Found Wanting Quotes

My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. ~ Henry David Thoreau

There is no such thing as privacy between a deity and his worshipper. There are no secrets, no glossed-over failures. Only promises kept and abandoned, sins committed and imagined, and raw emotion. How many of us are ready to have our lives judged? What would happen if we were found wanting? ~ Ilona Andrews

In the 1950s kids lost their innocence.
They were liberated from their parents by well-paying jobs, cars, and lyrics in music that gave rise to a new term ---the generation gap.

In the 1960s, kids lost their authority.
It was a decade of protest---church, state, and parents were all called into question and found wanting. Their authority was rejected, yet nothing ever replaced it.

In the 1970s, kids lost their love. It was the decade of me-ism dominated by hyphenated words beginning with self.
Self-image, Self-esteem, Self-assertion....It made for a lonely world. Kids learned everything there was to know about sex and forgot everything there was to know about love, and no one had the nerve to tell them there was a difference.

In the 1980s, kids lost their hope.
Stripped of innocence, authority and love and plagued by the horror of a nuclear nightmare, large and growing numbers of this generation stopped believing in the future.

In the 1990s kids lost their power to reason. Less and less were they taught the very basics of language, truth, and logic and they grew up with the irrationality of a postmodern world.

In the new millennium, kids woke up and found out that somewhere in the midst of all this change, they had lost their imagination. Violence and perversion entertained them till none could talk of killing innocents since none was innocent anymore. ~ Ravi Zacharias

But really,' Rachel insisted, 'so unfair. Just as Christians automatically cannot be folks who give serious thought to what they are doing. As though millions of people for hundreds of years across hundreds of cultures have simply had it wrong. Chesterton was right when he claimed that 'the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. ~ Carolyn Weber

Every day we see allurements of one kind or another that tell us what we have is not enough. Someone or something is forever telling us we need to be more handsome or more wealthy, more applauded or more admired than we see ourselves as being. We are told we haven't collected enough possessions or gone to enough fun places. We are bombarded with the message that on the world's scale of things we have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Some days it is if we have been locked in a cubicle of a great and spacious building where the only thing on the TV is a never-ending soap opera entitled Vain Imaginations. But God does not work this way. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

Love is hard. We try to love one another. But generally the quality and quantity of our love for one another is found wanting, because we find it difficult, if not impossible, to look beyond those things that are ugly and unlovable in those we try to love. Even though the things that are ugly and unlovable in ourselves are the very things that cause us to cry out for love. ~ Doug Worgul

To those who charge that liberalism has been tried and found wanting, I answer that the failure is not in the idea, but in the course of recent history. The New Deal was ended by World War II. The New Frontier was closed by Berlin and Cuba almost before it was opened. And the Great Society lost its greatness in the jungles of Indochina. ~ George McGovern

Conventional dogmas, even if endowed with the authority of an Aristotle - ancient or modern - must be tested vigorously. If they are found wanting, we need not bother with them. But if they are found to be substantially correct, we may not overlook them. ~ Norman Lamm

Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown. ~ Herbert Spencer

Signs and wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders! There's a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist--hark! By Jove, I have it! Look, you Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter; and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram--lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull--he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins--that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path--he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or Scales--happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when whang comes the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. ~ Herman Melville

The Theatre of the Absurd ... can be seen as the reflection of what seems to be the attitude most genuinely representative of our own time. The hallmark of this attitude is its sense that the certitudes and unshakable basic assumptions of former ages have been swept away, that they have been tested and found wanting, that they have been discredited as cheap and somewhat childish illusions. ~ Martin Esslin

But Vikram had seen through every facet, holding me against the light as if I truly were translucent, and instead of making me feel as if I had been looked through and found wanting, I felt . . . seen. ~ Roshani Chokshi

Steve Jobs was notoriously blunt about products he found wanting, but his attack on Flash - Adobe's popular technology for playing multimedia content inside a browser - was particularly vicious. Claiming it was buggy and insecure, Jobs banned it from the iPad. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Some jobs require a more consistent challenge to moral courage than others. Politics is one. In such a setting terrifically good men and women will still be found wanting occasionally. No one does the right thing all the time. It would be more generous and fair to consider their batting average than to judge them only by their last worst act. ~ Michael Josephson

