Keep Dancing Through Life Quotes

No one paid much attention when he left. They continued to eat and drink and talk and laugh over their suffering, and occasionally run to the bathroom to be ill. It was this way more or less every night and every morning. Strangers appeared in his hotel room, always a wreck after the previous night. In the morning, they stuck themselves back together again. They rubbed at raccoon-eyed faces full of smeared makeup, looked for lost hats and feathers and beads and phone numbers and shoes and hours. It wasn't a bad life. It wouldn't last, but nothing ever did.
They would all be like Alfie in the end, crying on his sofa at dawn and regretting it all. Which was why Magnus stayed away from those kinds of problems. Keep moving. Keep dancing. ~ Cassandra Clare

On that golden summer day, the young woman had just finished her morning run. She had sprinted the last half mile, then stopped abruptly to catch her breath. She was bent at the waist, hands on her knees, eyes on the ground, her mind a world away, perhaps in Barcelona or Tuscany or Rome, exulting in the enchanting sights she would soon see, the splendid life she would have.

It was then that the train hit her.

Unaware, unthinking, oblivious to everything but the beguiling visions in her head, she had ended her run on the railroad tracks that wound through the center of her small Oregon town, one moment in the fullest expectancy of her glorious youth, adrenaline and endorphins coursing through her body, sugarplum visions dancing in her head, the next moment gone, the transition instantaneous, irrevocable, complete.

If I'd had to die young, hers is the death I would have chosen. ~ Lionel Fisher

I believe in the complexity of the human story and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, This is it. Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing; the same person telling the story will tell it differently. I think of that masquerade in Igbo festivals that dances in the public arena. The Igbo people say, If you want to see it well, you must not stand in one place. The masquerade is moving through this big arena. Dancing. If you're rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world's stories should be told - from many different perspectives. ~ Chinua Achebe

The machinery of compulsory equalization works against the finest trait of the human species, the fact that we recognize ourselves in our differences and build links based on them. The best of the world lies in the many worlds the world contains, the different melodies of life, their pains and strains: the thousand and one ways of living and speaking, thinking and creating, eating, working, dancing, playing, loving, suffering, and celebrating that we have discovered over so many thousands of years. Equalization, which makes us all goofy and all the same, can't be measured. No computer could count the crimes that the pop culture business commits each day against the human rainbow and the human right to identity. But its devastating progress is mind-boggling. Time is emptied of history, and space no longer acknowledges the astonishing diversity of its parts. Through the mass media the owners of the world inform us all of our obligation to look at ourselves in a single mirror. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Because I'd lived through adversity once before, what I learned about myself was like a reminder of something I'd once known but had nearly forgotten-namely, that beneath the elegant clothing, and the accomplished dancing, and the clever conversation, my life had no complexity at all, but was as simple as a stone falling toward the ground. My whole purpose in everything during the past ten years had been to win the affections of the Chairman. ~ Arthur Golden

World has already begun. That suffering nourishes grace, and pain and joy are arteries of the same heart - and mourning and dancing are but movements in His unfinished symphony of beauty. Can I believe the gospel, that God is patiently transfiguring all the notes of my life into the song of His Son? What in the world, in all this world, is grace? I can say it certain now: All is grace. I see through the woods of the world: God is always good and I am always loved. God is ~ Ann Voskamp

I looked around for that welcoming light I'd heard about, but I didn't see it. Instead, everything around me seemed to glow and shimmer in the sunlight. I heard beautiful sounds-not the voices of dead loved ones, but the laughter and singing of my children when they were tiny. I saw James, young and shirtless, chasing them through Mama's garden. Off in the distance I saw Barbara Jean and Clarice, and even myself when we were kids, dancing to music pouring out of my old pink and violet portable record player. Here I was with my fingers brushing up against the frame of the picture I'd been painting for the last fifty-five years, and my beautiful, scarred husband, my happy children, and my laughing friends were right there with me. ~ Edward Kelsey Moore

People need to believe in more than what they see in everyday life. Somewhere inside, we all know that there is more out there than we experience normally. A belief in the other world can help explain why things happen to us. It can give us hope. I feel that we all hope we never get to be too old to fly to Never-Never Land or go through a wardrobe into Narnia. We want to think that there is something looking back at us when we look at the stars. We want to think that just around the bend in the forest, we'll find fairies dancing in a ring. I hope that my work affirms those beliefs," she continues. "I want people to think of my work as a key to that other world. ~ Wendy Froud

Remind yourself where you come from.

