Being Left Quotes

Sociological Explanations

Sociologists theorize that people can live together in peace because of the development of a social hierarchy that ranges from dominant to submissive. Everyone in a group takes his or her place in the hierarchy. A certain degree of anxiety around others allows people to assess the level of threat that they pose, and helps maintain the balance between aggression and inhibition.
However, people with social anxiety tend to misinterpret others' behavior as more aggressive or powerful than it really is. As a result, a socially anxious person often will become overly submissive--blushing, not making eye contact, freezing, or withdrawing.
Sociologists believe this response may be the result of a fundamental fear of rejection. In monkeys, apes, and humans, being left to fend for oneself usually is a threat to survival. In social anxiety, people may see being judged as a threat to their position in the group. To them, rejection means failure.

Kyoto went through her day at school constantly apologizing to everyone. Whenever she walked down the hall, opened her locker, sat down in an empty seat, or got in line in the cafeteria, she always said "Excuse me" or "I'm sorry." Most of the time, she didn't know why she was apologizing. She always wanted to please others.
Kyoto's mother took her to see a psychologist because of Kyoto's anxiety. The psychologist helped Kyoto see that she misinterpreted others' behavior as being more ~ Heather Moehn

Feeling someone else's anger is bad; being left alone is worse. ~ David Levithan

You should go home and get some sleep," Harper said drowsily, letting the pain medication help take her under.
Trent stood up, lowered the head of the gurney, and lifted Harper's head to fluff the pillow before gently lowering her back down.
"I'll see you in the morning," Harper said, refusing to acknowledge the fear she suddenly felt at being left alone. The light went off in the room and Harper's heart started to race. She needed the light on.
The mattress sagged as Trent sat down on the side of the bed. She felt him lean forward and heard him kick off his shoes. He pulled his legs up onto the single gurney and lay down on his side, carefully putting his arm around her. The warmth of his breath behind her ear, the sweetness of his lips against her skin eased the pressure she'd felt building inside.
"Yeah, you will, darlin'. I'll be right here. ~ Scarlett Cole

While a handful of countries and a small number of people are leading ample life, dozens of countries and billions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America are being left in absolute poverty. ~ Tran Duc Luong

The young should early be trained to bear being left alone; for it is a source of happiness and peace of mind. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

During dinner a sea turtle stopped by for a visit. At three or four feet in length... the turtle swam alongside for about twenty minutes, its head bobbing just above the surface of the water. Then with laughing eyes the turtle passed me..being left behind by a turtle pricked up my competitive nature. I pulled harder trying to keep up, but I couldn't catch the turtle. Soon I was reduced to laughter. " I am in the North Atlantic in a rowboat, racing a turtle...and loosing. Okay, so they can swim thirty miles an hour. Out here, I am the tortoise and it's the hare. ~ Tori Murden McClure

I also saw a huge expansion of the Internet, with many major corporations, afraid of being left behind, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop World Wide Web sites in a frantic scramble to reach the vast new consumer market of Web use ~ Dave Barry

To see how Grandfather handles leaving, and to
see how we manage being left. ~ Ally Condie

People are not being reached in the context of the body of Christ
they're like newborn babies being left on a doorstep somewhere to feed and care for themselves. ~ Peter E. Gillquist

Technology is the fashion of the '90s. It affects everyone, and everyone is interested in it - either from fear of being left behind or because they have a real need to use technology. ~ Jay Chiat

The leaders in Washington have got to come together in a bipartisan way and do the right thing for the people who are being left behind. We cannot have an America that is only based on the wealthy. ~ Howard Schultz

Being left makes you doubt your ability to keep people, even friends. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

A ship doesn't look quite the same from inside, does it? A wise sailor,' Robert said, fanning his arms, 'will one time stand upon the shore and watch his ship sail by, that he shall from then on appreciate not being left behind.' He grinned and added, 'Eh?'

George gave him a little grimace. 'Who's that? Melville? Or C.S. Forrester?'

It's me!' Robert complained. "Can't I be profound now and again?'

Hell, no.'

Why not?'

Because you're still alive. Gotta be dead to be profound.'

