Coming To An End Quotes

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

The more indifferent people are to politics, to the interests of others, the more obsessed they become with their own faces. The individualism of our time.

Not being able to fall asleep and not allowing oneself to move: the marital bed.

If high culture is coming to an end, it is also the end of you and your paradoxical ideas, because paradox as such belongs to high culture and not to childish prattle. You remind me of the young men who supported the Nazis or communists not out of cowardice or out of opportunism but out of an excess of intelligence. For nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of nonthought… You are the brilliant ally of your own gravediggers.

In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.

How to live in a world with which you disagree? How to live with people when you neither share their suffering nor their joys? When you know that you don't belong among them?... our century refuses to acknowledge anyone's right to disagree with the world…All that remains of such a place is the memory, the ideal of a cloister, the dream of a cloister…

Humor can only exist when people are still capable of recognizing some border between the important and the unimportant. And nowadays this border ha ~ Milan Kundera

Mama said there was always a catastrophe coming. Someone's world was always coming to an end. It wasn't our worry to change every ending, only the endings we could ~ Rob Thurman

I guess it is what you do if you grow up with warnings of damnation ringing from every church door and radio station and family reunion, in a place where total strangers will walk up to you at the Piggly Wiggly and ask if you are Saved. Even if you deny that faith, rebuke it, you still carry it around with you like some half-forgotten Indian head penny you keep in your pocket for luck. I wonder sometimes if I will be the same, if when I see my life coming to an end I will drop to my knees and search my soul for old sins and my memory for forgotten prayers. I reckon so. ~ Rick Bragg

Sometimes I wonder who'll come after me," he says. "Oh, we have plenty of
excellent people in the next generation. But after that -- well, I don't know.
I guess all old people feel like the world is coming to an end. ~ Neal Stephenson

Perhaps I am already tired of life - I feel as if it makes no difference when I die. The other day at the Toranomon Hospital when they told me it might be cancer, my wife and Miss Sasaki seemed to turn pale, but I was quite calm. It was surprising that I could be calm even at such a moment. I almost felt relieved, to think that my long, long life was finally coming to an end. ~ Junichiro Tanizaki

Sometimes things are most beautiful when they're coming to an end. ~ Kyra Jackson

It is not her love coming to an end;
she will always have love tucked underneath her rib cage.
This is another failed love attempt reaching its last page,
a relationship fading into the image of a memory,
and a woman understanding that it is not her job to plant, water, and harvest love in a man all at once,
especially one who doesn't want to taste the goodness of her love.

All that matters now is that she gave it her best shot,
another bullet wound from someone she handed the gun to. ~ Pierre Alex Jeanty

It's a lot of accumulated joy and tension and all kinds of emotions just pouring out of all us. We've all been preparing for this day and we all knew that one day we would just have to move on with our lives and careers even though we all love this show and love working together. But it's still an incredibly emotional time, especially for me with a lot of journalists asking me how it feels about FRIENDS coming to an end. It's started to make me think very deeply about what it's all meant to me and that's made me ever more emotional! ~ Jennifer Aniston

Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia. ~ Charles M. Schulz

We hope that the long darkness through which the Burmese people have lived may now be coming to an end. ~ William Hague

The world is coming to an end in 1950. ~ Henry Adams

Presents can make up for some of the disappointments that life doles out, such as it makes almost no sense and is coming to an end more quickly than ever. ~ Anne Lamott

Every pleasure is most valued when it is coming to an end. ~ Seneca.

She lifted my head up with her woundless hands and smiled. Her smile could make the day last a lifetime. I wanted to kiss her. She placed her hand on my heart. I tried to pull her close to me but I knew my life was coming to an end. It would be meaningless. Why would anyone care for a monster that I am? ~ S.K. Cunningham

When great nations fear to expand, shrink from expansion, it is because their greatness is coming to an end. Are we, still in the prime of our lusty youth, still at the beginning of our glorious manhood, to sit down among the outworn people, to take our place with the weak and the craven? A thousand times no! ~ Theodore Roosevelt

