, but admonish us, point us in new directions, or give us the courage to stay a given course. They can offer us kinsmen, kinswomen, comrades, advisors - offer us other eyes through which we might see ... Every ... student ... will all too quickly be beyond schooling, will be out there making a living and, too, just plain living - that is, trying to find and offer to others the affection and love that give purpose to our time spent here ... [Characters] can be cautionary figures ... who give us pause and help us in the private moments when we try to find our own bearings ~ Robert Coles

As the sailor locates his position on the sea by "shooting" the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God. ~ A.W. Tozer

The human mind is a fearful instrument of adaptation, and in nothing is this more clearly shown than in its mysterious powers of resilience, self-protection, and self-healing. Unless an event completely shatters the order of one's life, the mind, if it has youth and health and time enough, accepts the inevitable and gets itself ready for the next happening like a grimly dutiful American tourist who, on arriving at a new town, looks around him, takes his bearings, and says, Well, where do I go from here? ~ Thomas Wolfe

It was hard to get lost in Missoula even if you wanted to. Wherever you were, all you had to do to get your bearings was look around and find the big letter M, embossed in white halfway up the steep shoulder of grass that reared on the south bank of the Clark Fork River. Though only a hill, it was called Mount Sentinel and if you had the legs and lungs and inclination to hike the trail that zigzagged up it, you could stand by the M and gaze out across the town at a travel-brochure shot of forest and mountain dusted from early fall with snow. ~ Nicholas Evans

I got my bearings, I began to focus. My mother was very supportive. When I came back to New York I landed a job at Hot 97. ~ Angie Martinez

I was so sure I'd heard the doorbell and simultaneously certain that I hadn't. How could a smart and competent 23-year-old not be able to distinguish the edges of dreams from the tips of reality? How had the picture gone so horribly blurry that I'd looked to a dog to regain my bearings? ~ Julie Flygare

Many children grow through adolescence with no ripples whatever and land smoothly and predictably in the adult world with both feet on the ground. Some who have stumbled and bumbled through childhood suddenly burst into bloom. Most shake, steady themselves, zigzag, fight, retreat, pick up, take new bearings, and finally find their own true balance. ~ Stella Chess

Marlboro Man's call woke me up the next morning. It was almost eleven.
"Hey," he said. "What's up?"
I hopped out of bed, blinking and stumbling around my room. "Who me? Oh, nothing." I felt like I'd been drugged.
"Were you asleep?" he said.
"Who, me?" I said again, trying to snap out of my stupor. I was stalling, trying my darnedest to get my bearings.
"Yes. You," he said, chuckling. "I can't believe you were asleep!"
"I wasn't asleep! I was…I just…" I was a loser. A pathetic, late-sleeping loser.
"You're a real go-getter in the mornings, aren't you?" I loved it when he played along with me. ~ Ree Drummond

I am like a machine being driven to excessive rotations: the bearings are incandescing and, in a minute, melted metal will begin to drip and everything will turn to nothing. Quick: get cold water, logic. I am pouring it over myself by the bucketload but the logic sizzles on the hot bearings and dissipates elusive white steam into the air. ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

When someone "can not" or will not let go of some notion, injustice or loss, a fixation can develop, which can "fix" that person in place. When a person, a soul (or a group), becomes stuck or fixated on some specific perspective or emotion to the exclusion of the bigger picture, one can get a distorted view, one can be lost for a while. I am reminded of the saying one can't see the forest for the trees, for short-sightedness, especially combined with reactive emotions, obstinacy, and even obsessiveness, can cause one to lose all proportion and perspective. One can lose one's bearings; One can get lost. ~ Stephen Poplin

