Great Loss Quotes

For only the body would die, whereas the loss of a soul is a great loss which is apparently without end; ~ Teresa Of Avila

Appearing nude on film was not easy when I was twenty-six in Body Heat; it was even harder when I was forty-six in The Graduate, on the stage, which is more up close and personal than film. After my middle-age nude scene, though, I unexpectedly got letters from women saying, "I have not undressed in front of my husband in ten years and I'm going to tonight." Or, "I have not looked in the mirror at my body and you gave me permission."
These affirmations from other women were especially touching to me because when I began The Graduate I'd just come through a period when I felt a great loss of confidence, when my rheumatoid arthritis hit me hard and I literally couldn't walk or do any of the things that I was so used to doing. It used to be that if I said to my body, "Leap across the room now," it would leap instantly. I don't know how I did it, but I did it. I hadn't realized how much my confidence was based on my physicality. On my ability to make my body do whatever I wanted it to do.
I was so consumed, not just by thinking about what I could and couldn't do, but also by handling the pain, the continual, chronic pain. I didn't realize how pain colored my whole world and how depressive it was. Before I was finally able to control my RA with proper medications, I truly had thought that my attractiveness and my ability to be attractive to men was gone, was lost. So for me to come back and do The Graduate was an affirmation to myself. I had my body back. I was back. ~ Kathleen Turner

If you can sustain your interest in what you're doing, you're an extremely fortunate person. What you see very frequently in people's professional lives, and perhaps in their emotional life as well, is that they lose interest in the third act. You sort of get tired, and indifferent, and, sometimes, defensive. And you kind of lose your capacity for astonishment - and that's a great loss, because the world is a very astonishing place.
What I feel fortunate about is that I'm still astonished, that things still amaze me. And I think that that's the great benefit of being in the arts, where the possibility for learning never disappears, where you basically have to admit you never learn it. ~ Milton Glaser

Dear young people, choose God for your portion; love his truth, and be not ashamed of it; choose for your company such as serve him in uprightness; and shun as most dangerous the conversation of those whose lives are of an ill savor; for by frequenting such company some hopeful young people have come to great loss, and been drawn from less evils to greater, to their utter ruin. In the bloom of youth no ornament is so lovely as that of virtue, nor any enjoyments equal to those which we partake of in fully resigning ourselves to the Divine will. These enjoyments add sweetness to all other comforts, and give true satisfaction in company and conversation, where people are mutually acquainted with it; and as your minds are thus seasoned with the truth, you will find strength to abide steadfast to the testimony of it, and be prepared for services in the church. ~ Benjamin Franklin

It is the duty of the long-term investor to endure great losses with equanimity. ~ John Maynard Keynes

Frank Schirrmacher's passing is a great loss. Among the intellectuals, he, along with Friedrich Kittler, was the only one who understood the philosophical dimensions of the Internet. ~ Hubert Burda

To be mistaken in believing that the Christian religion is true is no great loss to anyone; but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it to be false! ~ Blaise Pascal

With little effort, he rolled his late lover off the edge of the cliff and watched, grimacing, when her dainty body bounced off a rocky outcropping. True, he planned on packing her back to France, or to another of his associates. And true, he didn't see her death as a great loss, but he wouldn't have wished her bashed on the rocks, even in death. However, this was the most expedient way to rid himself of an inconveniently dead mistress. ~ Chris Karlsen

Experience itself, to our own great loss and bane, affords us sad proof that Satan seizes as many opportunities of deceiving and destroying mankind as there are different moods and affections natural to the human character. Demonolatry, Nicholas Remy ~ Phillip W. Simpson

I have more energy to run after our four children. Weight loss and great skin were a bonus! ~ Niecy Nash

I am free, and always have been; free to accept my own reality, free to trust my perceptions, free to believe what makes me feel sane even if others call me crazy, free to disagree even if it means great loss, free to seek the way home until I find it. ~ Martha Beck