August 18, 2006

It was so nice to talk to you tonight. I always wind up in a better mood after talking to you. Somehow you always manage to brighten my life even when in a hell hole like this. You are the greatest woman ever, and I will never understand how I got so lucky to have been blessed with you. I appreciate all you do. You are the strongest person I know, and I admire you, and respect you. I am always extremely proud of you. I know with all that has happened with Marc and Biggles, you have gone out of your way to try to make everyone feel better. Even though I know that is your worst nightmare. I don't know many people who could be there, and put themselves through the pain just to make someone you don't even know more comfortable. You are an angel sent by God. Now you have given me two more angels. Remember Satan was once an angel of God, so Bubba is an angel, but just which side is sometimes debatable. Just joking. I know he can be very trying sometimes, and you have kept your cool way better than I ever could have. Our kids are so lucky to have you as their mother. So am I.
I cannot wait to get back into your arms. Talking about it tonight felt so good. Knowing that this whole thing is coming to an end. I dream about the day I step off that plane to see you. Hope you have no plans for the rest of your life, because you're gonna be a little busy. I miss you so much!!!
I loved talking to Bubba tonight. I love hearing him tell me he loves me, but ~ Taya Kyle

And here was the moment. The end of it all, for civilization was merely another name for friendship, and friendship was coming to an end. ~ Iain Pears

Sylvie's sort of pregnant. Well not sort of. She is. Pregnant. Actually pregnant with a baby.'
'Oh Dexter! Do you know the father? I'm kidding! Congratulations, Dex. God, aren't you meant to space your bombshells out a bit. Not just drop them all at once?'
She held his face in both hands, looked at it.
'You're getting married?-'
'Yes'
-'And you're going to be a father?'
'I know! Fuck me a father!'
'Is that allowed? I mean will they let you?'
'Apparently'
'I think it's wonderful. Fucking hell, Dexter, I turn my back for one minute ... !'
She hugged him once again her arms high round his neck. She felt drunk, full of affection and a certain sadness too, as if something was coming to an end. She wanted to say something along these lines, but thought it best to do this through a joke.
'Of course you've destroyed any chance I had of future happiness, but I'm delighted for you, really. ~ David Nicholls

passions without truth, truths without passion; heroes without heroic deeds, history without events; development, whose sole driving force seems to be the calendar, wearying with constant repetition of the same tensions and relaxations; antagonisms that periodically seem to work themselves up to a climax only to lose their sharpness and fall away without being able to resolve themselves; pretentiously paraded exertions and philistine terror at the danger of the world's coming to an end, and at the same time the pettiest intrigues and court comedies played by the world redeemers, who in their laisser aller remind us less of the Day of Judgment than of the times of the Fronde – the official collective genius of France brought to naught by the artful stupidity of a single individual; the collective will of the nation, as often as it speaks through universal suffrage, seeking its appropriate expression through the inveterate enemies of the interests of the masses, until at length it finds it in the self-will of a filibuster. If any section of history has been painted gray on gray, it is this. ~ Karl Marx

I am glad my life is coming to an end. To think that it might last another five hundred years, now that would be terrible, in my case. ~ Gore Vidal

The age of Grisha power is coming to an end. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Civilization is coming to an end, you understand. ~ Dorothy Parker

Money no longer has any meaning. Civilization is coming to an end. If not the destruction of the world, it's an endless stalemate. ~ Stephen Fry

A courteous war mage. The world really was coming to an end.
And then Pritkin ran back around the corner followed by half a dozen groggy people. He glanced at the cells that still had to be emptied. "You aren't done yet?" he demanded.
The world righted itself. ~ Karen Chance

Every crack is also an opening. When in the midst of great change, it is helpful to remember how a chick is born. From the view of the chick, it is a terrifying struggle. Confined and curled in a dark shell, half-formed, the chick eats all its food and stretches to the contours of its shell. It begins to feel hungry and cramped. Eventually, the chick begins to starve and feels suffocated by the ever-shrinking space of its world. Finally, its own growth begins to crack the shell, and the world as the chick knows it is coming to an end. Its sky is falling. As the chick wriggles through the cracks, it begins to eat its shell. In that moment - growing but fragile, starving and cramped, its world breaking - the chick must feel like it is dying. Yet once everything it has relied on falls away, the chick is born. It doesn't die, but falls into the world. ~ Mark Nepo