I spent the majority of my life running away from Utah, from the life I led there, from the memories I associated with those early years. It felt very someone-else-ago to me. London changed me profoundly.
When we were dancing on DWTS together, Jennifer Grey called me one night. She was having trouble with her back and wanted to see a physiotherapist. "Can you come with me?" she asked. She drove us through a residential section of Beverly Hills. We pulled into a house with a shed out back. Oddly, it didn't look like a doctor's office. There was a couch and incense burning. An Australian guy with a white beard came in : "Hey, mates." I looked at Jen and she winked at me. This was no physical therapy. She'd signed us up for some bizarre couples therapy!
The guy spoke to us for a while, then he asked Jennifer if she wouldn't mind leaving us to chat. I thought the whole thing was pretty out there, but I didn't think I could make a run for it.
"So, Derek," he said. "Tell me about your childhood." I laid it all out for him--I talked for almost two hours--and he nodded. "You can go pick him up now."
I raised an eyebrow. "Pick who up?"
The therapist smiled. "That younger boy, that self you left in Utah. You left him there while you've been on a mission moving forward so vigorously. Now you can go get him back."
I sat there, utterly stunned and speechless. It was beyond powerful and enlightening. Had I really ~ Derek Hough

Can dancing change your life? Yes. It's changed mine. What I've learned is, it's not about how good you are technically. It's about your soul coming through. It's about having fun. ~ Lisa Rinna

The Cretans' more natural attitudes toward sex would also have had other consequences equally difficult to perceive under the prevailing paradigm, wherein religious dogma often views sex as more sinful than violence. As Hawkes writes, "The Cretans seem to have reduced and diverted their aggressiveness through a free and well-balanced sexual life."33 Along with their enthusiasm for sports and dancing and their creativity and love of life, these liberated attitudes toward sex seem to have contributed to the generally peaceful and harmonious spirit predominant in Cretan life. ~ Riane Eisler

A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous, glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil--of people passing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices--of armies trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray's rhythmic death--of cities rushing out into space upon the wings of that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work--of a haunted world through which the assassins of the Dweller's court stole invisible, carrying with them every passion of hell--of the rallying to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity alike; for well I knew that, once loosed, not any nation could hold the devil-god for long and that swiftly its blight would spread! ~ A. Merritt

He had no idea about the 'loving deeply' part. Scarlet was the one love he'd had. They'd married the weekend after they'd discovered they both like sangria. He'd thought they were waltzing through life and it turned out she was line dancing. ~ Jodi Thomas

You have to know, to see with whom
you are Dancing Through All Ages,
The Love Of My Life,
Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
Our One Neverending Story ~ Petra Hermans

I see them in the primitive silkscreen the brain is able to produce, maybe eight inches in front of my closed eyes, miniaturised by time and distance, riddled by visual static, each figure a dancing red ribbon. These are among the people I've tried to know twice, the second time in memory and language. Through them, myself. They are what I've become, in ways I don't understand but which I believe will accrue to a rounded truth, a second life for me as well as for them. ~ Don DeLillo

Bold people dance happily when they are confronted with life's adventures ... they see themselves going through with smiles ... Give no excuse for being a coward. Be bold! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

To deal with the chaos of life, I escape into the prism of glass, dancing to the visual music in my mind. My photographs express my interior movement from darkness into light and back. ~ Polly Norman

I used to read in books how our fathers persecuted mankind. But I never appreciated it. I did not really appreciate the infamies that have been committed in the name of religion, until I saw the iron arguments that Christians used. I saw the Thumbscrew - two little pieces of iron, armed on the inner surfaces with protuberances, to prevent their slipping; through each end a screw uniting the two pieces. And when some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or may be said, 'I do not believe that a fish ever swallowed a man to keep him from drowning,' then they put his thumb between these pieces of iron and in the name of love and universal forgiveness, began to screw these pieces together. When this was done most men said, 'I will recant.' Probably I should have done the same. Probably I would have said: 'Stop; I will admit anything that you wish; I will admit that there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion; suit yourselves; but stop.'

But there was now and then a man who would not swerve the breadth of a hair. There was now and then some sublime heart, willing to die for an intellectual conviction. Had it not been for such men, we would be savages to-night. Had it not been for a few brave, heroic souls in every age, we would have been cannibals, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed upon our flesh, dancing around some dried snake fetich.