Emptiness is not a great loss. It creates a great opportunity to fill yourself again and again with great love. ~ Debasish Mridha

I don't feel part of the world. No one needs me or wants me or even likes me very much. I don't like myself. The world will keep turning without me. I'll be no great loss. I'm just a temporary misuse of a minute amount of carbon. ~ Barbara Elsborg

On the day of my death, when they carry my coffin,
do not think that I will feel pain for this world.
Do not cry and say: it is a great loss!
When milk sours, the loss is greater.
I shall not vanish when you see them lay me in the grave.
Do the sun and moon vanish when they set?
This seems like a death to you, but it is a birth.
The grave seems like a prison to you, but the soul has been freed.
What grain does not sprout when it is put into the ground?
So why do you not believe in the grain of men? ~ Mesa Selimovic

Haven't you realized that pleasure, which is indeed certainly the one and only reason for the two sexes to come together, is nevertheless not enough to establish a relationship between them? And that though this pleasure is preceded by desire which draws people together, it is however followed by aversion which pushes them apart? It's a law of nature which only love can change. Can we feel love whenever we want? Yet love is always needed, which would be a dreadfully tiresome thing if it hadn't fortunately been realized that it's enough for just one of the partners to feel it, thereby halving the problem, and without even incurring any great loss; in fact, one party is happy to love, the other to please, which is actually a bit less exciting but which can be combined with the pleasure of deceiving and that evens things out, so everyone's happy. ~ Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

Sometimes people need to experience acute suffering before the thinking and the awareness of the consciousness separate. People then realize there is another dimension in them that is not thinking but the ability to be aware of thinking. It is not emotion but the ability to be aware of emotion. ~ Eckhart Tolle

I cannot shield you from the challenges you will face. You will know great loss and danger, but also great joy. You may doubt your instincts in the years to come, but your feet have been walking this path since the moment you were born. ~ Deborah Harkness

Most people are remarkably resilient. Even those who have been through war or great loss often find reservoirs of strength. But the legacy of trauma is a heavy burden to bear. ~ Christina Baker Kline

And what about us?" Catcher asked.
Gabriel's eyebrows lifted. "You're part of the mystery-solving gang, aren't you?"
Catcher muttered something unflattering, and Mallory nudged him. "I presume you want us to stay here tonight?" she asked.
"It would make things easier," Gabe said.
"So we'll sleep on the couch," Catcher said, "like we're twelve-year-olds at a slumber party."
"In fairness," Ethan said, "we don't all have to sleep on the couch."
"In fairness," Catcher said, "you can kiss my ass."
"Ladies," Mallory said. "Let's put on our big-girl panties. Merit and Ethan are already sleeping in the bedroom, and there's no point in making them move. Catcher and I can take the couch. The shifters will feel better if we make this work, and it's no great loss to any of us. ~ Chloe Neill

What of it? If I die, I die. It will be no great loss to the world, and I am thoroughly bored with life. I am like a man yawning at a ball; the only reason he does not go home to bed is that his carriage has not arrived yet. ~ Mikhail Lermontov

MY BETH.

Sitting patient in the shadow
Till the blessed light shall come,
A serene and saintly presence
Sanctifies our troubled home.
Earthly joys and hopes and sorrows
Break like ripples on the strand
Of the deep and solemn river
Where her willing feet now stand.

O my sister, passing from me,
Out of human care and strife,
Leave me, as a gift, those virtues
Which have beautified your life.
Dear, bequeath me that great patience
Which has power to sustain
A cheerful, uncomplaining spirit
In its prison-house of pain.

Give me, for I need it sorely,
Of that courage, wise and sweet,
Which has made the path of duty
Green beneath your willing feet.
Give me that unselfish nature,
That with charity divine
Can pardon wrong for love's dear sake -
Meek heart, forgive me mine!

