Life After God Quotes

Some day you cross this thin line and you really realize that we need to protect ourselves from ourselves. ~ Douglas Coupland

For there was once a time when we expected the worst. But then the worst happened, did it not? And so we will never be surprised ever again. ~ Douglas Coupland

Mom said that people are interested in birds only in as much as they exhibit human behavior - greed and stupidity and anger - and by doing so they free us from the unique sorrow of being human ... I told Mom my own theory of why we like birds - of how birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain. ~ Douglas Coupland

I am a quiet man. I tend to think things through and try not to say too much. But here I am, saying perhaps too much. But there are these feelings inside me which need badly to escape, I guess. And this makes me feel relieved because one of my big concerns these past few years is that I've been losing my ability to feel things with the same intensity- the way I felt when I was younger. It's scary- to feel your emotions floating away and just not caring. I guess what's really scary is not caring about the loss. ~ Douglas Coupland

And then suddenly I realized that I was feeling- well, that I was actually feeling. My old personality was, after months of pills and pleasant nothingness, returning. Just the littlest bit- for I had only stopped taking my little yellow pills the day before- but my essence was already asserting itself, however weakly at this point. I felt a lump in my throat, and I spent the rest of the day walking around this strange and beautiful city, remembering myself, what it used to feel like to be me, before I switched myself off, before I stopped listening to my inner voices. ~ Douglas Coupland

Life was charmed but without politics or religion. It was the life of children of the children of the pioneers -life after God- a life of earthly salvation on the edge of heaven. Perhaps this is the finest thing to which we may aspire, the life of peace, the blurring between dream life and real life - and yet I find myself speaking these words with a sense of doubt. I think there was a trade-off somewhere along the line. I think the price we paid for our golden life was an inability to fully believe in love; instead we gained an irony that scorched everything it touched. And I wonder if this irony is the price we paid for the loss of God. ~ Douglas Coupland

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

I was worried that being in a relationship would add to my responsibilities. That's why I've avoided them my whole life. I already have enough on my plate, and seeing the stress my parents' marriage seemed to cause them, and the failed marriages of some of my friends, I wanted no part in something like that. But after tonight, I realized that maybe a lot of people are just doing it wrong. Because what's happening between us doesn't feel like a responsibility. It feels like a reward. And I'll fall asleep wondering what I did to deserve it. ~ Colleen Hoover

Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear
Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair;
A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
And offers for short life, eternal liberty. ~ Emily Bronte

Ways to Prove that you love Nell De Luca
1. Tell her. Every day. Three times a day. As many times as it takes.
2. Never choose anything else over her. Not football. Not your own stubbornness. Nothing.
3. Be there whether she wants to go skinny-dipping or wants to study. Make sure she knows that she's the adventure, not anything else.
4. Always tell her how amazing her food is (okay . . . that one is partly for you, too, because it means you get to keep eating her food).
5. Give her the best sex of her life (also works out pretty well for you).
6. Teach her whatever she wants to know, and learn from her, too. She's a fucking genius.
7. Tell her she's a fucking genius. All the time. When she doubts it and when she doesn't. Just tell her.
8. Never walk away after a fight. Don't. Fucking. Do it.
9. Prove you love her (preferably in bed, but that's optional) once a day. Three times a day. As many times as it takes.
10. Be worthy of her. Not by playing football or pretending to be something you're not. By being the man she makes you feel like you are. Strong and smart and kind and so damn lucky to have her. ~ Cora Carmack

I respect all religions, but I'm not a deeply religious person. But I try and live life in the right way, respecting other people. I wasn't brought up in a religious way, but I believe there's something out there that looks after you. ~ David Beckham

I knew it was a risk but what I was after was a novel that is about the feeling that comes with a coincidence in real life - that you feel as if something divine has intervened and has arrived with a message. ~ Alexander Chee

My life after childhood has two main stories: the story of the hustler and the story of the rapper, and the two overlap as much as they diverge. I was on the streets for more than half of my life from the time I was thirteen years old. People sometimes say that now I'm so far away from that life - now that I've got businesses and Grammys and magazine covers - that I have no right to rap about it. But how distant is the story of your own life ever going to be? The feelings I had during that part of my life were burned into me like a brand. It was life during wartime. ~ Jay-Z