You're unchivalrous, George. ~ Diane Carey

Being left out was a kind of freedom... ~ Lauren Kate

Ah, there you are," said Scarsbury. "George Lovelace was beside himself. He wanted to assemble a search party for you." Simon regretted his spiteful thoughts about George's horsemanship. "Let me guess," said Simon. "Everyone else said 'Nah, being left for dead builds character. ~ Cassandra Clare

There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds. ~ James Russell Lowell

Having come to live in this age is as though one were to have entered another country. Learn its language or risk being left out. ~ Theodore Bikel

Let's continue to stand up for those who are vulnerable to being left out or marginalized. ~ Hillary Clinton

Those who build and perpetuate mediocrity ... are motivated more by the fear of being left behind. ~ James C. Collins

I woke up to an ache in my chest, the smell of chocolate, and the sound of the ghost making a racket in the kitchen. Now, I'm not the sort to dwell on doom and sorrow. Life is too short for that. But I should at least try to describe the ache briefly: It is not the kind that comes from eating tacos too late at night. It's the kind that comes from being left behind. I think my heart is smart enough to know there's a place I should be filling with new memories, new jokes, and wondrous adventures with the one person I loved most of all. But that person is gone now. And so, my heart has a giant hole. I call it The Big Empty. ~ Natalie Lloyd

As we pulled up at the big school gates, I saw tears rolling down my dad's face. I felt confused as to what part of nature or love thought this was a good idea. My instinct certainly didn't; but what did I know? I was only eight.
So I embarked on this mission called boarding school. And how do you prepare for that one?
In truth, I found it really hard; there were some great moments like building dens in the snow in winter, or getting chosen for the tennis team, or earning a naval button, but on the whole it was a survival exercise in learning to cope.
Coping with fear was the big one. The fear of being left and the fear of being bullied--both of which were very real.
What I learned was that I couldn't manage either of those things very well on my own.
It wasn't anything to do with the school itself, in fact the headmaster and teachers were almost invariably kind, well-meaning and good people, but that sadly didn't make surviving it much easier.
I was learning very young that if I were to survive this place then I had to find some coping mechanisms.
My way was to behave badly, and learn to scrap, as a way to avoid bullies wanting to target me. It was also a way to avoid thinking about home. But not thinking about home is hard when all you want is to be at home.
I missed my mum and dad terribly, and on the occasional night where I felt this worst, I remember trying to muffle my tears in my pillow while the rest of the dormitory slept.
Bear Grylls

I'm in the strange position of the world drifting away from me, but you know what? I'm actually quite content with that. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. I don't feel like, 'Oh God, I'm being left behind.' ~ Robert Smith

I do not like being left in the dark. I am not particularly fond of believing in impossible things. ~ Erin Morgenstern

I get appalled when I see good drivers being left on the sidelines because they haven't come up with the half million to a million to put themselves in a competitive car. ~ John Surtees

I just ... I've fantasized about peace and quiet for so long, dreamt about being left alone ... but when the TV was off, and the sun was down ... I'm in a full sob right now. I've just never felt so alone, and I couldn't take it. ~ Andrea Randall

It would be the death of you to come with me, Sam," said Frodo, "and I could not have borne that."
"Not as certain as being left behind," said Sam.
"But I am going to Mordor."
"I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo. Of course you are. And I'm coming with you. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The best time for marriage will be towards thirty, for as the younger times are unfit, either to choose or to govern a wife and family, so, if thou stay long, thou shalt hardly see the education of thy children, who, being left to strangers, are in effect lost; and better were it to be unborn than ill-bred; for thereby thy posterity shall either perish, or remain a shame to thy name. ~ Walter Raleigh

She's figured out the brakes by this time, and she slows, intimidated by the echoing bellow of Rosie's engines in these desolate landscapes. She feels for a sickening moment that she might be the last human being left alive on the face of a necrotic planet. And that it might not matter after all. To have the race that built these mausoleums lie in them finally, quiet and resigned, and crumble into dust. Who'd ~ M.R. Carey