Thus our parting daily loseth
Something of its bitter pain,
And while learning this hard lesson,
My great loss becomes my gain.
For the touch of grief will render
My wild nature more serene,
Give to life new aspirations,
A new trust in the unseen.

Henceforth, safe across the river,
I shall see for evermore
A beloved, household spirit
Waiting for me on the shore.
Hope and faith, born of my sorrow,
Guardian angels shall become,
And the sister gone before me
By their hands shall lead me home. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Every great loss demands that we choose life again. We need to grieve in order to do this. The pain we have not grieved over will always stand between us and life. When we don't grieve, a part of us becomes caught in the past like Lot's wife who, because she looked back, was turned into a pillar of salt. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

Mazarin shed tears over this great loss, which Conde, who had no feeling for anything but glory, disregarded. "A single night in Paris," said he, "gives birth to more men than this action has destroyed. ~ Friedrich Schiller

A harmonica is easy to carry. Take it out of your hip pocket, knock it against your palm to shake out the dirt and pocket fuzz and bits of tobacco. Now it's ready. You can do anything with a harmonica: thin reedy single tone, or chords or melody with rhythm chords. You can mold the music with curved hands, making it wail and cry like bagpipes, making it full and rounds like an organ, making it as sharp and bitter as the reed pipes of the hills. And you can play it and put it back in your pocket. It is always with you, always in your pocket. And as you play, you learn new tricks, to pinch the tone with your lips, and no one teaches you. You feel around - sometimes in the tent door after supper when the women are washing up. Your foot taps gently on the ground. Your foot taps gently on the ground. Your eyebrows rise and fall in rhythm. And if you lose it or break it, why, it's no great loss. You can buy another for a quarter. ~ John Steinbeck

Your survival is imperative. With your death would come great loss. The supernatural world would be unable to recover itself for a millennium. ~ Amanda Carlson

In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins. ~ Antoni Tapies

My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses. ~ Isabel Allende

The impact of the earthquake on mental health was huge and unimaginably deep in people's lives. Some lost all benchmarks and references because of their great loss, we still have people coming to clinics with mental health problems related to the earthquake. They talk about the earthquake, about being under the rubble. ~ Reggie Fils-Aime

Oh Mickey, it was wonderful, it was fun - the whole kitten and kaboozle. It was like living. And to be denied that whole part would be a great loss. You gave it to me. You gave me a double life. I couldn't have endured with just one."
I'm proud of you and your double life."
All I regret", she said, crying again, crying with him, the two of them in tears..."is that we couldn't sleep together too many nights. To commingle with you. Commingle?"
Why not."
I wish tonight you could spend the night."
I do, too. But I'll be here tomorrow night."
I meant it up at the Grotto. I didn't want to fuck any more men even without the cancer. I wouldn't do that even if I was alive."
You are alive. It is here and now. It's tonight. You're alive."
I wouldn't do it. You're the one I always loved fucking. But I don't regret that I have fucked many. It would have been a great loss to have had otherwise. Some of them, they were sort of wasted times. You must have that, too. Haven't you? With women you didn't enjoy?"
Yes."
Yes, I had experiences where the men would just want to fuck you whether they cared about you or not. That was always harder for me. I give my heart, I give my self, in my fucking."
You do indeed."

And then, after just a little drifting, she fell asleep and so he went home - "I'm leaving now" - and within two hours she threw a clot and was dead.
So those were her last words, in English anyway. I give my heart, I ~ Philip Roth

The story of Pi is the story of all of us. We all have tigers under our tarpaulins - tigers that, we feel, could destroy us. We think we want to be rid of our tigers. But the truth is, we would feel a great loss if they ran away, because ultimately, each tiger is part of us. ~ Daniel Gottlieb

One of the great penalties those of us who live our lives in full view of the public must pay is the loss of that most cherished birthright of man's, privacy. ~ Mary Pickford