There are people we meet who have but little roles to play in our lives, who happen to be no more than a special appearance to our story.
People, who influence, who possess the drift, the force whose implication leads us forward in our course of life. We might have never come across them until today and probably not hear from them tomorrow or ever after, for all that exists is this moment, a moment enough for them to fulfil their purpose that being to help us find our way and enough for us to fulfil ours that being to actually find it, reach it, accomplish it.
They are the ones who bring meaning to our lives, who happen to inspire, who spark a fire that we carry with us for the rest of our days, who are but pillars of hope and sometimes sacrifice, life-changers, life-savers, catalysts. ~ Chirag Tulsiani

Sure, best seller. I'd love to knock Stephen King off the top of the list. I know I won't, but, after all, I spend my life inventing a different reality. ~ Tim O'Brien

The artistic life is a long and lovely suicide precisely because it involves the negation of self; as Highsmith imagined herself as her characters, so Ripley takes on the personae of others and in doing so metamorphoses himself into a 'living' work of art. A return to the 'real life' after a period of creativity resulted in a fall in spirits, an agony Highsmith felt acutely. She voiced this pain in the novel via Bernard's quotation of an excerpt from Derwatt's notebook: 'There is no depression for the artist except that caused by a return to the self'. ~ Andrew Wilson

I even spent a certain amount of time worrying about the Spiritualist doctrines: If The Other Side was so wonderful, why did the spirits devote most of their messages to warnings? Instead of telling their loved ones to avoid slippery stairs and unsafe cars and starchy foods, they should have been luring them over cliffs and bridges and into lakes, spurring them on to greater feats of intemperance and gluttony, in order to hasten their passage to the brighter shore. ~ Margaret Atwood

Discussion of theology is not for everyone, I tell you, not for everyone-it is no such inexpensive or effortless pursuit. Nor, I would add, is it for every occasion, or every audience; neither are all its aspects open to inquiry. It must be reserved for certain occasions, for certain audiences, and certain limits must be observed. It is not for all people, but only for those who have been tested and have found a sound footing in study, and, more importantly, have undergone, or at the very least are undergoing purification of body and soul. For one who is not pure to lay hold of pure things is dangerous, just as it is for weak eyes to look at the sun's brightness. What is the right time? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty is not confused by illusory, wandering images, leading us, as it were, to mix fine script with ugly scrawling, or sweet-smelling scent with slime. We need actually "to be still" in order to know God, and when we receive the opportunity, "to judge uprightly" in theology. Who should listen to discussions of theology? Those for whom it is a serious undertaking, not just another subject like any other for entertaining small-talk, after the races, the theater, songs, food, and sex: for there are people who count chatter on theology and clever deployment of arguments as one of their amusements. What aspects of theology should be investigated, and to what limit? Only aspects within our grasp, and only to the limit of the ~ Gregory Of Nazianzus

The morning was hot, and the exercise of reading left her mind contracting and expanding like the main-spring of a clock, and the small noises of midday, which one can ascribe to no definite cause, in a regular rhythm. It was all very real, very big, very impersonal, and after a moment or two she began to raise her first finger and to let it fall on the arm of her chair so as to bring back to herself some consciousness of her own existence. She was next overcome by the unspeakable queerness of the fact that she should be sitting in an arm-chair, in the morning, in the middle of the world. Who were the people moving in the house--moving things from one place to another? And life, what was that? It was only a light passing over the surface and vanishing, as in time she would vanish, though the furniture in the room would remain. Her dissolution became so complete that she could not raise her finger any more, and sat perfectly still, listening and looking always at the same spot. It became stranger and stranger. She was overcome with awe that things should exist at all. . . She forgot that she had any fingers to raise. . . The things that existed were so immense and so desolate. . . She continued to be conscious of these vast masses of substance for a long stretch of time, the clock still ticking in the midst of the universal silence. ~ Virginia Woolf

And we were in our thirties. Well into the Age of Boredom, when nothing is new. Now, I'm not being self-pitying; it's simply true. Newness, or whatever you want to call it, becomes a very scarce commodity after thirty. I think that's unfair. If I were in charge of the human life span, I'd make sure to budget newness much more selectively, to ration it out. As it is now, it's almost used up in the first three years of life. By then you've seen for the first time, tasted for the first time, held something for the first time. Learned to walk, talk, go to the bathroom. What have you got to look forward to that can compare with that? Sure, there's school. Making friends. Falling in love. Learning to drive. Sex. Learning to trade. That has to carry you for the next twenty-five years. But after that? What's the new excitement? Mastering your home computer? Figuring out how to work CompuServe? "Now, if it were up to me, I'd parcel out. So that, say, at thirty-five we just learned how to go on the potty. Imagine the feeling of accomplishment! They'd have office parties. "Did you hear? The vice president in charge of overseas development just went a whole week without his diaper. We're buying him a gift." It'd be beautiful. ~ Phoef Sutton