I feel as if I am being left out, as though I'm some straggler and people can't quite remember to stay back for me. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Computers, and what I had done for Will. But I thought this should probably be her moment. We sat on the foldaway chairs, under the tattered sunshade, and sipped at our mugs of tea. Her fingers, I noticed, were all the right colors. "She misses you," I said. "We'll be back most weekends from now on. I just needed ... Lou, it wasn't just about settling Thomas in. I just needed a bit of time to be away from it all. I just wanted time to be a different person." She looked a bit like a different person. It was weird. Just a few weeks away from home could rub the familiarity right off someone. I felt like she was on the path to being someone I wasn't quite sure of. I felt, weirdly, as if I were being left behind. "Mum told me your disabled bloke came to ~ Jojo Moyes

To boast wonder takes great courage. Being left speechless with joy is not for the weak. We forget to be surprised by everyday miracles, like toast springing up, the mesmerizing blue in the sky, or even simple friendships. To touch and remember this delicate sense of wonder, we travel. We deliberately let ourselves become tourists to welcome in this unique delight. ~ Edmond Manning

There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it. ~ Knut Hamsun

All of the evidence highlights the implicit bargain that is offered to citizens: pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you'll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of wrongdoing. This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience, and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being "left alone," is to remain quiet, unthreatening, and compliant. ~ Glenn Greenwald

Morality is a burglar's tool whose merit lies in never being left behind at the scene of the crime. ~ Karl Kraus

I'm not afraid anymore. But I know that the terror exists. I know the kind of terror it is. You can't conceive of that kind. Listen, what's the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me - it's being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who's had some disease that's eaten his brain out. You'd have nothing then but your voice - your voice and your thought. You'd scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you'd have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you'd become the vessel of the absolute truth. And you'd see living eyes watching you and you'd know that the thing can't hear you, that it can't be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it's breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of its own. That's horror. Well, that's what's hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something closed, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own. I don't think I'm a coward but I'm afraid of it. And that's all I know - only that it exists. I don't know its purpose. I don't know it's nature. ~ Ayn Rand

The only way to avoid being left behind was to start moving. ~ Jojo Moyes

I've always been more afraid of being left alone or left out than of things that go bump in the night. ~ Nelson Gidding

The men in grey were powerless to meet this challenge head-on. Unable to detach the children from Momo by bringing them under their direct control, they had to find some roundabout means of achieving the same end, and for this they enlisted the children's elders. Not all grown-ups made suitable accomplices, of course, but plenty did. [....] 'Something must be done,' they said. 'More and more kids are being left on their own and neglected. You can't blame us - parents just don't have the time these days - so it's up to the authorities.' Others joined in the chorus. 'We can't have all these youngsters loafing around, ' declared some. 'They obstruct the traffic. Road accidents caused by children are on the increase, and road accidents cost money that could be put to better use.' 'Unsupervised children run wild, declared others.'They become morally depraved and take to crime. The authorities must take steps to round them up. They must build centers where the youngsters can be molded into useful and efficient members of society.' 'Children,' declared still others, 'are the raw material for the future. A world dependent on computers and nuclear energy will need an army of experts and technicians to run it. Far from preparing children from tomorrow's world, we still allow too many of them to squander years of their precious time on childish tomfoolery. It's a blot on our civilization and a crime against future generations.' The timesavers were all in favor of such a policy, naturall ~ Michael Ende, Momo

I think I developed a culture of healthy skepticism of claims of certainty on any side of the aisle. A sort of boldness in using economics no matter where it leads you in political circles, you know, rather than worrying about being left-wing or right-wing or biased or this or that. ~ David Plotz

There's no telling what
we could be walking into," I said. "From what I've heard, some of those dhampir communes are like
the Wild West."
Adrian grinned at that. "Good thing we've got our own cowboy."
"Um, hello," said Rose from the screen, her face lined with irritation at being left out of the
conversation. "Do you guys want to fill us in on what you're talking about?"
Adrian looked up, glancing between her and Dimitri. "How would you two like to take a trip with
us? ~ Richelle Mead

I think that being liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, noncomitted to a cause but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. ~ Walter Cronkite