Civilization is perhaps approaching one of those long winters that overtake it from time to time. Romantic Christendom - picturesque, passionate, unhappy episode - may be coming to an end. Such a catastrophe would be no reason for despair. ~ George Santayana

The world is coming to an end. Please log off ... ~ Bob Irwin

People always think their world is coming to an end if they're exposed, and of course it isn't coming to an end; it goes right on exactly the way it always was. ~ Anne Roiphe

Genuine vital integrity dues not consist in satisfaction, in attainment, in arrival. As Cervantes said long since: 'the road is always better than the inn." When a period has satisfied its desires, its ideal, this means that it desires nothing more; that the wells of desire have been dried up. That is to say, our famous plenitude is in reality a coming to an end. There are centuries which die of self-satisfaction through not knowing how to renew their desires, just as the happy drone dies after the nuptial flight. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul. No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life - our desire to go on living - our dread of coming to an end. ~ Thomas A. Edison

When she was taken from me it was like the death of a world, an infinite number of futures coming to an end. ~ John Connolly

What is death? Either a transition or an end. I am not afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never having begun, nor of transition, for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as I am here. ~ Seneca.

Maybe I'm wrong," Mom said. "Maybe the world really is coming to an end."
"Should I try Fox News?" I asked.
Mom shuddered. "We're not that desperate," she said. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

You know how chickens are, imagining the world coming to an end one moment, then pecking corn the next. ~ Lloyd Alexander

Nostalgia is not indulgence. Nostalgia tells us we are in the presence of imminent revelation, about to break through the present structures held together by the way we have remembered: something we thought we understood but that we are now about to fully understand, something already lived but not fully lived, issuing not from our future but from something already experienced; something that was important, but something to which we did not grant importance enough, something now wanting to be lived again, at the depth to which it first invited us but which we originally refused. Nostalgia is not an immersion in the past, nostalgia is the first annunciation that the past as we know it is coming to an end. ~ David Whyte

Listen up, pal, the moon is way up in the sky. Aren't you scared? The helplessness that comes from nature. That moonlight, think about it, that moonlight, paler than a corpse's face, so silent and far away, that moonlight witnessed the cries of the first monsters to walk the earth, surveyed the peaceful waters after the deluges and the floods, illuminated centuries of nights and went out at dawns throughout centuries . . . Think about it, my friend, that moonlight will be the same tranquil ghost when the last traces of your great-grandsons' grandsons no longer exist. Prostrate yourself before it. You've shown up for an instant and it is forever. Don't you suffer, pal? I . . . I myself can't stand it. It hits me right here, in the center of my heart, having to die one day and, thousands of centuries later, undistinguished in humus, eyeless for all eternity, I, I!, for all eternity . . . and the indifferent, triumphant moon, its pale hands outstretched over new men, new things, different beings. And I Dead! Think about it, my friend. It's shining over the cemetery right now. The cemetery, where all lie sleeping who once were and never more shall be. There, where the slightest whisper makes the living shudder in terror and where the tranquility of the stars muffles our cries and brings terror to our eyes. There, where there are neither tears nor thoughts to express the profound misery of coming to an end. ~ Clarice Lispector

It's sad, something coming to an end. It cracks you open, in a way - cracks you open to feeling. ~ Jennifer Aniston

If this was a story that was coming to an end, then my curse would be magically fixed because everyting would have to come out exactly right for everybody. But real life isn't like that, and sometimes you just live with things. ~ Sage Blackwood

We were caught in a vicious circle of unpleasantness and sorrow. Not a very happy period for either us, but at leasst it's coming to an end. ~ Anne Frank

Standing at the bathroom mirror, toweling off, I stare at my face. Red eyes, gray stubble - a face totally different from the one with which I started. But also different from the one I saw last year in this same mirror. Whoever I might be, I'm not the boy who started this odyssey, and I'm not even the man who announced three months ago that the odyssey was coming to an end. I'm like a tennis racket on which I've replaced the grip four times and the strings seven times - is it accurate to call it the same racket? ~ Andre Agassi