Get around people who have something of value to share with you. Their impact will continue to have a significant effect on your life long after they have departed. ~ Jim Rohn

When Pat gave her 'criminal-hero' Tom Ripley a charmed and parentless life, a wealthy, socially poised Alter Ego (Dickie Greenleaf), and a guilt-free modus operandi (after he kills Dickie, Tom murders only when necessary), she was doing just what her fellow comic book artists were doing with their Superheroes: allowing her fictional character to finesse situations she herself could only approach in wish fulfillment. And when she reimagined her own psychological split in Ripley's character - endowing him with both her weakest traits (paralyzing self-consciousness and hero-worship) and her wildest dreams (murder and money) - she was turning the material of the 'comic book' upside down and making it into something very like a 'tragic book.' 'It is always so easy for me to see the world upside down,' Pat wrote in her diary– and everywhere else. ~ Joan Schenkar

Then the bull shook himself, turned his head and looked at us. There was an awed whisper from one of the young men: "By gaw, it's working!" I enjoyed myself after that. I can't think of anything in my working life that has given me more pleasure than standing in that pen directing the life-saving jet and watching the bull savouring it. ~ James Herriot

An adventure is nothing but a story. After the adventure ends, it's nothing but a memory; a shadow of a life you lived. People will envy you for the time it takes you to tell the story. But after that, what then? I think people admire you more for becoming a teacher. I really do. ~ Alex Z. Moores

Time is not your friend. It doesn't care if you live fast or die slow, if you are or if you aren't. It was here before you arrived and it will go on after you leave. Time doesn't care who wins or who loses, if your life span is full or empty, honorable or shameful. Time is indifferent. It simply doesn't give a shit. ~ Laura Wiess

Loneliness is the diary keeper's lover. It is not narcissism that takes them to their desk every day. And who "keeps" whom, after all? The diary is demanding; it imposes its routine; it must be chored the way one must milk a cow; and it alters your attitude toward life, which is lived, finally, only in order that it may makes it way to the private page.
[From "Fifty Literary Pillars", p.35] ~ William H Gass

Perhaps the body has its own memory system, like the invisible meridian lines those Chinese acupuncturists always talk about. Perhaps the body is unforgiving, perhaps every cell, every muscle and fragment of bone remembers each and every assault and attack. Maybe the pain of memory is encoded into our bone marrow and each remembered grievance swims in our bloodstream like a hard, black pebble. After all, the body, like God, moves in mysterious ways.

From the time she was in her teens, Sera has been fascinated by this paradox - how a body that we occupy, that we have worn like a coat from the moment of our birth - from before birth, even - is still a stranger to us. After all, almost everything we do in our lives is for the well-being of the body: we bathe daily, polish our teeth, groom our hair and fingernails; we work miserable jobs in order to feed and clothe it; we go to great lengths to protect it from pain and violence and harm. And yet the body remains a mystery, a book that we have never read. Sera plays with this irony, toys with it as if it were a puzzle: How, despite our lifelong preoccupation with our bodies, we have never met face-to-face with our kidneys, how we wouldn't recognize our own liver in a row of livers, how we have never seen our own heart or brain. We know more about the depths of the ocean, are more acquainted with the far corners of outer space than with our own organs and muscles and bones. So perhaps there are no phantom pains after al ~ Thrity Umrigar

Let's talk about it another time.*

*If I'm honest, sometimes I feel like we've been trying to find each other in every life before this one, and this is as close as we've ever gotten. And I know now that we have to try again because we fucked this up. Maybe we won't even be born on the same continent next time, or the time after that, and we'll just spend those lives searching for something we can't find, miserable for reasons we will never understand. Until we get to try again. Until we somehow find each other in another life. ~ Iain S. Thomas

After age twenty-five, you're not a victim anymore - you're a volunteer. ~ Chip Kidd

Switching from one career to another can be scary, but it also can be a thrilling experience. Look at it as an opportunity to really go after what you want to accomplish in life and make a difference in the world. The key is to take small, conscious steps and prepare yourself for a successful transition. ~ Jack Canfield