Let us thank every good and noble man who stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, of hatred and dea ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

The macabre who lived through the war have a story they loved to tell about the soldiers of the Foreign Legion giving a ball in the expanses around Verdun and dancing with the corpses. Alabama's continued brewing of the poisoned filter for a semiconscious banquet table, her insistence on the magic and glamor of life when she was already feeling its pulse like the throbbing of an amputated leg, had something of the same sinister quality. ~ Zelda Fitzgerald

Dancing is a part of my life where when I don't dance I feel like there's something missing because I'm such a physical person who loves to express myself through dance, but I love to act. I love to sing. I love to entertain so if I'm passionate about a certain project, I wanna do it. ~ Julianne Hough

But Aunt Habiba said not to worry, that everyone had wonderful things hidden inside. The only difference was that some managed to share those wonderful things, and others did not. Those who did not explore and share the precious gifts within went through life feeling miserable, sad, awkward with others, and angry too. You had to develop a talent, Aunt Habiba said, so that you could give something, share and shine. And you developed a talent by working very hard at becoming good at something. It could be anything - singing, dancing, cooking, embroidering, listening, looking, smiling, waiting, accepting, dreaming, rebelling, leaping. 'Anything you can do well can change your life', said Aunt Habiba. ~ Fatema Mernissi

A busy person is usually the most efficient because they know how to manage their time. That's something I learned through dancing all through school and all throughout my life. ~ Lindsay Arnold

Walk

Million miles away
Your signal in the distance
To whom it may concern

I think I lost my way
Gettin good at starting over
Every time that I return

Learning to walk again
I believe I've waited long enough
Where do I begin

Learning to talk again
Can't you see I've waited long enough
Where do I begin

Do you remember the days
We built these paper mountains
And sat and watched them burn

I think I found my place
Can't you feel it growing stronger
Little conquerors

Learning to walk again
I believe I've waited long enough
Where do I begin?

Learning to talk again
I believe I've waited long enough
Where do I begin?

Now
For the very first time
Don't you pay no mind
Set me free, again
You keep alive a moment at a time
But still inside a whisper to a liar
To sacrifice but knowing to survive
The first to find another state of mind
I'm on my knees, I'm praying for a sign
Forever, whenever

I never wanna die
I never wanna die
I never wanna die
I'm on my knees
I never wanna die

I'm Dancing on my grave
I'm Running through the fire
Forever, whenever
I Never wanna die
I Never wanna leave
I'll Never say goodbye

Forever, whenever
Forever, whenever

Learning to walk again
I belie ~ Foo Fighters

I twirl away, then back to him, staying on my toes, my hips always lightly rotating. He reacts clumsily at first, but soon the awkwardness fades away and he begins matching my movements, reflecting them in reverse. We dance like this, wrist to wrist, twirl and turn, step for step, for several more minutes. He holds my gaze, our eyes connecting at every turn, anticipating one another's movements.
His pulse is so strong against my wrist that it echoes through me, almost like a heartbeat of my own. My skin warms; my breath catches in my throat. I know how closely I dance along the line of destruction, but I cannot pull myself away. He is intoxicating, his force of life an addiction I cannot refuse. I have not felt this alive in centuries, not since you, Habiba, when you taught me the dance of Fahradan. Ours was a dance of giddy laughter, a dance of friends, sisters, a dance of life and youth and hope.
But this dance is different.
It is not I but he who entices, reversing the ancient roles of the dance. And I resist because I must, because if I don't, because if I give in to the all-too-human desires racing through me - then it is Aladdin who will pay the terrible price.
"Stop." I drop my wrists and step away, and he does the same, still caught up in mirroring me. Except that he is breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling with exertion, his eyes filled with a strange, wondrous, curious look as he stares at me. He moves closer, his eyes fixed on mine, an ~ Jessica Khoury