In its severe forms, depression paralyzes all of the otherwise vital forces that make us human, leaving instead a bleak, despairing, desperate, and deadened state ... Life is bloodless, pulseless, and yet present enough to allow a suffocating horror and pain. All bearings are lost; all things are dark and drained of feeling. The slippage into futility is first gradual, then utter. Thought, which is as pervasively affected by depression as mood, is morbid, confused, and stuporous. It is also vacillating, ruminative, indecisive, and self-castigating. The body is bone-weary; there is no will; nothing is that is not an effort, and nothing at all seems worth it. Sleep is fragmented, elusive, or all-consuming. Like an unstable, gas, an irritable exhaustion seeps into every crevice of thought and action. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Historians like a quiet life, and usually they get it. For the most part, history moves at a deliberate pace, working its changes subtly and incrementally. Nations and their institutions harden into shape or crumble away like sediment carried by the flow of a sluggish river. English history in particular seems the work of a temperate community, seldom shaken by convulsions. But there are moments when history is unsubtle; when change arrives in a violent rush, decisive, bloody, traumatic; as a truck-load of trouble, wiping out everything that gives a culture its bearings - custom, language, law, loyalty. 1066 was one of those moments. ~ Simon Schama

God could have made every creature just exactly the same, all of us round and shiny like little ball bearings one centimeter across, with all the invisible serial numbers distinguishing us one from another hidden away in the decrees and secret counsels of God. And there we would all be, pretty much all of us really bored. But what He actually did was make the gaudiest show ever, which started at the beginning of our story when Adam looked at Eve for the first time and, as already noted, started speaking poetry. ~ Douglas Wilson

A consumerist attitude may lubricate the wheels of the economy; it sprinkles sand into the bearings of morality. ~ Zygmunt Bauman

I propose to construct a new chart for navigating, on which I shall delineate all the sea and lands of the Ocean in their proper positions under their bearings; and further, I propose to prepare a book, and to put down all as it were in a picture, by latitude from the equator, and western longitude. ~ Christopher Columbus

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world - and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end - is being destroyed. ~ Hannah Arendt

It is funny that some of must not only get our bearings but must also know all the details of the world before we venture out into it. ~ Jack Henry Abbott

We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. ~ John Updike

One tended to lose one's bearings in the presence of willful and persistent acts of craziness, and the more gentle the act, the crazier it seemed, as if rage and violence, being closer to the norm, were easier to accommodate. ~ Tom Robbins

The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as from the need to impart mere information, or mirror anything. I am not a realist writer, even if I seem like one. ~ Colm Toibin

I cough, swirling, trying to gain my bearings. It is all black. There are footfalls around me, random screams followed by a blast of a gun. Falling to both knees, I crawl through the soft powder that had moments before been living, my hand outstretched in search of a wall so that I might ground myself. There is a swish overhead, and a screeching sound like a door needing oil. A tusk rolls to me, and I realize it had been thrown my way. ~ Lindsay Anderson

If the nation is not capable of preserving itself and reproducing, if it loses it vital bearings and ideals, then it doesn't need foreign enemies - it will fall apart on its own. ~ Vladimir Putin

The cross is not just a badge to identify us ... it is also the compass which gives us our bearings in a disoriented world. ~ John Stott

The human soul enjoys these rare, classical periods, but, apart from them, we are seldom single or unique; we keep company in this world with a hoard of abstractions and reflections and counterfeits of ourselves - the sensual man, the economic man, the man of reason, the beast, the machine and the sleepwalker, and heaven knows what besides, all in our own image, indistinguishable from ourselves to the outside eye. We get borne along, out of sight in the press, unresisting, till we get the chance to drop behind unnoticed, or to dodge down a sides treet, pause, breathe freely and take our bearings, or to push ahead, outdistance our shadows, lead them a dance, so that when at length they catch up with us, they look at one another askance, knowing we have a secret we shall never share. ~ Evelyn Waugh

If engines of love and power drive mankind, surely the bearings would burn to a frazzle without the oil of laughter. ~ Smoke Blanchard

It was a pity that there was no radar to guide one across the trackless seas of life. Every man had to find his own way, steered by some secret compass of the soul. And sometimes, late or early, the compass lost its power and spun aimlessly on its bearings.
Alan Bishop ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Nostalgia is eternal for Americans. We are often displaced from our origins and carry anxious memories of that lost past. We fear losing our bearings. ~ Gregory Benford

I thought it would fix everything, but it just made everything worse. Lies do. Remember when I told you white lies were like ball bearings in the machinery of society? Wrong. Lies are like incendiary bombs, burning and melting and mangling everything- trust, hopes, everyone you love. ~ Sarah Sundin