From: "Chris Kyle"
Date: December 25, 2010 at 12:55:57 AM EST

I appreciate your upbringing and your respect. My dad would have kicked my ass if I didn't call everyone sir or Mr. until they notified me otherwise. So I am telling you, my name is Chris. Please no more sir bullshit.
I went to college right out of high school, but did not finish. Sometimes I regret that. Now that I am out, I could really use the degree. Even if you think you will retire from the service, like I did, there is life after the military. I joined at 24 years old. I had some mental maturity over my teammates due to joining later. I also got to enjoy my youth. One thing about being a SEAL, you age fast. I was only in for eleven years, but I spent over half that time in a combat zone. Unlike other combat units, SEALs in a combat zone are operating. That means getting shot at on a daily basis. I had a baby face when I joined, and within two years, I looked as if I had aged 10 years. I am not in any way talking you out of joining. I loved my time, and if I hadn't gotten married and had two kids, I would still be in. Unforeseen events will come at you in life. Your plants today will not be the same in four years. I am just trying to prep you for what is to come. I sit in an office or train other people on a range all day, every day. I would much rather be in Afghanistan being shot at again. I love the job and still miss it today. There is no better friendship than what the teams will off ~ Taya Kyle

Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

As the floods of God
Wash away sin city
They say it was written
In the page of the Lord
But I was looking
For that great jazz note
That destroyed
The walls of Jericho
The winds of fear
Whip away the sickness
The messages on the tablet
Was valium
As the planets form
That golden cross Lord
I'll see you on
The holy cross roads
After all this time
To believe in Jesus
After all those drugs
I thought I was Him
After all my lying
And a-crying
And my suffering
I ain't good enough
I ain't clean enough
To be Him
The tribal wars
Burning up the homeland
The fuel of evil
Is raining from the sky
The sea of lava
Flowing down the mountain
The time will sleep
Us sinners by
Holy rollers roll
Give generously now
Pass the hubcap please
Thank you Lord ~ Joe Strummer

That drinking thing, the night before an early morning start, I actually think it helps the productivity in some ways (as long as it's not spirits) it gives you that I don't give a fuck attitude, more relaxed, I'm getting away with it after all, I had a life last night, and now I may be hungover, but I had that secret world that you didn't have, and that you tried to take away from me, want to take away from me. But I still got that beer buzz. And I'll do it again, tomorrow night too. I'll never surrender. And when I'm working, I'll be thinking about it. Those moments of mine, truly mine, that you can never have or take away from me. ~ Robert Black

I liked Edinburgh as a university in a way that I'd never enjoyed King's College London. I realised after I came to Edinburgh that perhaps it was a mistake to have gone to a college which was bang in the centre of a vast city. It had a bad effect on the social life of the students because a lot of them were commuting from outer London. ~ Peter Higgs

There are opportunities committed to every mother. The humble round of duties that women regard as boring and tiresome should be looked upon as a grand and noble work. Through sunshine and shadow, the mother may make straight paths for the feet of her children, toward the glorious heights above. But it is only when she seeks to follow Christ in her own life that the mother can hope to form the character of her children after God's pattern. Every mother should go often to her Savior with the prayer, "Teach us, how shall we train the child, and what shall we do to him?" She will be given wisdom. ~ Ellen G. White

We know that Hinduism believes in reincarnation. Such beliefs or theories have one purpose. It is to provide a plausible answer to our questions that would otherwise remain unanswered. We have questions such as, "Why should I perform work if the result is not likely to be seen; especially when death can visit me at any moment? And then: Why should death happen at all? And why do our kith and kin have to be engulfed in grief when we die? Is it not injustice and something not acceptable?" The Gita tries to assuage such feelings by stating that just as we attain childhood, youth, and old age, similarly, we also attain another body after our death. It is a continuous and cyclical process, and the wise ones should not have worries in this regard. ~ Nihar Satpathy

About my father.....
My father was a very simple person. When I was small I never understood why he is so simple actually I disliked it. He use to go to office and return late and have dinner with us. I use to think he never stood for me on anything. But he was the person who uses to take me to the market for Diwali shopping. He uses to give me 20 Rs to eat at school when he had only 30. He tried to fulfill all my wishes in his range. He uses to take me on his bicycle after school tuition and walk while making me sit on bicycle. He uses to scare away lizards for me. He uses to play with me. He was the one who told me to work hard when I failed. He never scolded me for studies but only when I killed an insect intentionally. He was the one who taught me physics and mathematics.
Once he found a wounded parrot on the road and he bought him home. He brought medicine for him and applied it on his wounds. Later on a cat took that parrot and he ran after her but the parrot died. He did not had proper food for three four days.
He spent each and every penny of his earning for our happiness and never forgot to return any pending amount. He use to talk to us but very less and joke sometimes. His style was very different, we use to tell him to use dye or color on his hairs but he always refused. And when he smiled and laughed he doesn't stop. For every question he had one answer:-"TRUST GOD HE WILL DO EVERYTHING,HE IS THE ONE WHO DOES EVERYTHING". He uses to discuss with us ~ Amit Dixit