In 1917 I went to Russia. I was sent to prevent the Bolshevik Revolution and to keep Russia in the war. The reader will know that my efforts did not meet with success. I went to Petrograd from Vladivostok, .One day, on the way through Siberia, the train stopped at some station and the passengers as usual got out, some to fetch water to make tea, some to buy food and others to stretch their legs. A blind soldier was sitting on a bench. Other soldiers sat beside him and more stood behind. There were from twenty to thirty.Their uniforms were torn and stained. The blind soldier, a big vigorous fellow, was quite young. On his cheeks was the soft, pale down of a beard that has never been shaved. I daresay he wasn't eighteen. He had a broad face, with flat, wide features, and on his forehead was a great scar of the wound that had lost him his sight. His closed eyes gave him a strangely vacant look. He began to sing. His voice was strong and sweet. He accompanied himself on an accordion. The train waited and he sang song after song. I could not understand his words, but through his singing, wild and melancholy, I seemed to hear the cry of the oppressed: I felt the lonely steppes and the interminable forests, the flow of the broad Russian rivers and all the toil of the countryside, the ploughing of the land and the reaping of the wild corn, the sighing of the wind in the birch trees, the long months of dark winter; and then the dancing of the women in the villages and the youths bathi ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Blue Squills
How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills, how blue!
And many a dancing April
When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh burn me with your beauty, then,
Oh hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
May bear the scar of you. ~ Sara Teasdale

There is a storytelling element in there. The tango form is a little like the blues in that you have a kind of structure. It's not as rigid as twelve bar, but it's very much a storytelling medium -- and there's an element of call-and-response, and a particular arc in the musical form, that suggest a story. It's about being in the moment, with the music; and responding to your partner, and the particular feeling and momentum in her body in any one moment. It's a very concentrated thing; you can't think about anything else while you are doing it. If you try to hold a conversation, it just kind of falls apart. The music was what really drew me into tango. Everyone knows a few of the more popular tango classics, but once you get into it, there's such a rich field. It's astonishing, this kind of miraculous musical form that developed in a very small locality: two cities on either side of the River Plate, in Argentina and Urugauy. It started in the 1880s or '90s, and there are all kinds of mysteries, myths and stories, about how tango started and developed. It was first of all considered really low-life, almost reptilian. Something to be avoided and not talked about. And then it became this word wide phenomena. . .and I could go on talking about tango forever. . . . but its also to do with movement. I try to get that into my pictures: a sense of movement, something flowing through. A while ago, I realised how much I'd been drawing dancing figures in the corners of my sketchbooks fo ~ Alan Lee (artist)

Though I never told your name to anyone and forever I have cherished you within my soul alone, but since you always were dancing in my eyes, the whole world has seen you through my sight, and knew it that you are my beloved for whom my love is all meant for.

Though I never confessed my love to anyone and forever I have loved you within my heart alone, but since you are always resonating in my songs, the whole world has heard you through my words, and knew it that you are my beloved for whom my life is all meant for.

Though I never admitted my ecstasies to anyone and forever I have treasured you within my thoughts alone, but since you are always reflecting in my joys, the whole world has understood you through my delights, and knew it that you are my beloved for whom even my death is all meant for. ~ ~Sw. Chidananda Tirtha

Death was more like what we went through in the park: two people walking side by side in the mist, rubbing against trees and bushes, and not a word between them. It was something emptier than the name itself and yet right and peaceful, dignified, if you like. It was not a continuation of life, but a leap in the dark and no possibility of ever coming back, not even as a grain of dust. And that was right and beautiful, I said to myself, because why would one want to come back. To taste it once is to taste it forever - life or death. Whichever way the coin flips is right, so long as you hold no stakes. Sure, it's tough to choke on your own spittle - it's disagreeable more than anything else. And besides, one doesn't always die choking to death. Sometimes one goes off in his sleep, peaceful and quiet as a lamb. The Lord comes and gathers you up into the fold, as they say. Anyway, you stop breathing. And why the hell should one want to go on breathing forever? Anything that would have to be done interminably would be torture. The poor human bastards that we are, we ought to be glad that somebody devised a way out. We don't quibble about going to sleep. A third of our lives we snore away like drunken rats. What about that? Is that tragic? Well then, say three-thirds of drunken rat-like sleep. Jesus, if we had any sense we'd be dancing with glee at the thought of it! We could all die in bed tomorrow, without pain, without suffering - if we had the sense to take advantage of our reme ~ Henry Miller

Dance is like life. It exists as you are flitting through it, and when it's over, it's done. ~ Jerome Robbins