Yes, an actual full-sized camel. If you find that confusing, just think how the criosphinx must have felt.
Where did the camel come from, you ask? I may have mentioned Walt's collection of amulets. Two of them summoned disgusting camels. I'd
met them before, so I was less than excited when a ton of dromedary flesh flew across my line of sight, plowed into the sphinx, and collapsed on top
of it. The sphinx growled in outrage as it tried to free itself. The camel grunted and farted.
"Hindenburg," I said. Only one camel could possibly fart that badly. "Walt, why in the world - ?"
"Sorry!" he yelled. "Wrong amulet!"
The technique worked, at any rate. The camel wasn't much of a fighter, but it was quite heavy and clumsy. The criosphinx snarled and clawed
at the floor, trying unsuccessfully to push the camel off; but Hindenburg just splayed his legs, made alarmed honking sounds, and let loose gas.
I moved to Walt's side and tried to get my bearings. ~ Rick Riordan

If this were a book or movie, she thought, she'd be able to read the stars and get her bearings. Characters always had just the right random skill set to master the situation at hand. Like, Thank god for that summer on an uncle's smuggling boat and the handsome deckhand who taught me celestial navigation. Ha. ~ Laini Taylor

I said I would do all the films about the commercials, and the films about ball-bearings and Ford tractors and so on, if once a year they gave me money for a free film. ~ Karel Reisz

I didn't revel in death, but I didn't hate it either. Death had raised me, like an older sibling. Amidst death, I had found my bearings as a soldier. Surrounded by death, I had found my place as a leader. ~ Roshani Chokshi

One added benefit of making the opponent come to you, as the Japanese discovered with the Russians, is that it forces him to operate in your territory. Being on hostile ground will make him nervous and often he will rush his actions and make mistakes.

For negotiations or meetings, it is always wise to lure others into your territory, or the territory of your choice. You have your bearings, while they see nothing familiar and are subtly placed on the defensive. ~ Robert Greene

No one hit home runs the way Babe did. They were something special. They were like homing pigeons. The ball would leave the bat, pause briefly, suddenly gain its bearings, then take off for the stands. ~ Lefty Gomez

The space reminded me of the small hay-bale clubhouses and scrap-wood tree forts that my brothers and I had made as kids - high up spaces where you could see things differently, where you could get your bearings. ~ Dee Williams

The Earth is indeed a precious gift of the Creator who, in designing its intrinsic order, has given us bearings that guide us as stewards of his creation. Precisely from within this framework, the Church considers matters concerning the environment and its protection intimately linked to the theme of integral human development. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

I hung up the phone after saying good night to Marlboro Man, this isolated cowboy who hadn't had the slightest probably picking up the phone to say "I miss you." I shuddered at the thought of how long I'd gone without it. And judging from the electrical charges searing through every cell of my body, I realized just how fundamental a human need it really is.
It was as fundamental a human need, I would learn, as having a sense of direction in the dark. I suddenly realized I was lost on the long dirt road, more lost than I'd ever been before. The more twists and turns I took in my attempt to find my bearings, the worse my situation became. It was almost midnight, and it was cold, and each intersection looked like the same one repeating over and over. I found myself struck with an illogical and indescribable panic--the kind that causes you to truly believe you'll never, ever escape from where you are, even though you almost always will. As I drove, I remembered every horror movie I'd ever watched that had taken place in a rural setting. Children of the Corn. The children of the corn were lurking out there in the tall grass, I just knew it. Friday the 13th. Sure, it had taken place at a summer camp, but the same thing could happen on a cattle ranch. And The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? Oh no. I was dead. Leatherface was coming--or even worse, his freaky, emaciated, misanthropic brother.
I kept driving for a while, then stopped on the side of the road. Shining my brights on ~ Ree Drummond

Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the arms of his chair, with his finger-tips together. "The ideal reasoner," he remarked, "would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. We have not yet grasped the results which the reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilise all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment. It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have endeavoured in my case to do. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I fell on my feet and found my bearings because of these. I could talk to them. They listened and answered, for or against, but always weighing what they had heard, unlike my mother, who used language for manipulation, not to express an opinion or state a fact. What sounded like a fact might be a lie, and every opinion was tailored for the moment. ~ Ruth Kluger

I'm sorry l haven 't talked to you in so long.
I feel l've been lost... no bearings, no compass. I kept crashing into things, a little crazy, I guess. l've never been lost before. You were my true north.

l could always steer for home when you were my home. Forgive me for being so angry when you left. l still think some mistake's been made... and l'm waiting for God to take it back.