When stuff is coming to an end, people freak out and they act crazy. ~ LIZ

Something told him that something was coming to an end. Not the world, exactly. Just the summer. There would be other summers, but there would never be one like this. Ever again. ~ Neil Gaiman

Now that the wars are coming to an end, I wish you to prosper in peace. May all mortals from now on live like one people in concord and for mutual advancement. Consider the world as your country, with laws common to all and where the best will govern irrespective of tribe. I do not distinguish among men, as the narrow-minded do, both among Greeks and Barbarians. I am not interested in the descendance of the citizens or their racial origins. I classify them using one criterion: their virtue. For me every virtuous foreigner is a Greek and every evil Greek worse than a Barbarian. If differences ever develop between you never have recourse to arms, but solve them peacefully. If necessary, I should be your arbitrator. ~ Alexander The Great

I never thought I could write this much and now that it's coming to an end, I feel sad that I have to stop, sort of the way you feel at the end of a really good book and you know you're going to miss the main character. But in this case, the main character is me! Myself. Joe (formerly JoDan) Bunch. - Joe Bunch ~ James Howe

Their time is coming to an end, we have to
Unify and watch our flag ascend. ~ Muse

A man that is of Copernicus' Opinion, that this Earth of ours is a Planet, carry'd round and enlightn'd by the Sun, like the rest of them, cannot but sometimes have a fancy ... that the rest of the Planets have their Dress and Furniture, nay and their Inhabitants too as well as this Earth of ours. ... But we were always apt to conclude, that 'twas in vain to enquire after what Nature had been pleased to do there, seeing there was no likelihood of ever coming to an end of the Enquiry ... but a while ago, thinking somewhat seriously on this matter (not that I count my self quicker sighted than those great Men [of the past], but that I had the happiness to live after most of them) me thoughts the Enquiry was not so impracticable nor the way so stopt up with Difficulties, but that there was very good room left for probable Conjectures. ~ Christiaan Huygens

Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. How terrible is the doom of the wicked! The little kindling of God's wrath kills them. What shall the eternal burnings be? Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall abide with everlasting burnings? There is a land of thick darkness and despair where dwells the undying worm, which in its ceaseless folds does crush the spirits of the damned. There is a fire quickly burning, that dries up the very marrow of body and soul and yet destroys them not. There also is the pit that knows no bottom, the hopeless falling without a thought of ever coming to an end. There is a land where souls linger in eternal death and yet they never die - crushed, but not annihilated - broken, but not destroyed. Forever, forever, forever, is the ceaseless wave which rolls its fresh tide of fire upon a shore of agony, whose years are as countless as the sands of the sea. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A man is a man is a man. His family threatened, his beliefs attacked, his way of life destroyed, his whole world coming to an end - he will kill. Make no mistake. He won't let the new order roll over him without a struggle. ~ Zadie Smith

Sardar Harbans Singh passed away peacefully in a wicker rocking-chair in a Srinigar garden of spring flowers and honeybees with his favourite tartan rug across his knees and his beloved son, Yuvraj the exporter of handicrafts, by his side, and when he stopped breathing the bees stopped buzzing and the air silenced its whispers and Yuvraj understood that the story of the world he had known all his life was coming to an end, and that what followed would follow as it had to, but it would unquestionably be less graceful, less courteous and less civilized than what had gone. ~ Salman Rushdie

The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon. ~ Lewis Mumford

No, every person on this planet has darkness inside them. Buried so deep that only you know it's there when your world is coming to an end. Oh, but it's there. It's always there. ~ Alexander Gordon Smith

It is said that what is called "the spirit of an age" is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. ~ Tsunetomo Yamamoto

With the end of empire, we are coming to an end of the epoch of rights. We have entered the epoch of responsibilities, which requires new, more socially-minded human beings and new, more participatory and place-based concepts of citizenship and democracy. ~ Grace Lee Boggs

I only work in relation to what the work is about. Yes, of course, if the world's coming to an end I would basically try to get out of the way when the sky falls. ~ Lawrence Weiner

And since October is coming to an end, what better time to draw Octo-Bear, the bear that is an octopus! ~ Dan Bergstein

