Great Turning Quotes

These great turning-days of life cast no shadow before, slip by unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little turn of the rudder, and the ship goes to heaven or hell. ~ Rebecca Harding Davis

I start with the history, and I ask myself, 'What are the great turning points? What are the big dramatic scenes that are essential to telling the story?' ~ Ken Follett

The encounter with death is the great turning-point in the lives of those who live on. ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher

I was overtaken by a dread of utter solitude in the great turning world. ~ Peter Matthiessen

I was never good at painting. The great turning point came when I had a block of wood and I carved a shape into the wood and put a small piece of timber into that space - like a negative - and so it made an endless column, only inward. ~ Carl Andre

In the past, changing the self and changing the world were often regarded as separate endeavors and viewed in either-or terms. But in the story of the Great Turning, they are recognized as mutually reinforcing and essential to one another. ~ Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone

Future generations will look back at the time we are living in now. The kind of future they look from, and the story they tell about our period, will be shaped by choices we make in our lifetimes. The most telling choice of all may well be the story we live from and see ourselves participating in. It sets the context of our lives in a way that influences all our other decisions.

In choosing our story, we not only cast our vote of influence over the kind of world future generations inherit, but we also affect our own lives in the here and now. When we find a good story and fully give ourselves to it, that story can act through us, breathing new life into everything we do. When we move in a direction that touches our heart, we add to the momentum of deeper purpose that makes us feel more alive. A great story and a satisfying life share a vital element: a compelling plot that moves toward meaningful goals, where what is at stake is far larger than our personal gains and losses. The Great Turning is such a story. ~ Joanna Macy And Chris Johnstone

People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values. ~ Grace Lee Boggs

A great turning point is in the offing. The world is changing. It's changed before, but not for a long time in our lives, not since before our lives. But now it's changing, and there are many many possibilities. ~ Terence McKenna

Daylight, full of small dancing particles and the one great turning, our souls are dancing with you, without feet, they dance. Can you see them when I whisper in your ear? All day and night, music, a quiet, bright reedsong. If it fades, we fade. ~ Rumi

No great work can be achieved by humbug. It is through love, a passion for truth, and tremendous energy, that all undertakings are accomplished. ~ Swami Vivekananda

I am struck by what a tawdry magician's trick Time is after all. I am sixty-six years old. Viewed from your coign of vantage - facing toward the future - sixty-six years is a great deal of time. It is all of the experience of your life more than three times over. But, viewed from my coign of vantage - facing toward the past - this sixty-six years was the fluttering down of a cherry petal. I feel that my life was a picture hastily sketched but never filled in . . . for lack of time. Only yesterday - but more than fifty years ago - I walked along this river with my father. I can remember how big and strong his hand felt to my small fingers. Fifty years. But all the insignificant, busy things - the terribly important, now forgotten things that cluttered the intervening time collapse and fall away from my memory. And I remember another yesterday when my daughter was a little girl. We walked along here. At this very moment, the nerves in my hand remember the feeling of her chubby fingers clinging to one of mine. ~ Trevanian

Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book. ~ Robert Reed

I believe in 3D for certain kinds of films. I certainly believe in using 3D for all things in animation because animation has such clarity and so much depth of focus. It worked great with 'Avatar' because 70 percent of that film is animated. ~ Steven Spielberg

The biggest problem facing a monkey today is: trees. There's bloody great huge trees everywhere; getting in the way.

(Leaps And Bounds) ~ Peter Coomber

So," he throttled shift knob into fifth gear half a block from a stop sign, "you're from Great Britain."

"Yes. England. The North. Sheffield."

"Why you guys drive on the left?"

"Obviously, because it's right."

"I'm being serious."

"Are you?"

"I'm askin, aren't I?"

"I don't know. Tradition, I suppose."

"That's a dumb-ass reason."

"Then perhaps you should start driving on the left. ~ Kevin Cole

I peek over the back of the couch and there she is, my goddess of death, her hair snaking out in a great black cloud, her teeth grinding hard enough to make living gums bleed. ~ Kendare Blake

Note: - One can do a great deal with appropriate smiles. I must study the subject carefully. The friendly smile - the scornful smile - the detached smile - the entreating smile - the common or garden grin. ~ L.M. Montgomery

The great European dream was to diminish militant nationalism. We would all be happy Europeans together. But we are going to see the old monster of militant nationalism being awoken when people realise how little control their politicians have. ~ Antony Beevor

Obama microtargeted his way to re-election by pitting Americans against each other in many instances. In order to confront the challenges the nation faces, he's really going to have to put his 2008 rhetoric about bringing people together into practice. Otherwise his legacy will only be that of a great campaigner whose promises fell short of accomplishment. ~ Kevin Madden

Britishness is just a way of putting things together and a certain don't care attitude about clothes. You don't care, you just do it and it looks great. ~ Vivienne Westwood

Nature never sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Humanity has passed through a long history of one-sidedness and of a social condition that has always contained the potential of destruction, despite its creative achievements in technology. The great project of our time must be to open the other eye: to see all-sidedly and wholly, to heal and transcend the cleavage between humanity and nature that came with early wisdom. ~ Murray Bookchin

