Life After Work Quotes

I have walked all my life through this tarnished world. After she walked out of Toronto with her brother, after that first unremembered year, her brother had been plagued by nightmares. "The road," he'd always said, when she shook him awake and asked what he'd been dreaming of. He'd said, "I hope you never remember it. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

If Socrates leaves his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend.' Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-law. But always meeting ourselves. ~ James Joyce

He was right! Said you'd go straight after 'em, sword and knife. What's with you?"
"You said, 'A trap.' I thought it was them," I muttered through suddenly numb lips. "Wasn't it?"
"Didn't you see the riding of greeners?" Bran retorted. "It was Debegri, right enough. He had paid informants in those inns, for he was on the watch for your return. Why d'you think Vidanric sent the escort?"
"Vidanric?"
"His name," Branaric said, still staring at me with that odd gaze. "You could try to use it--only polite. After all, Shevraeth is just a title, and he doesn't go about calling either of us Tlanth."
I'd rather cut out my tongue, I thought, but I said nothing.
"Anyway--life, sister--if he'd wanted me dead, why not in the comfort of his own home, where he could do a better job?"
I shook my head. "It made sense to me."
"It makes sense when you have a castle-sized grudge." He sighed. "It was the Renselaeus escort, hard on their heels, that attacked Debegri's gang and saved my life. Our friend the Marquis wasn't far behind--he'd just found out about the spies, he said. Between us we pieced together what happened, and what I said, and what you'd likely do. I thought you'd stay home. He said you'd ride back down the mountain breathing fire and hunting his blood. He was right." He stared to laugh, but it came out a groan, and he closed his eyes for a long breath. Then, "Arrow clipped me on the right, or I'd be finished. But I can't talk long--I'm alrea ~ Sherwood Smith

But in a way you can say that after leaving the sea, after all those millions of years of living inside of the sea, we took the ocean with us. When a woman makes a baby, she gives it water, inside her body, to grow in. That water inside her body is almost exactly the same as the water of the sea. It is salty, by just the same amount. She makes a little ocean, in her body. And not only this. Our blood and our sweating, they are both salty, almost exactly like the water from the sea is salty. We carry oceans inside of us, in our blood and our sweat. And we are crying the oceans, in our tears. ~ Gregory David Roberts

After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art. ~ Robert Henri

I prayed to a mystery.
Sometimes I was simply aware of the mystery. I saw a flash of it during a trip to New York that David and I took before we were married. We were walking on a busy sidewalk in Manhattan. I don't remember if it was day or night. A man with a wound on his forehead came toward us. His damp, ragged hair might have been clotted with blood, or maybe it was only dirt. He wore deeply dirty clothes. His red, swollen hands, cupped in half-fists, swung loosely at his sides. His eyes were focused somewhere past my right shoulder. He staggered while he walked. The sidewalk traffic flowed around him and with him. He was strange and frightening, and at the same time he belonged on the Manhattan sidewalk as much as any of us. It was that paradox -- that he could be both alien and resident, both brutalized and human, that he could stand out in the moving mass of people like a sea monster in a school of tuna and at the same time be as much at home as any of us -- that stayed with me. I never saw him again, but I remember him often, and when I do, I am aware of the mystery.
Years later, I was out on our property on the Olympic Peninsula, cutting a path through the woods. This was before our house was built. After chopping through dense salal and hacking off ironwood bushes for an hour or so, I stopped, exhausted. I found myself standing motionless, intensely aware of all of the life around me, the breathing moss, the chattering birds, the living earth. I was as m ~ Margaret D. McGee

Times like this were special. Memory builders. When something extraordinary happened to a person the
kind of things remembered forever after it didn't have to be a life-changing event like a graduation or
marriage or birth of a child. It more often was the small things. The sheer joy of summer sunlight on a
fragrant flower. The giggle of a toddler. The brush of a lover's fingertips. And the person marks the
moment with the flashing insight thinking ... This is special. I should remember this ~ Sandra Hill

It's an insidious idea, this notion that there is life after death. The promise of a reward in the afterlife has been used as an excuse to deny help to the poor, helpless and oppressed; to explain away human misery rather than deal with it. It is an idea that is used to encourage young men and women to kill themselves, and others, so that they can become martyrs. It allows victims of injustice to be told not to worry because justice will be done in the afterlife. It depresses me to think that so many people on the planet live their lives with this notion. Can we truly fulfill our potential as a species as long as we hold on to, and encourage, the perpetuation of the lie of life after death? ~ Alom Shaha