In America, conservative historian Francis Fukuyama wrote that the collapse of the Soviet Union marked not just the end of the Cold War, but the end of history: liberal capitalist democracy had won, no ideology could challenge it anymore, and nothing remained but a little cleanup work around the edges while all the world got on board the train headed for the only truth. …

On the other side of the planet, however, jihadists and Wahhabis were drawing very different conclusions from all these thunderous events [Iran's 1979 revolution and ouster of US presence and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan]. In Iran, it seemed to them, Islam had brought down the Shah and driven out America. In Afghanistan, Muslims had not just beaten the Red Army but toppled the Soviet Union itself. Looking at all this, Jihadists saw a pattern they thought they recognized. The First Community had defeated the two superpowers of its day, the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires, simply by having God on its side. Modern Muslims also confronted two superpowers, and they had now brought one of them down entirely. On down, one to go was how it looked to the jihadists and the Wahabbis. History coming to an end? Hardly. As these radicals saw it, history was just getting interesting. ~ Tamim Ansary

The Roman Empire came to an end, but the Roman people didn't come to an end, so I see the American Empire coming to an end just as other empires have come to an end. ~ Howard Zinn

Human life is difficult. But as this life is coming to an end, I consider myself lucky to have lived it. ~ James Hong

The majority of Israelis want change, the Netanyahu era is coming to an end. That's not because security issues don't matter but because social and economic issues are dominating the agenda. ~ Yair Lapid

Aureliano Segundo was deep in the reading of a book. Although it had no cover and the title did not appear anywhere, the boy enjoyed the story of a woman who sat at a table and ate nothing but kernels of rice, which she picked up with a pin, and the story of the fisherman who borrowed a weight for his net from a neighbor and when he gave him a fish in payment later it had a diamond in its stomach, and the one about the lamp that fulfilled wishes and about flying carpets. Surprised, he asked Ursula if all that was true and she answered him that it was, that many years ago the gypsies had brought magic lamps and flying mats to Macondo.
"What's happening," she sighed, "is that the world is slowly coming to an end and those things don't come here any more. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The days of holding the audience captive to watching television at times that programmers tell them they have to watch it are coming to an end. It's a new world, where the viewer and fan wants to watch whatever they want to watch, whenever they want to watch it. ~ Joseph McGinty Nichol

The era of using people as production tools is coming to an end. Participation is infinitely more complex to practice than conventional corporate unilateralism, just as democracy is much more cumbersome than dictatorship. But there will be few companies that can afford to ignore either of them. ~ Ricardo Semler

The time is coming to an end when you can wander the roads of the world as free and easy as you like, and meet a stranger across firelight. They will fence in the world entire ere they are done, the clever men of this earth, and there will be no space left on it for vagabonds, and dreamers ... and little lost girls running from their fate. ~ Paul Kearney

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end. ~ Sylvia Plath

The era when the United States was the dominant global power is steadily coming to an end, and it must find a way of acknowledging this and framing its ambitions and interests accordingly. Instead of claiming the right to continuing primacy in east Asia, for example, it should seek to share that primacy with China. ~ Martin Jacques

She'd found that holding on to him was the easiest and simplest thing to do, not thinking about the bomb, not thinking about the people it killed, not thinking about her family, and not thinking about whether or not she would die. Instead, she'd held tightly around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. She'd thought the entire world was coming to an end and holding on to him seemed to be the only thing she wanted to acknowledge as real. ~ Jettie Necole

Charonte are guarding a Dimme? Is the world coming to an end and I missed the memo? (Stryker) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Science is dangerous. There is no question but that poison gas, genetic engineering, and nuclear weapons and power stations are terrifying. It may be that civilization is falling apart and the world we know is coming to an end. In that case, why no turn to religion and look forward to the Day of Judgment, ... [being] lifted into eternal bliss ... [and] watching the scoffers and disbelievers writhe forever in torment. ~ Isaac Asimov

Some of these kids are spending more time with the coaches than they are with their parents. The coach is supposed to be raising these kids, not belittling them and talking to them like the world is coming to an end. ~ Ray Lewis