It was rare for a patient to readjust successfully to normal life after a period spent in a mental hospital. ~ Paulo Coelho

And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians – dead! – slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth. ~ H.G. Wells

Just to pose certain questions is, I guess, to show your hope they can be answered. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

It doesn't bother me that I won't be around one day," Lukas said after a while. "I don't stress about the fact that I wasn't here a hundred years ago. I think death will be a lot like that. A hundred years from now my life will be just like it was a hundred years ago. ~ Hugh Howey

Lily and James only made you Secret-Keeper because I suggested it," Black hissed, so venomously that Pettigrew took a step backward. "I thought it was the perfect plan ... a bluff ... Voldemort would be sure to come after me, would never dream they'd use a weak, talentless thing like you ... It must have been the finest moment of your miserable life, telling Voldemort you could hand him the Potters. ~ J.K. Rowling

After you have demonstrated a practical-life exercise, and once your child has begun to use it with concentration, you must take care not to interrupt him. ~ Paula Polk Lillard

I've learned to distinguish between the greatness of God and the inexcusable evil that has been done by those professing his name. And so I do not deduce [as Christopher Hitchens does] that God is not great, and that religion poisons everything. After all, if I failed to distinguish between the genius of Einstein and the abuse of his science to create weapons of mass destruction, I might be tempted to say science is not great, and technology poisons everything. ~ John Lennox

i will tell you about selfish people. even when they know they will hurt you they walk into your life to taste you because you are the type of being they don't want to miss out on. you are too much shine to not be felt. so when they have gotten a good look at everything you have to offer. when they have taken your skin your hair and your secrets with them. when they realize how real this is. how much of a storm you are and it hits them.

that is when the cowardice sets in. that is when the person you thought they were is replaced by the sad reality of what they are. that is when they lose every fighting bone in their body and leave after saying you will find better than me.

you will stand there naked with half of them still hidden somewhere inside you and sob. asking them why they did it. why they forced you to love them when they had no intention of loving you back and they'll say something along the lines of i just had to try. i had to give it a chance. it was you after all.

but that isn't romantic. it isn't sweet. the idea that they were so engulfed by your existence they had to risk breaking it for the sake of knowing they weren't the one missing out. your existence meant that little next to their curiosity of you. ~ Rupi Kaur

Some people pass by,
Some people pass through,
and Some people pass on. ~ Johnnie Dent Jr.

Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out? ~ Alfred Hitchcock

Replace perfectionism with persistence. After all, in recovery and life, it's persistence that really pays off. Forget about perfection. ~ Jenni Schaefer

Most Christians believe that Jesus IS God, that Jesus is the same jealous and angry God that abhorred homosexuals and condemned them as "an abomination." He is the same deity that gave instructions on how to beat slaves and the same divine Creator that suggested the stoning of non-believers and disobedient children. You have to accept the good along with the bad ... after all, he came not to abolish the Hebrew laws, but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). ~ David G. McAfee

In America, we are entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

There is no such expression in France. In fact, in France, the equivalent expression is la recherche du bonheur (looking for happiness). On the surface, this might seem as if I am splitting hairs, but if you really examine the idea of "looking" for happiness as opposed to "pursuing" happiness, you'll see there's actually a big difference.

If we're looking for something, it feels as if it's there hiding in plain sight. And all we have to do is be patient and when the room is quiet, quickly lift up the tablecloth and voilà! There it is! Happiness!

On the other hand, pursuing implies a kind of chasing after something.

"Looking for happiness" seems gentler. There is happiness and we just need to look. ~ Jamie Cat Callan

After a long time and many questions, Satan said, The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the
well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One? ~ Mark Twain

My backpack was with the Ripper, with my passport and most of my money. That was going to be a tough one to explain. "Sorry, I seem to have left my passport in 1888." At that moment though, I couldn't be bothered to care too much. A major inconvenience? Yes. A life-threatening one? Not after the night I'd had. ~ April White

We are two eagles
Flying together
Under the heavens,
Over the mountains,
Stretched on the wind.
Sunlight heartens us,
Blind snow baffles us,
Clouds wheel after us
Ravelled and thinned.

We are like eagles
But when Death harries us,
Human and humbled
When one of us goes,
Let the other follow,
Let the flight be ended,
Let the fire blacken,
Let the book close. ~ Sara Teasdale