She had grown tired of the pouffy floating hair of zero gravity and, after a few weeks of clamping it down with baseball caps, had figured out how to make this shorter cut work for her. The haircut had spawned terabytes of Internet commentary from men, and a few women, who apparently had nothing else to do with their time. ~ Neal Stephenson

My world was one miserable mistake-shaping second after another, except for the breaks in my misery that belonged to her.
And no way was I ready to give that up.
Best two and a half weeks of my life came from a girl who was never meant to give me anything.
And she was giving me everything. ~ J. Daniels

She demanded, "Give up your life of idolatry and become a doctor."
I declined. "I have my geraniums to look after. ~ Nick Bantock

Aurobindo Ghose writes somewhere of the present as 'the pure and virgin moment,' that razor's edge of time and existence which divides the past from the future, and is, and yet, instantaneously is not. The phrase is attractive and yet what does it mean? The virgin moment emerging from the veil of the future in all its naked purity, coming into contact with us, and immediately becoming the soiled and stale past. Is it we that soil it and violate it? Or is the moment not so virgin after all, for it is bound up with all the harlotry of the past? ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

I'd spent my entire life in Seattle, watching others pass me by, day after day, completely oblivious to me. I remained along the background. I was an outsider; the eye looking in on the world around me.
I was the puppet eager to cut her strings.
I had witnessed the transformation humans must undergo in order to become Programs. I had watched as their humanity was stripped from them while they lay motionless, their hearts barely beating. My uncle had told the others that he only took bodies of the deceased, but those of us who had spent time in the operating rooms knew differently. ~ Nicole Sobon

Freelancing in Somalia during their civil war and in Kuwait right after the first Bush War, I had some rather intense experiences that made life in the U.S. seem rather shallow and superfluous. ~ Peter Menzel

Wednesday, November 8th, 1893

Here I sit in the still winter night on the drifting ice-floe, and see only stars above me. Far off I see the threads of life twisting themselves into the intricate web which stretches unbroken from life's sweet morning dawn to the eternal death-stillness of ice. Thought follows thought - you pick the whole to pieces, and it seems so small - but high above all towers one form … Why did you take this voyage? … Could I do otherwise? Can the river arrest its course and run up hill? My plan has come to nothing. That palace of theory which I reared, in pride and self-confidence, high above all silly objections has fallen like a house of cards at the first breath of wind. Build up the most ingenious theories and you may be sure of one thing - that fact will defy them all. Was I so very sure? Yes, at times; but that was self-deception, intoxication. A secret doubt lurked behind all the reasoning. It seemed as though the longer I defended my theory, the nearer I came to doubting it. But no, there is not getting over the evidence of that Siberian drift-wood. But if, after all, we are on the wrong track, what then? Only disappointed human hopes, nothing more. And even if we perish, what will it matter in the endless cycles of eternity? ~ Fridtjof Nansen

Let me tell you about this leg, Miss Oldridge," he said. "This used to be a modest, well-behaved leg, quietly going about its business, troubling nobody. But ever since it was hurt, it has become tyrannical."

Her expression eased another degree, and amusement glinted in her eyes, like faint, distant stars in a midsummer night's sky.

Encouraged, he went on, "This limb is selfish, surly, and ungrateful. When English medical expertise declared the case hopeless, we took the leg to a Turkish healer. He plied it with exotic unguents and cleaned and dressed it several times a day. By this means he staved off the fatal and malodorous infection it should have suffered otherwise. Was the leg grateful? Did it go back to work like a proper leg? No, it did not."

Lips twitching, she made a sympathetic murmur.

"This limb, madam," he said, "demanded months of boring exercises before it would condescend to perform the simplest movements. Even now, after nearly three years of devoted care and maintenance, it will fly into a fit over damp weather. And this, may I remind you, is an English leg, not one of your delicate foreign varieties. ~ Loretta Chase

four hundred years before us, four hundred years after we're gone - it'll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it'll never strike in any deep way at all but - a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you. And - oh, I don't know, stop me if I'm rambling…" passing a hand over his forehead.… "but Welty himself used to talk about fateful objects. Every dealer and antiquaire recognizes them. The pieces that occur and recur. Maybe for someone else, not a dealer, it wouldn't be an object. It'd be a city, a color, a time of day. The nail where your fate is liable to catch and snag. ~ Donna Tartt

Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

After I binged last night -or was it tonight - I was convinced yet again that there were people coming to get me. It was more than just shadows and voices, more than just fantasies ... it was real, and I was scared to my core.
My bones were shaking ... m heart was pounding ... I thought I was going to explode. I'm glad I have you to talk to, to write this down. I tried to keep it all together, but then I gave in to the manes and became one with my insanity. ~ Nikki Sixx

What is this film (Mirror) about?It is about a Man. No, not the particular man whose voice we hear from behind the screen, played by Innokentiy Smoktunovsky. It's a film about you, your father, your grandfather, about someone who will live after you and who is still "you". About a Man who lives on the earth, is a part of the earth and the earth is a part of him, about the fact that a man is answerable for his life both to the past and to the future. You have to watch this film simply, and listen to the music of Bach and the poems of Arseniy Tarkovsky; watch it as one watches the stars, or the sea, as one admires a landscape. There is no mathematical logic here, for it cannot explain what man is or what is the meaning of his life. (Sculpting in Time) ~ Andrey Tarkovsky

I'd like to think and believe that a billion light years away, into the distant filaments of galaxies, a place like this one exists, where all dreams come true, older people don't suffer from the misery of dying, and children are relieved from the veil of innocence and ignorance. Although I still want to feel the pain of being human, I'd like to live there, correct all my shortcomings, reconcile and profess my deepest affection to my loved ones, and ask for forgiveness to the people whom I've hurt or ignored in this life. (Danny Castillones Sillada, Out There, Inusara Journal) ~ Danny Castillones Sillada

Being unemployed, Kurt set in motion a routine that he would follow for the rest of his life. He would rise at around noon and eat a brunch of sorts. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese was his favorite food. After eating, he would spend the rest of the day doing one of three things: watching television, which he did unceasingly; practicing his guitar, which he did for hours a day, usually while watching TV; or creating some kind of art project, be it a painting, collage, or three-dimensional installation. This last activity was never formal - he rarely identified himself as an artist - yet he spent hours in this manner. ~ Charles R. Cross

I scanned the body head to toe, marveling at the thoroughness of the devastation, and the Passenger murmured its appreciation. Someone had spent a great deal of time and effort doing this, and although the results were certainly not up to my high artistic standards, they still showed a certain primitive vigor and abandon that were admirable, even infectious. The technique was clumsy, inefficient, even brutal, but it spoke of a wild experimental joy in the work that was a pleasure to see. After all, so very few of us seem to enjoy our jobs nowadays. Whoever did this clearly did enjoy it. Just as clearly - at least to me - the killer was exploring, seeking something he had not quite found, in spite of a very thorough search. ~ Jeff Lindsay

There is no question that the Deep South seceded and fought the civil war to defend slavery. And its leaders made no secret of this motive. Slavery they argued Ad nauseam was the foundation for a virtuous biblically sanctioned social system superior to that of the free states. When 19th century deep southerners spoke of defending their "traditions", "heritage", and way of life they proudly identified the enslavement of others as the center piece of all three. Indeed, many of their leaders even argued that all lower class people should be enslaved regardless of race for their own good.
In response to Yankee and midland abolitionist the Deep South's leaders developed an elaborate defense for human bondage. James Henry Hammond, former governor of South Carolina, published a seminal book arguing that enslaved laborers where happier, fitter and better looked after than their free counter parts in Brittan and the North, who were ruthlessly exploited by industrial capitalists. Free societies were therefore unstable as there was always a danger that the exploited would rise up creating a fearful crisis in republican institutions. Salves by contrast were kept in their place by violent means and denied the right to vote, resist or testify, ensuring the foundation of every well designed and durable republic.
Enslavement of the white working class would be in his words a most glorious act of emancipation. Jefferson's notion all men are created equal, he wrote, was ridiculousl ~ Colin Woodard

Don't sell yourself short because without that you can't go far in life because after sports the only thing you know is sports and you can't do anything else with that. ~ Bo Jackson

The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Yet, even before he left the room, - and certainly, not five minutes after, the clear conviction dawned upon her, shined bright upon her, that he did love her; that he had loved her; that he would love her. And she shrank and shuddered as under the fascination of some great power, repugnant to her whole previous life.She crept away, and hid from his idea. But it was of no use ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

It was not easy to go from being one of the seven righteous pillars holding up the whole planet and human race to being just another mental patient. I remember talking to a woman who was ending racism and asking her if it was part of a bigger program or if racism was the whole deal. As someone who had gone back to the beginning of time and dealt with issues of whether or not life itself was a good idea, I wasn't sure that just getting rid of racism was a big enough prize.