The capitalism we are in now is already coming to an end ~ Jack Goldstone

Sometimes you get to a place in life where you feel you've made some choices, and maybe they weren't the right choices, and that it's all coming to an end. ~ Mike Singletary

Altermodern is an in-progress redefinition of modernity in the era of globalisation, stressing the experience of wandering in time, space and mediums. The term 'altermodern has its roots in the idea of 'other-ness (Latin alter = 'other, with English connotation of 'different) and suggests a multitude of possibilities, of alternatives to a single route. It suggests that the historical period defined by postmodernism is coming to an end, symbolised by global financial crises. ~ Nicolas Bourriaud

Any woman who wishes to be an intellectual, to write non-fiction, to deal with theory, faces a lot of discrimination coming her way and perhaps even self-doubt because there aren't that many who've gone before you. And I think that the most powerful tool we can have is to be clear about our intent. To know what it is we want to do rather than going into institutions thinking that the institution is going to frame for us. ~ Bell Hooks

Let his sin be his punishment, let him eat it with his bread, and let that be an end to it. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I was born in 1961. Now I think the 16 years that elapsed between 1961 and the end of the wars is nothing. To a child growing up it felt like an eternity, an entirely different world. ~ Jeremy Northam

For the benefit of your research people, I would like to mention (so as to avoid any duplication of labor): that the planet is very like Mars; that at least seventeen states have Pinedales; that the end of the top paragraph Galley 3 is an allusion to the famous "canals" (or, more correctly, "channels") of Schiaparelli (and Percival Lowell); that I have thoroughly studied the habits of chinchillas; that Charrete is old French and should have one "t"; that Boke's source on Galley 9 is accurate; that "Lancelotik" is not a Celtic diminutive but a Slavic one; that "Betelgeuze" is correctly spelled with a "z", not an "s" as some dictionaries have it; that the "Indigo" Knight is the result of some of my own research; that Sir Grummore, mentioned both in Le Morte Darthur ad in Amadis de Gaul, was a Scotsman; that L'Eau Grise is a scholarly pun; and that neither bludgeons nor blandishments will make me give up the word "hobnailnobbing". ~ Vladimir Nabokov

What's the big idea?" Sabrina demanded.
"I declared war on you, remember?" Puck said.
Sabrina rolled her eyes. "Is this another one of your stupid pranks?"
Puck sniffed. "You have contaminated me with your puberty virus and you called my villainy into question."
"First of all, puberty isn't a virus," Sabrina said as she fought a tug of was with the Pegasus for her now rather damp pillow."Secondly, I'm sorry if I gave you the itty-bitty baby and boo-boo face. Do you wasnt me to give you a hug?"
Puck curled his lip in anger.
"Oh, now is the baby cranky. Perhaps we should put him down for a nap?"
"We'll see who's laughing soon enough," Puck said. "You see these flying horses?"
"Duh!"
"These horses have a very special diet," Puck said. "For the last two days they have eaten nothing but chili dogs and prune juice."
Sabrina heard a rumble coming from Puck's horse. It was so loud it drowned out the sound of its beating wings. Sabrina couldn't tell if the churn of the sound was worse for the Pegasus but it whined a bit and its eyes bulged nervously.
Puck continued. "Now, chili dogs and prune juice are a hard combination on a person's belly. It can keep a human being on the toilet for a week. Imagine what would happen if I fed chili dogs and prune juice to an eight-hundred-and-fifty-pound flying horse. Oh, wait a minute! You don't have to imagine it. I did feed chili dogs and prune juice to an eight-hundred-and-fifty-po ~ Michael Buckley

Reason tells the soul how mistaken it is in thinking that all these earthly things are of the slightest value by comparison with what it is seeking. A little recollection reminds it that all these things come to an end. And faith instructs it in what the soul must do to find satisfaction ... ~ Eknath Easwaran