This "manna from heaven" was being squandered because of the laziness and stupidity of the savages who refused to work as harvesters of latex and obliged the planters to go to the tribes and take them by force. Which meant a great loss of time and money for the enterprises. "Well, ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. ~ Gail Caldwell

Most epiphanies happen after great loss or tragedy. The soul is equipped to deal with dynamic events because of its elastic quality. Energy is mutable, it can change its presence, but not its tone. ~ S.L. Northey

There will be a great loss of learning before the moon's full cycle is completed. Fire and floods will be fomented by ignorant rulers; much time will go by before it is rectified. ~ Nostradamus

You don't that often see writers being sought out when there are matters of great moment to discuss. And I think that's a loss. ~ Salman Rushdie

In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be ?replaced? by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten. ~ George Lucas

Stop taking people for granted. Try to be more sensitive sometimes because you wouldn't know one day that person will be gone and you will realize later on that you had a great loss and regret the things you haven't done. ~ Demi Jane Tumulak

The Rolling Stones suffered a great loss with the death of Ian Stewart, the man who had for so many years played piano quietly and silently with them on stage. ~ Andy Peebles

I remember, when I was a little kid, I was good at sports, and I could jump off the high board. And then puberty hit, and suddenly I was looking to boys for direction. I remember that as a great loss. ~ Francine Prose

Probably you were not quite well, my little dove, when you wrote to me, for a note of real melancholy pervaded your letter. I recognized in it a nature closely akin to my own. I know the feeling only too well. In my life, too, there are days, hours, weeks, aye, and months, in which everything looks black, when I am tormented by the thought that I am forsaken, that no one cares for me. Indeed, my life is of little worth to anyone. Were I to vanish from the face of the earth to-day, it would be no great loss to Russian music, and would certainly cause no one great unhappiness. In short, I live a selfish bachelor's life. I work for myself alone, and care only for myself. This is certainly very comfortable, although dull, narrow, and lifeless. But that you, who are indispensable to so many whose happiness you make, that you can give way to depression, is more than I can believe. How can you doubt for a moment the love and esteem of those who surround you? How could it be possible not to love you? No, there is no one in the world more dearly loved than you are. As for me, it would be absurd to speak of my love for you. If I care for anyone, it is for you, for your family, for my brothers and our old Dad. I love you all, not because you are my relations, but because you are the best people in the world. ~ Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky

To strip our past of glory is no great loss, but to deny it honor is devastating. ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

There's no great loss without some small gain. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

Think of the self that God has given as an acorn. It is a marvelous little thing, a perfect shape, perfectly designed for its purpose, perfectly functional. Think of the grand glory of an oak tree. God's intention when He made the acorn was the oak tree. His intention for us is '… the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.' Many deaths must go into our reaching that measure, many letting-goes. When you look at the oak tree, you don't feel that the loss' of the acorn is a very great loss. The more you perceive God's purpose in your life, the less terrible the losses seem. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Leave bands, go back to obscurity if I choose to, without a great sense of loss of security because it's all been based on the fact that I did it on my own or was doing, enjoying doing it on my own in the first place. ~ Eric Clapton

One loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps. ~ W.B.Yeats

Always life would bring with it joy and sorrow combined. To allow herself to love and to love well, she opened her heart to loss, but to live without love would truly be no life at all. Alainn was well aware with any great love there would be great loss. It was both the cost and the reward of loving. ~ Leigh Ann Edwards

Your identity is altered, even though you don't want it to be. You are not the same person, and some of your friends will relate to you differently. Redefining ourselves, that is, building a new identity after the death of a loved one, is another significant task commonly forgotten in grief work. It's okay to be a different person than when you started your journey through loss. So ask yourself how much your great loss has affected your identity as a person and how you will rebuild it. ~ Louis E. LaGrand

Most medical personnel remain largely unfamiliar with non-medical treatments, and tend to dismiss them without knowing about what they're dismissing. This is a great loss to the doctor as well as to the public. ~ Andrew Saul

Dear Producers,
Something is radiating deep within me and it must be transmitted or I will implode and the world will suffer a great loss, unawares. Epic are the proportions of my soul, yet without a scope who cares am I? This is why I must but must be one of the inhabitants of MTV's "Real World." Only there, burning brightly into a million dazzled eyes, will my as yet uncontoured self assume the beauteous forms that are not just its own, but an entire market niche's, due.

