Crucial Moments Quotes

At certain crucial moments - an emergency or an opportunity - one must act first and think later. ~ Edmund White

In every race there is a crucial moment when the body wants to quit. Then it needs imagination and mental tenacuty to survive the crisis. Otherwise the penalty is defeat. ~ Derek Ibbotson

Minerva drew unusual attention to herself on her very first evening, when she was revealed to be a Hatstall. After five and a half minutes, the Sorting Hat, which had been vacillating between the houses of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, placed Minerva in the latter. (In later years, this circumstance was a subject of gentle humour between Minerva and her colleague Filius Flitwick, over whom the Sorting Hat suffered the same confusion, but reached the opposite conclusion. The two Heads of House were amused to think that they might, but for those crucial moments in their youths, have exchanged positions). ~ J.K. Rowling

Books have the power to be the light we are seeking at crucial moments in our lives. Reading helps us realize we are not alone, that we can change our circumstances and even achieve the impossible. ~ Gioconda Belli

I have found that great people do have in common ... an immense belief in themselves and in their mission. They also have gerat determination as well as an ability to work hard. At the crucial moment of decision, they draw on their accumulated wisdom. Above all, they have integrity. ~ Yousuf Karsh

The close games are usually lost, rather than won. What I mean by that is games are mostly won because of the opponent making mistakes during crucial moments. ~ John Wooden

I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular. But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless. ~ Whitney Young

In the end it was Tabby who cast the deciding vote, as she so often has at crucial moments in my life. I'd like to think I've done the same for her from time to time, because it seems to me that one of the things marriage is about is casting the tiebreaking vote when you just can't decide what you should do next. ~ Stephen King

Self-confidence is very important. If you don't think you can win, you will take cowardly decisions in the crucial moments, out of sheer respect for your opponent. You see the opportunity but also greater limitations than you should. I have always believed in what I do on the chessboard, even when I had no objective reason to. It is better to overestimate your prospects than underestimate them. ~ Magnus Carlsen

Besides, it was beneficial to have a reputation for honesty, if only so that one could lie at crucial moments. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Institutional nepotism might be tolerated in prosperous times. Setbacks can become crises, however, when there is incompetence in key positions at crucial moments. ~ Stewart Stafford

asking small questions to dispel fear and inspire creativity thinking small thoughts to develop new skills and habits - without moving a muscle taking small actions that guarantee success solving small problems, even when you're faced with an overwhelming crisis bestowing small rewards to yourself or others to produce the best results recognizing the small but crucial moments that everyone else ignores ~ Robert Maurer

I have become more aware of (1) how true emotions can feel during crucial moments, and (2) how false they really are. ~ Joseph Grenny

He's a tremendous breath of fresh air. The things he [Pope Francis] has done in a short period of time: the fact that he does not live in a huge papal mansion and just dropped by in the dining room where ordinary people have meals. You think of his background, where he didn't use limousines in South America, that he used public transport. I'm so, so thrilled that he is there at this crucial moment in the history of our world. ~ Desmond Tutu

NOBREZA SILENCIOSA. SILENT NOBILITY. It is a mistake to believe that the crucial moments of a life when its habitual direction changes forever must be loud and shrill dramatics, washed away by fierce internal surges. This is a kitschy fairy tale started by boozing journalists, flashbulb-seeking filmmakers and authors whose minds look like tabloids. In truth, the dramatics of a life-determining experience are often unbelievably soft. It has so little akin to the bang, the flash, of the volcanic eruption that, at the moment it is made, the experience is often not even noticed. When it deploys its revolutionary effect and plunges a life into a brand-new light giving it a brand-new melody, it does that silently and in this wonderful silence resides its special nobility. ~ Pascal Mercier

I like to keep a little bit of nervousness simmering. It keeps mortals alert at crucial moments. Sensitive to every detail. It imprints lasting memories. These moments belong to forever" -Aphrodite ~ Julie Berry

It's beneficial to have a reputation for honesty, if only so that one can lie at crucial moments. ~ Brandon Sanderson

You should enjoy the present moment because this is all you have. Create for tomorrow, but live in and for today. ~ Robert Anthony

But something occurred to me as I sped through that dirty shroud of fog, something Vonnegut has been trying to explain to the rest of us for most of his life. And that is this: Despair is a form of hope. It is an acknowledgment of the distance between ourselves and our appointed happiness.
At certain moments, it is reason enough to live. ~ Steve Almond

Spiritual leaders teach that waking up is a process, that it doesn't just happen once and for all, but must occur again and again when we realize we have forgotten the miracle of being alive, and in recognizing our forgetfulness, we wake to the miracle once again. In the moments we are awake to the wonder of simply being alive, gratitude flows, no matter our circumstances. ~ M.J. Ryan

The moment of passage from disturbance into harmony is that of intensest life. ~ John Dewey

Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life. ~ Daniel Barenboim

Everything I ever worried about turned out exactly as it was going to, despite my anxious moments to the contrary. ~ Wayne Dyer

The crucial question one comes back to is the examination; without that experience is meaningless. And I think it's true that society is becoming more and more passive, less and less fired up with enthusiasm, in many spheres. ~ Peter Hammill

I woke a few moments ago from a fever and a host of interlocking fever dreams, one after the next. There was one where I was in London, walking through old abandoned formerly beautiful buildings, all of them about to be demolished. Sometimes I'd find myself walking past the enormous line of people waiting to attend the television memorial for a dead author friend of mine, but his memorial was a television spectacular with comedians and big band music. There was the one where I had accidentally connected my bank card to a portable printer and the little printer kept printing cash but on the wrong paper and at the wrong size, so my money had huge, incredibly detailed faces on it, works of art that could not be spent. Then I woke from one dream into another: I was asleep in the passenger seat of the car, and saw that we were driving through a densely populated town, and that the driver was also asleep. I tried hard to wake her up and failed, and knew that no one was in control, no one was at the wheel, and soon someone was going to be killed, and I was shouting and calling without effect; but I whimpered and snuffled enough in the real world that my wife stroked my face and said, "Honey? You're having a nightmare," and, finally, I woke for real.