I studied the dusty street, the plastic walls and dries patches of piss. And I guess it was being left with just shantytowns and Steel Cities that got folk started with the tree building. Because even for the rich freaks, life's ugly. But build a tree, and you got something worth looking at. Something worth believing in. ~ Chris Howard

THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn't very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business. ~ Matt Haig

Until such time as duplications of individual nervous systems can be grown in tissue cultures (at this point no one knows "whose" consciousness they would have), our special identities will always be subject to being hit by a truck or dying in a plane crash. A sudden virus or heart seizure, even in the body's youth, may carry us off. Statistically, looking ahead thousands of years, the chances are that every human and even inanimate form will be broken sooner or later. But the distress felt by men and women today does not arise from the fear of such hazards. Rather, it comes from the certainty of aging and physical degeneration leading to death. It is the fear of losing our powers and being left alone, or in the hands of indifferent nurses, and knowing that the moment must come when we will not see the people we love any more, and everything will go black. ~ Alan Harrington

When parents put gold into the hands of youth, when they should put a rod under their girdle
when instead of awe they make them past grace, and leave them rich executors of goods, and poor executors of godliness, then it is no marvel that the son being left rich by his father's will, becomes reckless by his own will. ~ John Lyly

And that's the worst of it, the part no one ever tells you about."

"What part?" he said, his voice still clenched with grief.

"How it never stops. How the pain of missing people never stops. When you burn your finger in a fire, it hurts, but it only hurts one way because you know what caused the pain and why the pain is there, and you know that it will settle, in a bit. But heart pain has facets, Silas. A thousand different sides, sharp and hard; most of them you don't even know exist, even when you're looking straight at them. When someone leaves, or dies, or doesn't love you in return, well, you may think you know why your heart hurts. But wrapped in there are a hundred kinds of fear all tangled in a knot you can't untie. Nobody wants to be alone. We all fear being left alone, being left behind. I know such things exist. But you must learn to see death as something more than loss, more than absence, more than silence. You must learn to make mourning into memory. For once a person takes leave of his life, that life becomes so much more a part of ours. In death, they come to be in our keeping. The dead find their rest within us. Thus, in remembrance, we are never alone. But people forget the power of memory. So we fear death in the deepest place of our very being, because we don't know that memories make us immortal. We focus instead on being gone and the awful mystery behind absence. Love and death - and those two are very closely bound together - sca ~ Ari Berk

She had said she didn't feel fear, but it was a lie; this was her fear: being left alone. Because of one thing she was certain, and it was that she could never love, not like that. Trust a stranger with her flesh? The closeness, the quiet. She couldn't imagine it. Breathing someone else's breath as they breathed yours, touching someone, opening for them? The vulnerability of it made her flush. It would mean submission, letting down her guard, and she wouldn't. Ever. Just the thought made her feel small and weak as a child ... ~ Laini Taylor

When clients relinquish symptoms, succeed in achieving a personal goal, or make healthier choices for themselves, subsequently many will feel anxious, guilty, or depressed. That is, when clients make progress in treatment and get better, new therapists understandably are excited. But sometimes they will also be dismayed as they watch the client sabotage her success by gaining back unwanted weight or missing the next session after an important breakthrough and deep sharing with the therapist. Thus, loyalty and allegiance to symptoms - maladaptive behaviors originally developed to manage the "bad" or painfully frustrating aspects of parents - are not maladaptive to insecurely attached children. Such loyalty preserves "object ties," or the connection to the "good" or loving aspects of the parent. Attachment fears of being left alone, helpless, or unwanted can be activated if clients disengage from the symptoms that represent these internalized "bad" objects (for example, if the client resolves an eating disorder or terminates a problematic relationship with a controlling/jealous partner). The goal of the interpersonal process approach is to help clients modify these early maladaptive schemas or internal working models by providing them with experiential or in vivo re-learning (that is, a "corrective emotional experience"). Through this real-life experience with the therapist, clients learn that, at least sometimes, some relationships can be different and do not have to follow th ~ Edward Teyber

On a long flight, after periods of crisis and many hours of fatigue, mind and body may become disunited until at times they seem completely different elements, as though the body were only a home with which the mind has been associated but by no means bound. Consciousness grows independent of the ordinary senses. You see without assistance from the eyes, over distances beyond the visual horizon. There are moments when existence appears independent even of the mind. The importance of physical desire and immediate surroundings is submerged in the apprehension of universal values.