....In the eighties when I was called out of retirement to defeat communism, it was over my strenuous objections. "I don't even dislike communism all that much," I objected. "It seems so beside the point." "The Republicans are going to take credit for this and ride it into the ground," I correctly predicted. After winning many many preliminary rounds which I honestly hoped I'd lose, I was smuggled into what was thought to be just another psychiatric hospital where the Russian bear took one look at me, declined to dance, and the rest is history. My delusional world always felt kind of tinny and hollow, but that never helped me get out of it. ~ Mark Vonnegut

Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor himself on the chance that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend's confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know. Let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities of a profession to which nature never called him, and his religion will infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will believe in as the mighty creator of success. The evil principle deprecated in that religion is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind. ~ George Eliot

[He] understood the people in a new way ... The people is not everyone who speaks our language, nor yet the elect marked by the fiery stamp of genius. Not by birth, not by the work of one's hands, not by the wings of education is one elected into the people.
But by one's inner self.
Everyone forges his inner self year after year.
One must try to temper, to cut, to polish one's soul so as to become a human being.
And thereby become a tiny particle of one's own people. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Life kills you more acutely than death.
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A saved relationship is no relationship, after all.
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I'm in need of someone who is ready to listen.
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We all have this special talent for hiding a truth by adding layers of lies on to it.
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When you are attached to one and attracted to another, then one's truth becomes the other's lie as long as you keep the truth away from each other.
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I still don't know why I chose her over you. I was so happy with you. Maybe I was happy with you but I wasn't happy with us. Those are two different things. People jump into a relationship when they experience the former.
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A break-up doesn't necessarily end the love two people have for each other. In fact some love stories never end. They only end something within the people involved. ~ Novoneel Chakraborty

Let it be granted, that according to the letter of the Gita it is possible to say that warfare is consistent with renunciation of fruit. But after forty years' unremitting endeavour fully to enforce the teaching of the Gita in my own life, I have in all humility felt that perfect renunciation is impossible without perfect observance of ahimsa in every shape and form. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

It was getting late, but sleep was the furthest thing from my racing mind. Apparently that was not the case for Mr. Sugar Buns. He lay back, closed his eyes, and threw an arm over his forehead, his favorite sleeping position.

I could hardly have that. So, I crawled on top of him and started chest compressions. It seemed like the right thing to do.

"What are you doing?" he asked without removing his arm.

"Giving you CPR." I pressed into his chest, trying not to lose count. Wearing a red-and-black football jersey and boxers that read, DRIVERS WANTED. SEE INSIDE FOR DETAILS, I'd straddled him and now worked furiously to save his life, my focus like that of a seasoned trauma nurse. Or a seasoned pot roast. It was hard to say.

"I'm not sure I'm in the market," he said, his voice smooth and filled with a humor I found appalling. He clearly didn't appreciate my dedication.

"Damn it, man! I'm trying to save your life! Don't interrupt."

A sensuous grin slid across his face. He tucked his arms behind his head while I worked. I finished my count, leaned down, put my lips on his, and blew. He laughed softly, the sound rumbling from his chest, deep and sexy, as he took my breath into his lungs. That part down, I went back to counting chest compressions.

"Don't you die on me!"

And praying.

After another round, he asked, "Am I going to make it?"

"It's touch-and-go. I'm going to have ~ Darynda Jones

I try to stay in shape, I work out in the gym, take my vitamins every day, and I guess maybe I have some good genes, but lately I've been feeling it. You know, after all these years it does catch up with you. But just for now. ~ Regis Philbin

Let them judge me as they like, I could deceive them, but myself I cannot deceive ... and strange to say, in this acknowledgement of his baseness there was something painful yet joyful and quieting. More than once in Nekhlyudov's life there had been what he called, 'a cleansing of the soul.' A state of mind in which, after a long period of sluggish inner life ... he began to clear out all the rubbish that had accumulated in his soul and caused the cessation of true life. After such an awakening, Nekhlyudov always made some rules for himself ... wrote in his diary, began afresh ... ~ Leo Tolstoy