I am a Kirk Cameron-Kurt Cobain figure, roguishly quirky, dandified but down to earth, kooky but comprehensible; denizen of the growing penumbra between alternative and mainstream culture; angsty prophet of the already bygone apocalypse, yet upbeat, stylish and sexy!

Oscar Wilde wrote, "Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating... [they] live the poetry [they] cannot write." As with Dorian Gray, life is my art! Oh MTV, take me, make me, wake me from my formless slumbers and place me in the dreamy Real World of target marketing. ~ Dave Eggers

I do believe that great love brings with it the terror and possibility of great loss. ~ Emily Susan Rapp

The greatest things in life always come with a chance of great loss ~ Luke Edison

How we respond to tragedy is the hallmark of character. Suffering a great loss places us at a spiritual milepost. The wind of our souls can either sour and wither or rejoice and thrive. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels. ~ Paul Theroux

The bodies we have are not made for extended use. We must cope with accumulated DNA damage, cell damage, muscle atrophy, bone loss, decreased muscle mass, and joints worn out from overuse during a lifetime of bipedal locomotion. It might have worked great for prehistoric humans, but it wreaks havoc on our knees and hips. ~ S. Jay Olshansky

The day you were born
Heaven wept at its great loss,
Earth joyed at its gain. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I was experiencing all the success the entertainment industry has to offer, but I knew there had to be something more. It was sort of through that God prepared me to hear about His great plan. ~ Kirk Cameron

I've got a great sense of where I want to lead and I'm comfortable with why I'm running. And, you know, the call on that speech was, beware. This is going to be a tough campaign. ~ George W. Bush

A great screenplay makes everybody step up to the bar and deliver. ~ Catherine Hardwicke

I would like to please the reader, and I think that surprise has to be an element of this, and that may necessitate a certain amount of teasing. To shock the reader is something else again. That has to be handled with great care if you're not going to alienate and hurt him, and I'm firmly against that, just as I disapprove of people who dress with that in mind
dye their hair blue and stick safety pins through their noses and so on. ~ John Ashbery

I've managed to get some beautiful bags. I have a great collection, and so does my mother. My favourite is a purple one by Gucci, which I take everywhere! ~ Becki Newton

A striking man stood in the doorway behind him: perhaps sixty-five, with a great shock of white hair. The hair was the only thing that looked at all old about him; he was close to six and a half feet tall, with a craggy, handsome face bronzed by the sun, a trim, athletic bearing, wearing a blue blazer over a crisp white cotton shirt and tan slacks. He radiated good health and vigorous living. His hands were massive. ~ Douglas Preston

I ended up spending years on a spiritual quest - diving into the world's great spiritual traditions. ~ Brandon Bays

A lot of guys go through their whole careers and don't win a championship, but are still great coaches. ~ Chuck Daly

What now matters most is how we respond to various risks to the survival of humanity. We are creating some of these risks, and discovering how we could respond to these and other risks. If we reduce these risks, and humanity survives the next few centuries, our descendants or successors could end these risks by spreading through this galaxy.

Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche's words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea.