She looked in the mirror and her hopes fell. "Our friend is behind us again and he's coming up fast. Closing the distance."
Then he knows we're on to him."
Christ! He's got a gun, Red! He's stuck his arm out the window."
Don't worry," Red told her. "Shooting a pistol left-handed from a moving car at another moving car at sixty miles an hour at this distance? Hell, he'd be lucky to hit that mountain."
There was a sharp crack and the rear window disintegrated into flashing shards. Something buzzed in the air between them and smashed into the tapedeck. Fee howled and ducked into his console.
Unless," Red continued thoughtfully, "that's Orvid Crayle behind us. He's very good. ~ Michael Flynn

It's my experience that people want to do something, but become confused by an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, not knowing what to do, and in the end do the only thing they believe they possibly can: nothing. ~ Bill Carter

Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn't. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

One lesson I learned from 'The Monstrumologist' was never to get too attached to your own characters. That's harder in practice than in theory. At the end of the third book - which coincided with the end of my contract - I was an emotional wreck. I mourned Will Henry and Warthrop. ~ Rick Yancey

You used to give yourself over to endless sessions of doubt. You would claim to be an expert on the subject. But doubting would tire you so much that you would end up doubting doubt itself. I saw you one day at the end of an afternoon of solitary speculation. You were unmoving and petrified. Running several kilometers in a deep forest full of ravines and pitfalls would have exhausted you less. ~ Edouard Leve

Turning the pages of scriptural history from beginning to end, we learn of the ultimate pioneer-even Jesus Christ. His birth was foretold by the prophets of old; His entry upon the stage of life was announced by an angel. His life and His ministry have transformed the world ... May we ever follow Him. ~ Thomas S. Monson

I am going to fight - I, a socialist and Syndicalist - so that we shall make an end to war, so that the little ones of France will sleep in peace, and the women go without fear. ~ Philip Gibbs

Ergo, while the Argument from Design appears to be a nice, neat answer to account for the presence of a multifarious Universe, the truth is that it backfires on itself, shifting the need for an explanation back and back and back…and back…without end, without resolution. This is called an infinite regress, and its presence in the logic of the argument fails to prove the existence of God; if anything, it reveals that the idea of a designer is patently ridiculous, even more so than a godless Cosmos. The argument therefore answers nothing; it merely moves the mystery of origins to an even higher level, demanding that the Creator have his own Creator. ~ Michael Vito Tosto

In coming to the Congress as a new Member and becoming a fellow Blue Dog, we have had an opportunity to share and really spend a great deal of time in examining the challenges that our Nation finds itself in in getting its fiscal house in order. ~ Jim Costa

The Internet has destroyed irony in the world, or at least wounded it considerably. What are we to do about an invention whose end result is that starving people in China are looking up things on marthastewart.com? ~ Douglas Coupland

The present is a transitory existence which is made in order to be abolished: it retrieves itself only by transcending itself toward the permanence of future being; it is only as an instrument, as a means, it is only by it's efficacy with regard to the coming of the future that the present is validly realized: reduced to itself it is nothing , one may dispose of it as he pleases. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The hunger and heat combined, a poisonous taste resembling defeat; yes, he thought, that's what it is: I've been defeated in some obscure way. By having killed the androids? By Rachael's murder of my goat? He did not know, but as he plodded along, a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certainly fatal cliffside fall - falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves.

At that moment the first rock - and it was not rubber or soft foam plastic - struck him in the inguinal region. And the pain, the first knowledge of absolute isolation and suffering, touched him throughout in its undisguised actual form.

He halted. And then, goaded on - the goad invisible but real, not to be challenged - he resumed his climb. Rolling upward, he thought, like the stones; I am doing what stones do, without volition. Without it meaning anything. ~ Philip K. Dick

No matter where I go in the world, although I can't speak any foreign language, I don't feel out of place. I think of earth as my home. If everyone thought this way, people might notice just how foolish international friction is and they would put an end to it. ~ Akira Kurosawa

Women were relegated to an inferior caste ... most dramatically with the coming of industrialization. 'Women's work' was segregated from significant human activity. ~ Madonna Kolbenschlag