It isn't a case of marriage having been tried and found wanting. In this 20th century world, true marriage is deeply wanted, but largely untried. ~ Richard Lessor

How easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy. ~ James F. Cooper

I am a socialist not because I think it is a perfect system, but half a loaf is better than no bread. The other system has been tried and found wanting ~ Swami Vivekananda

Mene mene tekel upharsin'?"
" 'You have been weighed in the balance and have been found wanting.'... ~ Cassandra Clare

The real difficulty with thousands in the present day is not that Christianity has been found wanting, but that it has never been seriously tried. ~ Henry Parry Liddon

For Bohr the theory came first, then the philosophical position, the interpretation constructed to make sense of what the theory says about reality. Einstein knew that it was dangerous to build a philosophical worldview on the foundation of any scientific theory. If the theory is found wanting in the light of new experimental evidence, then the philosophical position it supports collapses with it. 'it is basic for physics that one assumes a real world existing independently from any act of perception', said Einstein. 'But this we do not know'. ~ Manjit Kumar

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. ~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

So, my Christian friend, if you are settling back, snuggling into your foam rubber chair and resting in your faith in John 3:16 and the fact that you have accepted Jesus Christ, you had better watch yourself. Take heed, lest you also be found wanting. Take heed of your own heart, lest when all is said and done, you have become tied in with the world. ~ A.W. Tozer

I was desperately unhappy with it [Blade Runner]. I was compelled by contract to record five or six different versions of the narration, each of which was found wanting on a storytelling basis. The final version was something that I was completely unhappy with. The movie obviously has a very strong following, but it could have been more than a cult picture. ~ Harrison Ford

Any experience deeply felt makes some men better and some men worse. When it has ended, they share nothing but the recollection of a commitment in which each was tested and to some degree found wanting. [ ... ] The consequences of the journey change the voyager so much more than the embarking or the arrival. ~ Murray Kempton

The evidence for Christian truth is not exhaustive, but it is sufficient. Too often, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting - it has been found demanding, and not tried. ~ John Baillie

Your eyes meet and you immediately feel yourself shriveling under his gaze. He bears a scale in one hand and appears to be weighing your worth. Finding you wanting, the Horseman of Famine turns his dark steed and trots on. ~ Daniel Keidl

It was the kiss by which all the others of his life would be judged and found wanting. ~ Stephen King

Success could be defined as the ability to go on persevering even when it seems that there are no possibilities left. Each failure is not truly a failure, just another possibility explored and found wanting. We never truly run out of possibilities for success, just imagination to find them. ~ Jennifer Megan Varnadore

This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence. ~ Henry David Thoreau

No. It's not. When I walk down the road, people immediately make judgments about me based on my body size. That doesn't happen to you guys, no matter how self-conscious you might be about your bodies. You're still thin, and you get to exist in spaces without constantly being found wanting. ~ Sandhya Menon

We thought of the poor, at that time, as quite divorced from us, who were not poor. By the exercise of one's charity, life could be made all right. You would always have the poor with you, they were the unfortunate, and you made donations. You could handle them. It was mildly unpleasant, but not fundamentally upsetting. Now, for the first time, we face the dreadful reality that we are not separated. They are us. They are something we have made. There is no conceivable way today to say: Fish, and you'll be all right. In hurt, in anguish, in shock, we are becoming aware that it is ourselves, who have to be found wanting, not the poor. ~ Studs Terkel

I have been found wanting, Natalie thought; I have made myself unnacceptable and am not worthy. ~ Shirley Jackson

It suddenly occurred to me that the whole notion of this side, of us and them - it was all over. It was no longer the Lord's Crusade. We were no longer fighting to overthrow Satan. We have been tested, I thought to myself, and we have been found wanting. Our faith was corrupted. My comrades and I - we'd become the endless days, days without light. What does that mean, you ask? We were sick and tired of living. At the least provocation, we would spit out, Fuck it, and kill whoever happened to be involved. (2007: 222) ~ Hwang Sok-yong