For unmeasurable periods, I seem divorced from my body, as though I were an awareness spreading out through space, over the earth and into the heavens, unhampered by time or substance, free from the gravitation that binds to heavy human problems of the world. My body requires no attention. It's not hungry. It's neither warm or cold. It's resigned to being left undisturbed. Why have I troubled to bring it here? I might better have left it back at Long Island or St. Louis, while the weightless element that has lived within it flashes through the skies and views the planet. This essential consciousness needs no body for its travels. It needs no plane, no engine, no instruments, only the release from flesh which circumstances I've gone through make possible.

Then what am I – the body substance which I can see with my eyes and feel with my hands? Or am I this realization, this greater ~ Charles A. Lindbergh

I think, as the writer, you're always going to mourn something [left out of a film]. But you also just want to know there's a good reason for it being left out. On the whole, you want to give something to somebody creative. The worst thing you can do is say, "Here, be creative, but do it like I want you to do it." I was always very mindful of that. ~ Markus Zusak

Ostracism makes individuals feel they lack purpose, have less control over their lives, are less good moral beings, and lack self-worth. Those high school cliques aren't uniquely adolescent experiences: Human beings hate being left out. We conform because to do so seems to give our life meaning. ~ Anonymous

I'm not difficult," Violet said. "I'm simple. I like good books and clever conversation and being left alone much of the time. How does that make me difficult? I make sense? I don't talk about my feelings, of course, but then, I don't want to." She shrugged. "So that's reasonable."
Sebastian smiled despite himself, a smile that felt bitter even to him. "God, no. Not feelings. Heaven forbid that you have anything so messy."
"I have feelings." She spoke stiffly. "I just don't talk about them. What's the point? Talking never changes them. ~ Courtney Milan

There was an old joke about being left on a deserted island with an editor. You are starving. All you have left is a glass of orange juice. Days pass. You are near death. You are about to drink the juice when the editor grabs the glass from your hand and pees into it. You look at him, stunned . "There," the editor says, handing you the glass. "It just needed a little tweaking. ~ Harlan Coben

Things do not get better by being left alone. ~ Winston Churchill

So this was betrayal. It was like being left alone in the desert at dusk without water or warmth. It left your mouth dry and will broken. It sapped your tears and made you hollow. ~ Anna Godbersen

yet to be moved by music is essentially human; it reflects sensitivity. The life Gregor led as a human being left no room for this kind of appreciation. But, regressing into an animal, his sensibility has become refined rather than coarsened. ~ Franz Kafka

I might have been afraid that if I really loved someone and needed her, one day she might suddenly disappear without a word, and I'd be left all alone. ~ Haruki Murakami

We lost not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety
and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it would always be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal. ~ Judith Viorst

Maybe you only ever notice the distance when it's you who's being left behind. ~ Julie Murphy

For we lose not only by death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. ~ Judith Viorst

Constant travel brings old age upon a man; a horse becomes old by being constantly tied up; lack of sexual contact with her husband brings old age upon a woman; and garments become old through being left in the sun. ~ Chanakya

A good plan will therefore include alternative actions, the choice between them being left open until the passage of time indicates which is feasible and which is not. ~ Carl Eckart

Billy helped," Jethro said, his voice held hesitation.

"Billy?" Duane didn't try to mask his surprise; he and Beau stared at each other, communicating for several seconds without talking. The twins' ability to impart thoughts through a look had always been frustrating. I didn't like being left out of a conversation.

"Yes. Billy. Billy helped," I confirmed irritably. "And will you two cease discussing with your eyeballs. There are several other people in the room who can't brain-link."

Duane lifted an eyebrow, his eyes darting from me to Beau and then quickly to the floor. "Fine, Cletus. Cool your engine."