We got us a good sergeant, is what I'm saying.' Maybe nodded, and glanced back at Crump. 'You listening, soldier? Don't mess it up.' The tall, long-faced man with the strangely wide-spaced eyes blinked confusedly. 'They stepped on my cussers,' he said. 'Now I ain't got any more.' 'Can you use that sword on your belt, sapper?' 'What? This? No, why would I want to do that? We're just marching.' Lagging behind, breath coming in harsh gasps, Limp said, 'Crump had a bag of munitions. Stuck his brain in there, too. For, uh, safekeeping. It all went up, throwing Nah'ruk everywhere. He's just an empty skull now, Maybe.' 'So he can't fight? What about using a crossbow?' 'Never seen him try one of those. But fight? Crump fights, don't worry about that.' 'Well, with what, then? That stupid bush knife?' 'He uses his hands, Maybe.' 'Well, that's just great then.' 'We're just marching,' said Crump again, and then he laughed. ~ Steven Erikson

Taki

As a prolific author and journalist, Taki has written for many top-rated publications, including the Spectator, the London Sunday Times, Vanity Fair, National Review, and many others. Greek-born and American-educated, Taki is a well-known international personality and a respected social critic all over the world.

In June 1987, I was an usher at the wedding of Harry Somerset, Marquis of Worcester, to Tracy Ward. The wedding and ensuing ball took place in the grand Ward country house, attended by a large portion of British society, including the Prince and Princess of Wales. Late in the evening, while I was in my cups, a friend, Nicky Haslam, grabbed my arm and introduced me to Diana, who was coming off the dance floor. We exchanged pleasantries, me slurring my words to the extent that she suddenly took my hand, looked at me straight in the face, and articulated, "T-a-k-e y-o-u-r t-i-m-e." She mistook my drunken state for a severe speech impediment and went into her queen-of-hearts routine. Nicky, of course, ruined it all by pulling her away and saying, "Oh, let him be, ma'am; he's drunk as usual. ~ Larry King

I heard the universe as an oratorio sung by a master choir of stars, accompanied by the orchestra of the planets and the percussion of satellites and moons. The aria they performed was a song to break the heart, full of tragic dissonance and deferred hope, and yet somewhere beneath it all was a piercing refrain of glory, glory, glory. And I sensed that not only the grand movements of the cosmos, but everything that had happened in my life, was a part of that song. Even the hurts that seemed most senseless, the mistakes I would have done anything to erase
nothing could make those things good, but good could still come out of them all the same, and in the end the oratorio would be no less beautiful for it. ~ R. J. Anderson

I don't think we're doing an adequate vetting process of those who are coming to our country. ~ Rand Paul

[T]he man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I was, however, still very much an emotional wreck and sometimes this resulted in misdirected anger. Unfortunately, my sisters bore the brunt of that. Sometimes I would just blow up without reason or warning. Once, my sister Sara was in the room and she was just moving things around, trying to clean up, and I blew up at her. She was so stunned and upset, she just walked out of the room and into the hallway to cry. Another soldier in a wheelchair came by and asked if she was okay. Through sobs and tears she choked out a "yeah."
"Did your soldier yell at you?" he asked. She nodded yes and he said, "I don't know why we do that. But don't take it personally. We're all going through it."
She calmed down and walked back in. She stood squarely in front of my bed and told me that I really pissed her off. Clearly I'd already forgotten I yelled at her because I looked at her with a bewildered expression and managed to push out through my wired jaw, "What's wrong with you?"
She glared at me and spat back, "You son of a bitch, you're what's wrong!" I was clueless. In fact, I pissed off my family members on a pretty regular basis until they figured out how to deal with it. They'd just control when I got to talk. My jaw was wired shut, but I could talk a little bit with some help.
I'd had a tracheotomy so I had a hole in my throat. I had this little purple plastic piece that I could put in the hole that would keep the air from coming out so I could talk. Every time I wo ~ Noah Galloway

No. I'm trying to think like a human, trying to decide if it's selfish to kiss you. If it's not in your best interest. I don't always understand how to be thoughtful."
He really did look like he was having an internal struggle over right and wrong. I could practically see the wheels grinding in his skull. "Here's a clue," I told him. "If I ask you if you're going to kiss me, it means I want you to, which means it's not selfish of you."
He frowned. "Are you sure?"
A demon with a moral streak stronger than any guy I'd ever met. Who would have imagined that. ~ Erin McCarthy