Magic provides a way of still having room for possibilities, an unlimited sense of what the world offers. Magic is always there when science is found wanting. ~ Deborah Harkness

For me, acting is like a holiday. When you're directing, you have a strong sense of responsibility for others. It's exciting but exhausting, especially when you're like me: always wanting to break the rules. ~ Simon McBurney

I let them do some simple arithmetic. In a group of one hundred people, how many assholes are there? How many fathers who humiliate their children? How many morons whose breath stinks like rotten meat but who refuse to do anything about it? How many hopeless cases who go on complaining all their lives about the non-existent injustices they've had to suffer? Look around you, I said. How many of your classmates would you be pleased not to see return to their desks tomorrow morning? Think about that one family member of your own family, that irritating uncle with his pointless, horseshit stories at birthday parties, that ugly cousin who mistreats his cat. Think about how relieved you would be - and not only you, but virtually the entire family - if that uncle or cousin would step on a landmine or be hit by a five-hundred-pounder dropped from a high altitude. If that member of the family were to be wiped off the face of the earth. And now think about all those millions of victims of all the wars there have been in the past - I never specifically mentioned the Second World War, I used it as an example because it's the one that most appeals to their imaginations - and think about the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of victims who we need to have around like we need a hole in the head. Even from a purely statistical standpoint, it's impossible that all those victims were good people, whatever kind of people that may be. The injustice is found more in the fact that the assholes ~ Herman Koch

In all of history, we have found just one cure for error - a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism. ~ David Brin

'Eyes Wide Open' took shape from two real life events straight from my own past. One was the sad suicide of my young nephew, a troubled kid, who was found at the bottom of a landmark cliff in central California. The second was a chance encounter forty years ago with none other than, ahem, Charles Manson! ~ Andrew Gross

There are far too many silent sufferers. Not because they don't yearn to reach out, but because they've tried and found no one who cares. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

She would walk into that tent, and she would stab her first friend, her first lover, her only true equal through the heart. She did not want to, she found. But she would do it anyway. It was what Wallachia needed, what it demanded, and Wallachia came before Mehmed. It always would. It had to. ~ Kiersten White

Even after years of war, some men retained scruples about licensed
homicide. [ ... ] Lieutenant Peter Downward commanded the sniper
platoon of 13 Para. He had never himself killed a man with a rifle,
but one day he found himself peering at a German helmet just visible
at the corner of an air-raid shelter
an enemy sniper.
I had his head spot in the middle of my telescopic sight, my safety
catch was off, but I simply couldn't press the trigger. I suddenly
realised that I had a young man's life in my hands, and for the cost
of one round, about twopence, I could wipe out eighteen or nineteen
years of human life. My dithering deliberations were brought back to
earth with a bump as Kirkbride suddenly shouted: 'Go on, sir. Shoot
the bastard! He's going to fire again.' I pulled the trigger and saw
the helmet jerk back. I had obviously got him, and felt completely
drained ... What had I done? ~ Max Hastings

I did an interview once where I was asked who I found attractive and I went on about cartoons and Nala from 'The Lion King' - and it's a bit weird but various of my ex-girlfriends actually did look like Nala. ~ Eddie Redmayne

Wanting to be true to yourself ... Is just an act of self-satisfaction. ~ Aya Kanno

Ever since his first ecstasy or vision of Christminster and its possibilities, Jude had meditated much and curiously on the probable sort of process that was involved in turning the expressions of one language into those of another. He concluded that a grammar of the required tongue would contain, primarily, a rule, prescription, or clue of the nature of a secret cipher, which, once known, would enable him, by merely applying it, to change at will all words of his own speech into those of the foreign one. His childish idea was, in fact, a pushing to the extremity of mathematical precision what is everywhere known as Grimm's Law - an aggrandizement of rough rules to ideal completeness. Thus he assumed that the words of the required language were always to be found somewhere latent in the words of the given language by those who had the art to uncover them, such art being furnished by the books aforesaid. ~ Thomas Hardy