If we are the only rational beings in the Universe, as some recent evidence suggests, it matters even more whether we shall have descendants or successors during the billions of years in which that would be possible. Some of our successors might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would give us all, including some of those who have suffered, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists. ~ Derek Parfit

Being successful doesn't necessarily make you great. What makes you great is when you reach back and help somebody else become great. ~ Joel Osteen

The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. 2. And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 3. And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken. 4. The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly. 5. The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful. ~ Anonymous

We don't know what it's like not to be in love with you. We loved you the moment you looked at us, held our hand, danced dirty, kissed us. We were lost in you way before we even met, before the thought crossed your mind that you were bored and we were vaguely good-looking, interesting, exotic, fuckable. While you were weighing options, we were just hoping it wouldn't hurt too much - the fucking, or the falling in love, or the rejection. We didn't get to choose. - Kai Cheng Thom to -----, 2013 (age 22) ~ Jeanette Lynes

I can forgive almost any crime if a great story is left in its wake. ~ Pat Conroy

Great things can happen when you don't care who gets the credit. ~ Mark Twain

FAUSTUS. [Stabbing his arm.] Lo, Mephistophilis, for love of thee,
I cut mine arm, and with my proper blood
Assure my soul to be great Lucifer's,
Chief lord and regent of perpetual night! ~ Christopher Marlowe

Everybody is satisfied, that a conservation and secure enjoyment of our natural rights is the great and ultimate purpose of civil society; and that therefore all forms whatsoever of government are only good as they are subservient to that purpose to which they are entirely subordinate. Now, to aim at the establishment of any form of government by sacrificing what is the substance of it; to take away, or at least to suspend, the rights of nature, in order to an approved system for the protection of them ... is a procedure as preposterous and absurd in argument as it is oppressive and cruel in its effect. ~ Edmund Burke

It occurs to me,Jim,that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don't you invest more time being interested?
Collin's advice from John Gardner that he took to heart. ~ James C. Collins

It is the success which makes great men. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The experiments I am about to relate ... may be repeated with great ease, whenever the sun shines, and without any other apparatus than is at hand to every one. ~ Thomas Young

Everybody has some one thing they do not want to lose," began the man. "You included. And we are professionals at finding out that very thing. Humans by necessity must have a midway point between their desires and their pride. Just as all objects must have a center of gravity. This is something we can pinpoint. Only when it is gone do people realize it even existed. ~ Haruki Murakami

This is my life now. Absurd, but unpredictable. Not absurd because unpredictable but unpredictable because absurd. If I have lost the meaning of my life, I might still find small treasured things among the spilled and pilfered trash. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Even if you perform with a great choreography, or a part of a great group, I believe you can't imitate people's aura. ~ Minzy

In combating cynicism, it helps to know its source. Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustated idealist – someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.

Bill O'Brien points out that 'burnout' comes from causes other than simply working too hard: "There are teachers, social workers and clergy who work incredibly hard until they are 80 years old and never suffer 'burnout' - because they have an accurate view of human nature. They don't over-romanticize people, so they don't feel the great pshychological stress when people let them down ~ Peter M. Senge

We of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war ~ Alexander The Great

Yet Malone, remarkably, was a model of restraint compared with others, such as John Payne Collier, who was also a scholar of great gifts, but grew so frustrated at the difficulty of finding physical evidence concerning Shakespeare's life that he began to create his own, forging documents to bolster his arguments if not, ultimately, his reputation. He was eventually exposed when the keeper of mineralogy at the British Museum proved with a series of ingenious chemical tests that several of Collier's "discoveries" had been written in pencil and then traced over and that the ink in the forged passages was demonstrably not ancient. It was essentially the birth of forensic science. This was in 1859. ~ Bill Bryson

He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he made his run. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

If the world is to contain a public space, it cannot be erected for one generation and planned for the living only; it must transcend the life-span of mortal men ... . There is perhaps no clearer testimony to the loss of the public realm in the modern age than the almost complete loss of authentic concern with immortality, a loss somewhat overshadowed by the simultaneous loss of the metaphysical concern with eternity. ~ Hannah Arendt

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types
the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution. ~ G.K. Chesterton

On the morning of what should have been Amelia Ashley's birthday, the river valley that had once housed High Bridge changed for Joshua Mayhew. For the first time in many years, it seemed beautiful to him. For the first time in many years, it was beautiful. ~ Tara Hudson