Like a lot of gym teachers, Coach Babcock loved to torture his students. He felt he had failed as a teacher if his students didn't cry out for mercy. He often bragged that he held the school district's record for causing the most hysterical breakdowns in one afternoon. He used such classic forms of torture as weight training, wrestling, long-distance running, rope climing, wind spirits, chin-ups, and the occasional game of wet dodgeball (the wet ball was superloud when it hit a kid, and it left a huge red welt). But his favorite device of torment was so horrible, so truly evil, that it would drive most children to the brink of madness. It was the square dance.
For six weeks of the school year, his students suffered through the Star Promenade, the Slip the Clutch, and the Ferris Wheel. As Babcock saw it, square dancing was the most embarrassing and uncomfortable form of dancing ever created, and a perfect way to prepare his students for the crushing heartbreak of life. Square dancing was a metaphor for like- you got swung around and just when you thought you were free, you got dragged back into the dance. He really thought he was doing the kids a favor. ~ Michael Buckley

Muscles contract somewhere above the roof of my mouth, pumping venom into her bloodstream. Kelly cries out, a gasp of pain that turns suddenly to moans of euphoria as the carotids rush the narcotic serum directly to her brain. Her knees buckle, and I reach down to steady her  -  one arm over her breasts, the other around her waist as I hold her tightly to myself. Then the blood begins to flow, seeping out of the wounds I have made, and I put my lips to her skin and drink.

There are no words adequate to describe it. My mind explodes with a wash of light and color, swirling and dancing before my eyes. Then the Sharing truly begins, and I can see inside her: images of her memories, her thoughts, her hopes and dreams, the way she remembers her past and how she imagines her future. Her joys; her grief; that which she loves and that she despises, what stirs her fire and chills her bones. And through it all, I feel the touch of her presence, and I know that she sees the same things inside of me.

Blood is more than matter, more than plasma and hemoglobin. Blood is life, the river on which the spirit flows. And as Kelly's blood flows into me, it carries her life with it, until my soul entwines with hers. She has given a part of herself to me, and from this day forth we are bound to each other. ~ Chris Lester

You spend your life having lessons, practising and competing as an amateur, and working during the day. As you get to the top end of the amateur field, you try not to work anymore; you earn your living through dancing, maybe by doing a bit of teaching. It's an ongoing life's work. ~ Anton Du Beke

In our every cell, furled at the nucleus, there is a ribbon two yards long and just ten atoms wide. Over a hundred million miles of DNA in very human individual, enough to wrap five million times around our world and make the Midgard serpent blush for shame, make even the Ourobouros worm swallow hard in disbelief. This snake-god, nucleotide, twice twisted, scaled in adenine and cytosine, in thymine and in guanine, is a one-man show, will be the actors, props and setting, be the apple and the garden both. The player bides his time, awaits his entrance to a drum-roll of igniting binaries. This is the only dance in town, this anaconda tango, this slow spiral up through time from witless dirt to paramecium, from blind mechanic organism to awareness. There, below the birthing stars, Life sways and improvises. Every poignant gesture drips with slapstick; pathos; an unbearably affecting bravery. To dare this stage, this huge and overwhelming venue. Squinting through the stellar footlights, hoping there's an audience, that there's someone out there, but dancing anyway. But dancing anyway. ~ Alan Moore

Life became colourful and wild as Ada danced through night and day. She danced so fiercely that she forgot what day it was or even her own name. ~ Meara O'Hara

Laughing,Savannah jumped from her precarious perch on the boulder into the safety of Gregori's arms.
He caught her,crushing her against his chest, sheer elation, exhilaration, rushing through his veins. To feel again was beyond his comprehension, to feel like this, to have such joy in him, was totally unbelievable. He whispered to her in the ancient language, words of love and commitment that he could not find a way to express in any other language. She was more than she could ever know to him; she was his life,the very air he breathed. You worry about the most ridiculous things, he said gruffly, burying his face for just a moment against her neck,inhaling her scent.
"Do I?" she asked aloud,her eyes dancing at him. "You're the one always concerned I'm going to do something wild."
"You do wild things," he answered complacently. "I never know what you are going to do next. It is a good thing I reside in your mind, ma petite, or I would have to be locked up in the nearest asylum."
Her lips brushed his chin, feathered along his jaw, then nibbled enticingly at the edge of his mouth. "I think you should be locked up.You're postively lethal to women."
"Not to women,only to you. ~ Christine Feehan

Dancing through life Swaying and sweeping And always keeping cool Life is faught less When you're thoughtless Those who don't try Never look foolish Dancing through life Mindless and careless Make sure you're where less Trouble is rife Woes are fleeting Blows are glancing When you're dancing Through life ... ~ Stephen Schwartz