But l'm doing better now. The work helps me. Most of all, you help me.

You came into my dream last night with that smile that always held me like a lover... rocked me like a child. All l remember from the dream is a feeling of peace. l woke up with that feeling and tried to keep it alive as long as l could.

l'm writing to tell you that l'm on a journey toward that peace. And to tell you l'm sorry about so many things. l'm sorry l didn't take better care of you so that you never spent one minute being cold or scared or sick.

I'm sorry I didn't try harder to find the words to tell you what I was feeling.

I'm sorry I never fixed the screen door. I fixed it now.

I'm sorry I ever fought with you. I'm sorry I didn't apologize more.
I was too proud.

I'm sorry I didn't bring you more compliments on everything you wore and every way you fixed your hair.

I'm sorry I didn't hold on to you with so much strength that even God couldn't pull you away.


All my love. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Maps, contour maps and all maps, intrigue us for the metaphors that they are: tools to give us a sense of something whose truth is far richer but without which we would perceive nothing and never find our bearings. ~ Zia Haider Rahman

You could buy individual boxes of detergent and fabric softener, even bleach, and there was nothing that made me grind my teeth with pleasure more than a real thing shrunken down small. The first time my dad showed me a toothache kit from a box of equipment from the Korean War and I saw the tiny cotton balls (the size of very small ball bearings), I nearly swooned. "Let me hold one of those," I said, almost mad at him. He gave it to me with a tiny pair of tweezers. I let it float in my palm a moment and then made him take it back. Miniaturization was a gift from God, no doubt about it, and there it was, right in a vending machine in the place we used to do our laundry. ~ Haven Kimmel

You make me come alive- too alive. It's breathless, like a disaster. Ravishing, like crossing over into the desert and losing your bearings. Nothing's the same again. ~ Margaret Way

When he wakes sometimes from dark dreams of broken cradles, and compasses without bearings, he pushes the unease down, lets the daylight contradict it. And isolation lulls him with the music of the lie. ~ M.L. Stedman

But instead of taking the cue to leave, Patch crossed to Scott in three steps. He flung him around to face the wall. Scott tried to get his bearings, but Patch slammed him against the wall again, disorienting him further. "Touch her," he said in Scott's ear, his voice low and threatening, "and it'll be the biggest regret of your life."
Before leaving, Patch flicked his eyes once in my direction. "He's not worth it." He paused. "And neither am I. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Every physical fact, every expression of nature, every feature of the earth, the work of any and all of those agents which make the face of the world what it is, and as we see it, is interesting and instructive. Until we get hold of a group of physical facts, we do not know what practical bearings they may have, though right-minded men know that they contain many precious jewels, which science, or the expert hand of philosophy will not fail top bring out, polished, and bright, and beautifully adapted to man's purposes. ~ Matthew Fontaine Maury

That's why it's best not to start the engine on an open throttle from cold (unless the handbook recommends it): immediate revs from cold cause a lot of wear to oil-starved bearings. Starting with a closed throttle allows the oil time to circulate and warm, while the engine is idling, for those crucial first few seconds. ~ Peter Henshaw

Every literary culture has among its first bearings the 'blether' of animals who seek to make sense of human existence. ~ Andrew O'Hagan

We are among the first peoples in human history who do not broadly inherit religious identity as a given, a matter of kin and tribe, like hair color and hometown. But the very fluidity of this - the possibility of choice that arises, the ability to craft and discern one's own spiritual bearings - is not leading to the decline of spiritual life but its revival. ~ Krista Tippett