I grunted, but said nothing. I didn't want to pick a fight with Duane. I only had a few more weeks of him hanging around and the thought depressed me. He was a grumpy, brooding little bastard who had the habit of only speaking when spoken to - and sometimes not even then. I was going to miss him. ~ Penny Reid

Bad things happen to everyone. Not that this was an excuse or a justification for wronging another human being. Still, all humans had this shared experience - that of suffering. No human being left this world without shedding a tear, or feeling pain, or wading into the sea of sorrow. ~ Sylvain Reynard

In order to thrive in the 21st century, you have to be a savvy citizen of the digital economy or risk being left behind. ~ Leila Janah

Another thing very injurious to the child is the tying and cutting of the navel string too soon, which should always be left till the child has not only repeatedly breathed but till all pulsation in the cord ceases. As otherwise the child is much weaker than it ought to be, a part of the blood being left in the placenta which ought to have been in the child and at the same time the placenta does not so naturally collapse, and withdraw itself from the sides of the uterus, and is not therefore removed with so much safety and certainty. ~ Erasmus Darwin

Still other times are more difficult, even "toxic", when we may become overwhelmed with anger that directly interferes with our ability to be in tune with our children. At these times, children may become filled with a sense of shame and humiliation, being left with an urge to turn away and with a sense that the self is defective. Repair is essential when there is a rupture, especially of this latter toxic sort. Repair is an interactive process that involves an acknowledgment of the disconnection and an attempt to move forward and reconnect. ~ Marion F. Solomon

Imagine someone is racing intentionally towards his own destruction and you can save him - do you go ahead and save him? Imagine there's an operation, and the patient is a drug user and the drugs are incompatible with the anesthetic, but the patient is ashamed of being an addict and does not want to tell the anesthesiologist - do you talk to the anesthesiologist? Imagine a trial and a defendant who will be convicted if he doesn't admit to being left handed - do you tell the judge what's going on? Imagine he's gay, and could not have committed the crime because he's gay, but is ashamed of being gay. It isn't a question of whether the defendant should be ashamed of being left-handed or gay
just imagine that he is ~ Bernhard Schlink

I think writers have to be able to enjoy solitude rather than just endure it. I've always enjoyed being left alone with my imagination, ever since I was a kid. ~ Peter Robinson

The passion for being for ever with one's fellows, and the fear of being left for a few hours alone, is to me wholly incomprehensible. I can entertain myself quite well for weeks together, hardly aware, except for the pervading peace, that I have been alone at all. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

The future of America is not an entitlement. We have been given a treasure chest of gifts and opportunities, but some people are being left behind, and success is not sustainable unless it is shared. ~ Howard Schultz

Being fat means being left out, scorned, and vilified. ~ Mary Pipher

History without the history of science, to alter slightly an apothegm of Lord Bacon, resembles a statue of Polyphemus without his eye-that very feature being left out which most marks the spirit and life of the person. My own thesis is complementary: science taught ... without a sense of history is robbed of those very qualities that make it worth teaching to the student of the humanities and the social sciences. ~ I. Bernard Cohen

No one realized that, being left out in the cold, I was also very much in the dark. ~ Deborah Curtis

The kids are a guarantee of our relative longevity. We're safe as long as they're around. But once they get big and scatter, she wants to be the first to go. She is afraid I will die unexpectedly, sneakily, slipping away in the night. It isn't that she doesn't cherish life; it's being left alone that frightens her. The emptiness, the sense of cosmic darkness.
Mastercard, Visa, American Express.
I tell her I want to die first. I've gotten so used to her that I would feel miserably incomplete. We are two views of the same person. I would spend the rest of my life turning to speak to her. No one there, a hole in space and time. ~ Don DeLillo

To me, the burden of proof isn't on people looking for ways to improve our schools; it's on people who want to keep things the same. Our current system isn't working, and too many kids are being left behind. ~ Michael Bennet

At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages, mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing the things that children used to do in their spare time. Let them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have - I believe the English already use the phrase - "parity of esteem." An even more drastic scheme is not impossible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma - Beelzebub, what a useful word! - by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out 'A Cat Sat On A Mat'. ~ C.S. Lewis