American racism has many moving parts, and has had enough centuries in which to evolve an impressive camouflage. It can hoard its malice in great stillness for a long time, all the while pretending to look the other way. Like misogyny, it is atmospheric. You don't see it at first. But understanding comes. ~ Teju Cole

Acknowledgements!
My thanks to Hollywood
When you showed me John Rambo
Stitching up his arm with no anaesthetic
And giving them "a war they won't believe"
I knew then my calling, the job for me

Thanks also to the recruitment adverts
For showing me soldiers whizzing around on skis
And for sending sergeants to our school
To tell us of the laughs, the great food, the pay
The camaraderie

I am, dear taxpayer, forever in your debt
You paid for my all-inclusive pilgrimage
One year basking in the Garden of Eden
(I haven't quite left yet)

Thanks to Mum and thanks to Dad
Fuck it,
Thanks to every parent
Flushing with pride for their brave young lads
Buying young siblings toy guns and toy tanks
Waiting at the airport
Waving their flags ~ Danny Martin

Great and small suffer the same mishaps. ~ Blaise Pascal

The ceremonial law was given by Christ. Even after it was no longer to be observed, Paul presented it before the Jews in its true position and value, showing its place in the plan of redemption and its relation to the work of Christ; and the great apostle pronounces this law glorious, worthy of its divine Originator. The solemn service of the sanctuary typified the grand truths that were to be revealed through successive generations. The cloud of incense ascending with the prayers of Israel represents his righteousness that alone can make the sinner's prayer acceptable to God; the bleeding victim on the altar of sacrifice testified of a Redeemer to come; and from the holy of holies the visible token of the divine Presence shone forth. Thus through age after age of darkness and apostasy faith was kept alive in the hearts of men until the time came for the advent of the promised Messiah. ~ Ellen G. White

My view of Sarah Palin is she is the most dynamic figure maybe in politics, even more in some ways than President Obama, who is a little more scripted than she is. He is great with the teleprompter. ~ Rudy Giuliani

I actually think there are lots of good matches for each person, and they cross our paths all the time, but we're so wedded to the idea of love at first sight that we can miss the really great people who don't come with a thunderbolt attached. ~ Jean Hanff Korelitz

And we're losing something of great value, a way of thinking and moving through time that can be summed up in a single word: depth. Depth of thought and feeling, depth in our relationships, our work and everything we do. Since depth is what makes life fulfilling and meaningful, it's astounding that we're allowing this to happen. ~ William Powers

The Maker is very great in mercy. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Roberto Donna is a great Italian chef. ~ Jose Andres

I'm a Prada freak and I think they have great eyewear. Even though I don't need glasses, I use them as a fashion accessory. ~ Tony Vincent

Depersonalization like the deposing of useless individuality - the loss of everything that can be lost, while still being. To take away from yourself little by little, with an effort so attentive that no pain is felt, to take away from yourself like one who gets free of her own skim, her own characteristics. Everything that characterizes me is just the way I am most easily viewed by others and end up being superficially recognizable to myself. ~ Clarice Lispector

Intelligent beings from other planets regularly visit our world in an effort to enter into contact with us. NASA and the American government know this and possess a great deal of evidence. Nevertheless, they remain silent in order not to alarm people. I am dedicated to forcing the authorities to end their silence. ~ Gordon Cooper

Every part of my body felt electric. My chest ached and my head throbbed with the great terrible limitless possibility of the morning, and when it came, the sky was washed white, everything was new, and I hadn't slept at all. ~ Dave Eggers

Colonization means potential immortality for the human genus. Man's safety on Earth was never great, and it dwindles hourly. Disarmament, even world government, will not guarantee survival in an age when population presses natural resources to the limit and when the knowledge of how to work mischief on a planetary scale is ever more widely diffused among peoples who may grow ever more desperate. ~ Poul Anderson