I remember, around age ten, beholding the scene in The Shining in which the hot young woman whom Jack Nicholson is lewdly embracing in the haunted hotel bathroom ages rapidly in his arms, screeching from nubile chick to putrefying corpse within seconds. I understood that the scene was supposed to represent some kind of primal horror. This was The Shining, after all. But the image of that decaying, cackling crone, her arms outstretched in desire toward the man who is backing away, has stayed with me for three decades, as a type of friend. She's part baths-ghost, part mad-Naomi. She didn't get the memo about being beyond wanting or being wanted. Or perhaps she just means to scare the shit out of him, which she does. ~ Maggie Nelson

Our "increasing mental sickness" may find expres­sion in neurotic symptoms. These symptoms are con­spicuous and extremely distressing. But "let us beware," says Dr. Fromm, "of defining mental hygiene as the prevention of symptoms. Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friend; where there are symp­toms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting." The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been si­lenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their per­fect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish "the illusion of indi­viduality," but in fact they have been to a great extent deindividualized. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity. But "uniformity and free­dom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible too. . . . Man is not made to be an automaton, and if he becom ~ Aldous Huxley

And so it was, that when they taunted him, saying, "If you are the Son of God, come down from that cross!" - the man called Jesus did nothing. Yet three days later, quietly and unobtrusively, when there were no witnesses and no crowds and no one to whom to prove anything, he did something a great deal more astonishing - and the world has been talking about it ever since. And in this miracle is found your salvation, for you have been shown the truth, not only of Jesus, but of Who You Are, and may thus be saved from the lie about yourself, which you have been told, and which you have accepted as your truth. God invites you always to your highest thought about yourself. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

Shoes. I needed to get on my tennis shoes. I scrambled through my things on the floor and found them, shoving my feet in and tying the knots. Of course Kaidan Rowe would know what freesia smelled like. He probably had to take a flower course during lust training.
"Going somewhere?"
In my peripheral vision I saw him standing in the bathroom door. I wouldn't meet his eyes, afraid they'd be as stormy as they were after our kiss.
I stood and looked at the clock. It was nine. "Yeah, I'm going for a run."
"Mind if I join you?"
I huffed out a determined breath and looked at him now. "Only if you'll do something for me."
He raised his eyebrows in response.
"Teach me to hide my colors. ~ Wendy Higgins

What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup. ~ Frederick Buechner

Excuse me, but you didn't answer me. What part of it is good for you?" she pressed.
"I found you," he said. ~ Heather Burch

Now that that album's done [TModern Vampires of the City], I have time to revisit things that I was working on earlier, previous to it. I actually found it very helpful to be working on some music on my own. ~ Rostam Batmanglij

It's seemed more like a punishment than a reward most days ... " he said, his tone one of bitter resignation. Then his gaze lifted to meet mine, and his voice changed. " ... at least until I found you. ~ Meg Cabot

free life" as described by a mountaineer: "The mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of life and death, we had found the freedom for which we were blindly groping and which was as necessary to us as breath. ~ Peter Matthiessen

Yes, I found happiness. And no, it didn't take years of struggles, hours of meditation or tons of self-help books and yoga lessons. It just happened. Here, it follows me wherever I go. During the day, it joins me, like a willing ally, through the usual cycle of grasping and craving, and, at night, it lets me fall asleep, my mind quiet, no rambling thoughts filling it. ~ Carol Vorvain

when a customer calls looking for a specific style of shoes in a specific size that we're out of stock on. In those instances, every rep is trained to research at least three competitors' Web sites, and if the shoe is found in stock to direct the customer to the competitor. Obviously, in those situations, we lose the sale. But we're not trying to maximize each and every transaction. Instead, we're trying to build a lifelong relationship with each customer, one phone call at a time. ~ Tony Hsieh

On Ponkawtasset, since, we took our way,
Down this still stream we took our meadowy way,
A poet wise has settled, whose fine ray
Doth faintly shine on Concord's twilight day.

Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high,
Shining more brightly as the day goes by,
Most travellers cannot at first descry,
But eyes that wont to range the evening sky,

And know celestial lights, do plainly see,
And gladly hail them, numbering two or three;
For lore that's deep must deeply studied be,
As from deep wells men read star-poetry.

These stars are never pal'd, though out of sight,
But like the sun they shine forever bright;
Aye, they are suns, though earth must in its flight
Put out its eyes that it may see their light.

Who would neglect the least celestial sound,
Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground,
If he could know it one day would be found
That star in Cygnus whither we are bound,
And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round? ~ Henry David Thoreau

The Dhamma has to be found by looking into your own heart and seeing that which is true and that which is not, that which is balanced and that which is not balanced. ~ Ajahn Chah

One of the things I've found most challenging about writing a multibook series is keeping it fresh and evolving while still delivering the familiarity that keeps longtime fans devoted to the characters and story world. ~ Tina St. John

I'm not what you think I am, Aladdin! I will betray you, and I will hurt you, because that is what I am. Why do you think Nardukha rips souls from the living and creates jinnis? Why do you think he sends us into the world? To make your miserable dreams come true? To bring you happiness?" I laugh sourly. "He gives you the thing you want most and uses it to destroy you. Look at yourself. You're a prince. You have money, power, privilege. The chance to avenge your parents. And you're miserable."
Aladdin stares at me, and in his eyes is pity. "I've been making myself miserable my whole life," he says softly. "I convinced myself long ago that if I could get revenge on Sulifer, I could finally move on. That I could erase the memory of the day my parents died, when I held their severed heads and watched their blood run in the gutters. But as you say, here I am, a step away from that vengeance - and it has soured on my tongue. I don't want it anymore."
He sighs and looks up at the sky, as if searching for words among the stars. "You don't make me miserable, Zahra. I do that to myself, because I'm too weak, too afraid to admit that it isn't Sulifer I'm angry at - it's me. My parents were killed because of me. The day before they were executed, I was caught by the guards for stealing an earring, and when they found out who I was, Sulifer had me whipped until I told him where my parents were. And after they were dead, he gave me back the earring as payment for turning my mothe ~ Jessica Khoury

Studies show that people are terrible at estimating their abilities. Recently, we set out to see who is most likely to do this. Sure, we found that people greatly misestimated their performance and their ability. But it was those with the fixed mindset who accounted for almost all the inaccuracy. The people with the growth mindset were amazingly accurate. When you think about it, this makes sense. If, like those with the growth mindset, you believe you can develop yourself, then you're open to accurate information about your current abilities, even if it's unflattering. ~ Carol S. Dweck

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to the other ~ Henry David Thoreau

Mary found again in the adorable Host the adorable fruit of her womb ... and began in the Cenacle her new maternity at the feet of Jesus in the Eucharist ~ Peter Julian Eymard

Father may have been wanting in some things, but here he was masterful. Night upon night, I marveled at his power to hold listeners in rapt attention. He could tell a story with such detail, such flourish, that afterwards a man could swear it had been his own memory, and not a tale at all. ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

I was never a guy who came into a new situation on a team being vocal right away. I kind of monitored the situation, observed the situation and then found my role throughout that process. ~ Drew Gooden

She often felt like she had been cast in a supporting
role with the film that was Louise. And there was more melodrama to be found there than a full-scale Merchant-Ivory period production. Tonight, she was certain, would be no exception. ~ Kerri Thomson

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. ~ John Gall

I want you like this,crying out for me to release you but wanting it to go on for all eternity," he whispered against her skin. "Pleading with me to end this, begging me to never stop. It is there in your mind.I hear you, see your fantasies.I know each of them, and I will fulfill every one. ~ Christine Feehan

In college, educated women (I found out) were frigid; active women (I knew) were neurotic; women (we all knew) were timid, incapable, dependent, nurturing, passive, intuitive, emotional, unintelligent, obedient, and beautiful. You can always get dressed up and go to a party. Woman is the gateway to another world; Woman is the earth-mother; Woman is the eternal siren; Woman is purity; Woman is carnality; Woman has intuition; Woman is the life-force; Woman is selfless love.