Goodbye is a strange concept - if the person being left behind resents it and refuses to accept it, is it still goodbye, or simply a departure? ~ Marla Miniano

We are, as a culture, moving to a future with more people and more voices and more possibilities. Some people are being left behind, not because the future is intolerant of them but because they are intolerant of this future. ~ Rebecca Solnit

There must be different kinds of loneliness, or at least different degrees of loneliness, but the most terrifying loneliness is not experienced by everyone and can be understood by only a few. I compare the panic in this kind of loneliness to the dog we see running frantically down the road pursuing the family car. He is not really being left behind, for the family knows it is to return, but for that moment in his limited understanding, he is being left alone forever, and he has to run and run to survive. It is no wonder that we make terrible choices in our lives to avoid loneliness. ~ Charles M. Schulz

Rather than standing back and being left behind, we must make the most of the opportunities that a growing China presents to us here in Britain. ~ George Osborne

...somewhere in his murkiest depths, he wasn't so much afraid of being left again as condemning someone else to second best. ~ Markus Zusak

And what was I panicking about anyway? Being left alone with myself? I'd rather have a vampire around?

Well. Yes. ~ Robin McKinley

The world's urban poor and the illiterate are going to be increasingly disadvantaged and are in danger of being left behind. The web has added a new dimension to the gap between the first world and the developing world. We have to start talking about a human right to connect. ~ Tim Berners-Lee

I am holed up in a small village where I am doing my own work and it feels great. I have a small gallery and not many people find me, but I am happy being left alone and doing what I love. ~ Catherine Stock

Julia never asked herself why bad things happen to good people, for she already knew the answer: bad things happen t everyone. Not that this was an excuse or a justification for wronging another human being. Still, all humans had this shared experience- that of suffering. No human being left this world without shedding a tear,of feeling pain,or wading into the sea of sorrow. Why should her life be any different? Why should she expect special, favoured treatment? Even Mother Teresa suffered, and she was a saint. ~ Sylvain Reynard

In the darkness of a thousand
withered souls, it was Er Lang's hand that I
sought, and his voice that I longed to hear. Perhaps
it is selfish of me, but an uncertain future
with him, in all its laughter and quarrels, is better
than being left behind. ~ Yangsze Choo

I love the solitude of being on a plane and finally getting to read an entire book and being left alone. ~ Christina Ricci

The US will increasingly see the risks of being left behind, and ten years from now they would have to start worrying about being shut out of markets because their production is dirty. ~ Nicholas Stern

When you think about the guys who started Twitter, and the Google guys, and the Facebook guys and the Napster guys, and the Microsoft guys, and the Dell guys and the Instagram guys, it's all guys. The girls, they're being left behind. ~ Will.i.am

I question the more or less psychoanalytic perspective that the male need to control women sexually results from some primal male "fear of women" and of women's sexual insatiability. It seems more probable that men really fear, not that they will have women's sexual appetites forced on them, or that women want to smother and devour them, but that women could be indifferent to them altogether, that men could be allowed sexual and emotional-therefore economic-access to women only on women's terms, otherwise being left on the periphery of the matrix. ~ Adrienne Rich

If at any time all labour should cease, and all existing provisions be equally divided among the people, at the end of a single year there could scarcely be one human being left alive
all would have perished by want of subsistence. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Since I spent much of my childhood being left behind and ignored, one might think that, as an adult, moments of perceived abandonment would feel old hat. The truth is, as an adult, I am always waiting to be left behind. I'm always ready to be discarded and, therefore, I spend a significant amount of time preparing for this eventuality.
I lower my expectations, I don't seek out meaningful relationships, and I don't engage in any sort of real intimacy, physical or otherwise.
Engage is the key word here. Except, when I engage, when it happens, when I'm left behind it doesn't feel old hat. It feels like it did the first time and it takes me by surprise. So, I don't let it happen. ~ Penny Reid

I don't understand how I can know so little about love and how it works. How I can be so bad at it when it's all I've ever wanted.
All I've ever known is about leaving or being left. ~ Carrie Ryan