I was growing sad, sad with restlessness and hunger. I felt that nothing would happen to me. I felt desperate with desire to be a woman, to plunge into living. Why was I enslaved by this need of being in love first? Where would my life begin? It seemed to me that a great current was passing all around me and that I was left out. I would have to find someone who felt as I did. But where? Where? ~ Anais Nin

The greatest challenge of my life has been to see and accept the actual truth without great pain and struggle against it. ~ M.C. Halliday

A band is a great way to destroy a friendship, and a tour's a great way to destroy a band. ~ Julian Casablancas

She has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business earnestness, and "goes in"
to use an expression of Alfred's
for Woman's mission, Woman's rights, Woman's wrongs, and everything that is woman's with a capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and ought not to be. "Most praiseworthy, my dear, and Heaven prosper you!" I whispered to her on the first night of my taking leave of her at the Picture-Room door, "but don't overdo it. And in respect of the great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments being within the reach of Woman than our civilisation has as yet assigned to her, don't fly at the unfortunate men, even those men who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the natural oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they do sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not ALL Wolf and Red Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it." However, I digress. ~ Charles Dickens

In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us: they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys, as gently as children outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we, who do need such great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's growth––: could we exist without them? Is the legend meaningless that tells how, in the lament for Linus, the daring first notes of song pierced through the barren numbness; and then in the startled space which a youth as lovely as a god had suddenly left forever, the Void felt for the first time that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and helps us. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I have a lady, she's a great lady. I love her a lot, she loves me. We're on the same page. Whenever that day happens when we're not on the same page we'll move forward with it. We're interested in having our lives be our lives right now and not a third person's vis-a-vis marriage and whatever that means. ~ Jon Hamm

The shaman is a very peculiar figure. He is critical to the functioning of the psychological and social life of his community, but in a way he is always peripheral to it. He lives at the edge of the village. He is only called upon in matters of great social crisis. He is feared and respected. And this might be a description of these hallucinogenic substances. ~ Terence McKenna

Each generation has its own dream of beauty. I have lived long enough to watch it change. Just then, he was what all sculptors were reaching after, and only the great achieved. ~ Mary Renault

A great brand is a promise, a compact with a customer about quality, reliability, innovation, and even community. And while the concept of brand is intangible, brand equity is far from it. ~ Stephen B. Shepard

I'm loving doing Outlander. We've got a great cast and we're up in the Scottish Highlands. [ ... ] It's big budget, they're spending a lot of money on it. They're going for a very gritty and realistic portrayal of the Highlands and I play Dougal MacKenzie, the War Chieftain of Clan MacKenzie. As that implies, he's quite the serious character. There's lots of political intrigue, there's romance, there's adventure and action and there's time-travel. ~ Graham McTavish

Religious hypocrisy is one of the great barriers to faith for any thoughtful person. Why become a Christian when the church is filled with so many hypocrites and deeply flawed people? Mark ~ John Ortberg

A good movie can take you out of your dull funk and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theatre; a good movie can make you feel alive again, in contact, not just lost in another city. Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. If somewhere in the Hollywood-entertainment world someone has managed to break through with something that speaks to you, then it isn't all corruption. The movie doesn't have to be great; it can be stupid and empty and you can still have the joy of a good performance, or the joy in just a good line. An actor's scowl, a small subversive gesture, a dirty remark that someone tosses off with a mock-innocent face, and the world makes a little bit of sense. Sitting there alone or painfully alone because those with you do not react as you do, you know there must be others perhaps in this very theatre or in this city, surely in other theatres in other cities, now, in the past or future, who react as you do. And because movies are the most total and encompassing art form we have, these reactions can seem the most personal and, maybe the most important, imaginable. The romance of movies is not just in those stories and those people on the screen but in the adolescent dream of meeting others who feel as you do about what you've seen. You do meet them, of course, and you know each other at once because you talk less about good movies than about what you love in bad movies. ~ Pauline Kael

And I got to know Red Foley well. And I got to know Lefty really well, he was a great guy. ~ Mel Tillis

There has certainly been a great deal of work addressing the relationship between naturalism and the first-person perspective. Quite a number of philosophers have suggested that there are features of the first-person perspective that naturalism just cannot accommodate, whether it be qualitative character, or consciousness, or simply the ability we have to think of ourselves in a distinctively first-person manner. ~ Hilary Kornblith

It is the fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seems to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers. ~ G.K. Chesterton

All great men and women had experienced times of wilderness,these moments precedes the dawn of self awakening, greatest potential and success. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

L.A.'s pretty great, man. But I'll be very honest - I prefer New York. It's more my speed. ~ Jerrod Carmichael

It's as if you've been walking against a great wind all your life, and then the wind is gone, and you can't walk. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

We're losing film, especially in projection, we're losing a great achievement of civilization. A still image and darkness make up 50% of the experience. The still images become movement in your head. That's the magic of cinema. ~ Laszlo Nemes

As a young girl, I saw commitment in my grandmother, who helped Grandpa homestead our farm on the Kansas prairie. Somehow they outlasted the Dust Bowl, the Depression, and the tornadoes that terrorize the Great Plains. ~ Sheri L. Dew