"I am the gateway to another world," (said I, looking in the mirror) "I am the earth-mother; I am the eternal siren; I am purity," (Jeez, new pimples) "I am carnality; I have intuition; I am the life-force; I am selfless love." (Somehow it sounds different in the first person, doesn't it?)

Honey (said the mirror, scandalised) Are you out of your fucking mind?
I AM HONEY
I AM RASPBERRY JAM
I AM A VERY GOOD LAY
I AM A GOOD DATE
I AM A GOOD WIFE
I AM GOING CRAZY
Everything was peaches and cream. ~ Joanna Russ

... the appearance of the third and youngest would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him; there was an uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying that he had hardly as yet found the entrane to his professional groove. ~ Thomas Hardy

I wasn't even looking for him, so why do I feel found? ~ Emery Lord

Satre found atheism 'cruel', Camus 'dreadful', and Nietzsche 'maddening'. Atheists who consistently try to live without God tend to commit suicide or go insane. Those who are inconsistent live on the ethical or aesthetic shadow of Christian truth while they deny the reality that made the shadow. ~ Norman Geisler

Every time I stand in front of mirror, I found my face too ugly, so I thought I have to get the role in some movies which cover my face with make up. ~ Johnny Depp

Revenge can only be found on the road to self-destruction. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

And suddenly, I feel like crying, but not in a bad way. More like in the way you feel when someone gives you a perfect present - something you'd been wanting, but thought you couldn't ask for. It's that feeling of someone knowing you in all the ways you needed to be known. ~ Becky Albertalli

Spill-what's the deal with Hottie McDreamMan?"
"Sage?" I laughed.
"No, I mean Minister Sanders." She threw a pillow at me. "Of course I mean Sage! He's the one, right? The guy from your dreams. Oh my God-he's real and he's hot! Does he kiss as well in real life as he did in your dreams?"
"I wouldn't know," I admitted. "We haven't kissed."
"What are you waiting for?"
"So the whole randomly-popping-up-in-pictures thing doesn't bother you?"
"Nope."
"The whole strange-cultists-chasing-after-him? That doesn't bother you either?"
"Nobody's perfect, Clea."
"How about if I told you he might be a serial killer? Would that bother you?"
"Debatable. Elaborate."
I told her about the nightmares and about what I'd seen in his house. As I unrolled the story, her expression went from flip and giddy to openmouthed and riveted.
"Oh my God, Clea."
"Crazy, right? And I still have no idea how he got into all those pictures."
"That part's easy."
"Really?"
"Of course," she said. "You're soulmates.
"Rayna…"
"Fine, I know, you don't like that word. But you can't possibly deny that you have a deep, powerful soul connection. By definition you have that. You said yourself, he found you in four different countries and four different times. Out of all the people in the world at any given time, he found you. The only possible way he could have done that is if your souls were connected. He's a soul-seeking missile."
Hilary Duff

Were they laughing at me? I forced myself to block them from my mind, to concentrate on the lake, the water. What were they to me? People I met today, that was all. We shared blood. The One who mattered to me still found me worthy, still loved me, whether I knew when to curtsy properly or not. ~ Lisa Tawn Bergren

She has lived under the covers of selfless love, and so was imbibed by her.
Agonies were many that flamed through her heart,
All she found,
were ways to cover it up.
To the world, a girl full of life,
only in solitude she knew her true worth. ~ Priyansha Vashi

If men were to be destroyed and the books they have written were to be transmitted to a new race of creatures, in a new world, what kind of record would be found in them of so remarkable a phenomenon as the rainbow? ~ Henry David Thoreau

I can at once become happy anywhere, for he is happy who has found himself a happy lot. In a word, happiness lies all in the functions of reason, in warrantable desires and virtuous practice. ~ Marcus Aurelius