But I woke into a world in which, somewhere, I am still being driven through my life by a sleeping driver, in which money is only good as art, in which we can write the finest books but at the end the crowds will come out and ~ Neil Gaiman

It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power
it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. ~ C.S. Lewis

I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand a wrathful God who'd just as soon dangle us all from a hook. And I can understand a tender, unprejudiced Jesus. But I could never quite feature the two of them living in the same house. You wind up walking on eggshells, never knowing which ... is at home at the moment. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

In their book Radical Reconciliation, Curtiss DeYoung and Allan Boesak unpack why this happens. They write, "reconciliation is revolutionary, that is, oriented to structural change." Which means, reconciliation can never be apolitical. Reconciliation chooses sides, and the side is always justice.

This is why white American churches remain so far from experiencing anything resembling reconciliation. The white Church considers power its birthright rather than its curse. And so, rather than seeking reconciliation, they stage moments of racial harmony that don't challenge the status quo. They organize worship services where the choirs of two racially different churches sing together, where a pastor of a different race preaches a couple of times a year, where they celebrate MLK but don't acknowledge current racial injustices. Acts like these can create beautiful moments of harmony and goodwill, but since they don't change the underlying power structure at the organization, it would be misleading to call them acts of reconciliation. Even worse, when they're not paired with greater change, diversity efforts can have the opposite of their intended effect. They keep the church feeling good, innocent, maybe even progressive, all the while preserving the roots of injustice. ~ Austin Channing Brown

Even though I am a professional, and I know what the steps are, I don't quite know how I'm going to do them, because I haven't lived that moment yet. I always feel very insecure and I get very excited. ~ Suzanne Farrell

The whole world opens when we accept this moment, this very moment. ~ Deepak Chopra

A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spurt at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur. ~ Mark Twain

Anger usually only serves us, and even then, only very fleetingly. ~ Sam Owen

I could remember the details as if it had happened yesterday, even though it was hard to believe some of it had happened at all. Funerals were tricky like that. And life, I guess. The important parts you blocked out altogether, but the random, slanted moments haunted you, replaying over and over in your mind. ~ Kami Garcia

Moments later he said, "There they go, there they go." He meant his brains. That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

It doesn't make sense to call ourselves ugly, because we don't really see ourselves. We don't watch ourselves sleeping in bed, curled up and silent with chests rising and falling with our own rhythm. We don't see ourselves reading a book, eyes fluttering and glowing. You don't see yourself looking at someone with love and care inside your heart. There's no mirror in your way when you're laughing and smiling and happiness is leaking out of you. You would know exactly how bright and beautiful you are if you saw yourself in the moments where you are truly yourself. ~ Anonymous

Thank you Jonah."
He lowers his head at the break in my voice. I ignore the moisture in his eyes and pretend that mine don't sting.
"For what?" he whispers.
" For showing me that people can change. Even if it is one person out of a million. ~ Katie McGarry

God is not in heaven - God is in the present moment. If you are also in the present moment you enter the temple. ~ Rajneesh

May love be your guide in every moment of your life. ~ Paulo Coelho

The world is being created and destroyed in this very moment. Whoever you met will reappear, whoever you lost will return. Don't betray the grace that was bestowed on you. Understand what is going on inside you and you will understand what is going on inside everyone else. Don't imagine that I came to bring peace. I came with a sword. ~ Paulo Coelho

Jessica put out her hand and braced herself against the door jamb. She experienced one of those rare moments when understanding of the world alters and a previously impossible thing is admitted, if not understood. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

Unfortunately, a lot of people in the world will never be get a happy ending and it's okay if they give up, it's okay if they don't persevere, but it's also okay if they push on just for a few moments of happiness before they reach their sad ending. ~ Christy Leigh Stewart

Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes forever the precise and transitory instant. We photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory. The writer has time to reflect. He can accept and reject, accept again; and before committing his thoughts to paper he is able to tie the several relevant elements together. There is also a period when his brain "forgets," and his subconscious works on classifying his thoughts. But for photographers, what has gone is gone forever. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

The point of life is not to get anywhere - it is to notice that you are, and have always been, already there. You are always and forever in the moment of pure creation. The point of life therefore is to create - who and what you are, and then to experience that. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

If gardens are created to tell stories, which I believe they are, then garden gates are the crucial opening lines that can make or break a tale. ~ Vivian Swift

Nothing, in all of the Universe is more delicious than to be in this physical body allowing the fullness that is you to be present in the moment. ~ Esther Hicks

We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it, to his home, to his centers of entertainment: a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be, make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to disappear. ~ Che Guevara

Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

It occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can. ~ Bill Bryson

Because we spent so much time in the writer's room, not even talking about where it goes, but just who the people are in our world, we could find all those unexpected moments and twists and turns that we didn't even see ourselves. ~ Veena Sud