There are thousands of boys being wasted daily to our country through being left to become characterless, and, therefore, useless wasters, a misery to themselves and an eyesore and a danger to the nation. They could be saved if only the right surroundings or environment were given to them at the receptive time of their lives. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

PANOTII LOOKS PUT OUT ABOUT BEING LEFT BEHIND AND dogs my steps as I stow his tack under the deep overhang on the south side of the wizard's hovel. There's plenty of grass here, water at the lake, and it's not that cold yet, despite the shift in seasons. If the rains start before we get back, the horses can take shelter under the overhang. I'm not worried about them wandering off. Not one of them has stepped outside of the large makeshift corral of God Bolt pits since we got here.

"You can't come with us," I tell him. "It'll be cold and slippery. And big monsters will want to eat you." He tosses his head, snorting. "Really big monsters. There might be Dragons. And the Hydra. And I can't vouch for the friendliness of the Ipotane toward regular horses." I blow gently into his nose. Panotii chuffs back. "You'll be safe here, and if anyone tries to steal you, Grandpa Zeus will throw down a thunderbolt. Boom! No more horse thief."

"Zeus may have better things to do than babysit our horses," Flynn says, stowing his own equine gear next to mine.

I glance northward toward the Gods' mountain home and speak loudly. "In that case, I'm announcing right now that I'll make an Olympian stink if anything happens to my horse." Flynn looks nervous and moves away from me like he's expecting a God Bolt to come thundering down.

"She's not kidding." Sunlight glints off Griffin's windblown hair. Thick black stubble darkens his jaw. He flashes me a smi ~ Amanda Bouchet

You do NOT fear your OWN ability to COMMIT. Just think about your unwavering dedication to your career, your notion of sisterhood and friendship. You are tireless. That is why we all lean on you. Because you are totally committed to the lot of us. You do not have a "fear of commitment" that's just an easy way out of all of this. What you have dearest one, is a deep seated and totally understandable fear of OTHER people's commitment to YOU.
I totally wholeheartedly agree, you've never been in love. Until Zac, you've chosen chaps whom you've simply liked but who have loved you. so when it's over, it hasn't hurt you.
Why have you done this, over all these years? I'll tell you why, because what YOU actually fear is being left by someone YOU love.
Your fear of COMMITMENT centres solely on another's commitment to YOU'It makes ~ Freya North

The engineers of human souls'. There were two main problems. The first was that many people did not want their souls to be egineered, thank you very much. They were content with their souls being left as they were when they had come into this world; and when you tried to lead them, they resisted. Come to this free open-air concert, comrade. Oh, we really think you should attend. Yes, of course, it is voluntary, but it might be a mistake if you didn't show your face...
And the second problem with engineering human souls was more basic. It was this: who engineers the engineers? ~ Julian Barnes

She's contemplative; I can feel the air around her thick with her thoughts. "No," she says at last, "I want to believe you're being sincere but I know you're not. So I say no, because even if I allow myself to fantasize a little about our lives in a cabin on the beach, I still find myself being left by you. There's almost no scenario I can think of where we live happily ever after."
"There could be," I tell her and mean it at the moment. Maybe mean it for longer. Her fingers stop moving and she sighs. I open my eyes and she's staring down at me. The lights have come on around the parking lot and one of them shines directly into her face. She angelic, a neon seraphim under the brilliant skies of the spring. I can see us on our boat, eating our hand picked clams on the fire behind our place. I can see it so vividly I'm almost sure it's happened. ~ Jaden Wilkes

There are lots of real reasons to decide to leave something or someone, but there are lots of other reasons that are less valid and less real and less about a relationship than our own minds: Fear (of screwing up, of being left, of not being good enough), restlessness, resistance to growing up, PMS, not knowing how to live without drama, fearing that you're getting happy, and happiness is boring.
The thing that scared me the most was the knowledge that if I stayed, something was going to change, and that something was probably me. I didn't know what changed me would look like, or if I would like her more or less than I already did. Would I still recognize myself? Would I still be myself? ~ Anna White