Living A Half Life Quotes

He'd somehow lived a detached life, more Like a spectator than a participant in his own existence. ~ Guillaume Musso

It's weird, marriage. It's like this license that gives a person the legal right to control their spouse / their 'other half. ~ Jess C. Scott

A movement unlocked my attention. I re-focused my eyes, looking past the vodka glass and into the static buzz of the TV. I stayed very still for a few seconds before lowering the glass to the floor, careful not to take my eyes off the screen. There was something distant and alive in the depths of the white noise - a living glide of thoughts swimming forward, a moving body of concepts and half felt images. ~ Steven Hall

The path to true happiness is one of integrating and fully accepting all aspects of our experience. This integration is represented in the Taoist symbol of yin/yang, a circle which is half dark and half light. In the midst of the dark area is a spot of light, and in the midst of the light area is a spot of darkness. Even in the depths of darkness, the light is implicit. Even in the heart of light, the dark is understood, acknowledged, and absorbed. If things are not going well for us in life and we are suffering, we are not defeated by the pain or closed off to the light. If things are going well and we are happy, we are not defensively trying to deny the possibility of suffering. This unity, this integration, comes from deeply accepting darkness and light, and therefore being able to be in both simultaneously. ~ Sharon Salzberg

Despair

Who is he?
A railroad track toward hell?
Breaking like a stick of furniture?
The hope that suddenly overflows the cesspool?
The love that goes down the drain like spit?
The love that said forever, forever
and then runs you over like a truck?
Are you a prayer that floats into a radio advertisement?
Despair,
I don't like you very well.
You don't suit my clothes or my cigarettes.
Why do you locate here
as large as a tank,
aiming at one half of a lifetime?
Couldn't you just go float into a tree
instead of locating here at my roots,
forcing me out of the life I've led
when it's been my belly so long?

All right!
I'll take you along on the trip
where for so many years
my arms have been speechless ~ Anne Sexton

Once fallen in true love, a person can't really fall out of it, no matter what. How much ever you try to hate your better half, you'll end up falling more instead. Some part of him will always reside in your heart. ~ Mehek Bassi

It wasn't only you, Lord Langford. It was this place, these people. This life. I want nothing to do with it."
"It's a bit late for that, Rue. Whether you like it or not, we are your blood."
"Half my blood."
"Aye," agreed the marquess, sober. "Although 'twould seem you've gotten the better half by far. All beauty, none of the beast."
She blinked at that, and crossed her arms.
"How charming! Had you planned that for long?"
"Only since this morning." He shrugged, unabashed. "I'll do better in London."
"Please, don't bother."
"I'm afraid I can't help myself. I'm charming by nature." And he looked back at her now in utter and wicked innocence, snaring her in a world of sharp, splendid green.
-Rue & Kit ~ Shana Abe

Because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total - but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial. ~ Daniel Berrigan

before I got to the shore, which I conjectured was about eight o'clock in the evening. I then advanced forward near half a mile, but could not discover any sign of houses or inhabitants; at least I was in so weak a condition, that I did not observe them. I was extremely tired, and with that, and the heat of the weather, and about half a pint of brandy that I drank as I left the ship, I found myself much inclined to sleep. I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder than ever I remembered to have done in my life, and, as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for, as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long ~ Jonathan Swift

Men are essentially useless for the difficult things in life. For births and deaths, one clearheaded woman is more useful than a half-dozen men. ~ Laura Bickle

I believe we are all transient," she began. She thought for awhile and added, "I believe that we are half-blind and full of errors. I believe that we understand very little, and what we do understand is mostly wrong. I believe that life cannot be survived - that is evident! - but if one is lucky, life can be endured for quite a long while. If one is both lucky and stubborn, life can sometimes even be enjoyed. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

They wouldn't give us a patent, they put obstacles in the way of our funding effort, then they needed a half a million dollars so that they would let us use the technology we had invented, developed and funded. What did the government do except put roadblocks in the way of saving Janine's life? A reckless driver is responsible for the deaths he causes, what about the government? ~ D.K. Halling

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. ~ George Eliot

People are too emotional about communism, or rather, about their own Communist Parties, to think about a subject that one day will be a subject for sociologists. Which is, the social activities that go on as a direct or indirect result of the existence of a Communist Party. People or groups of people who don't even know it have been inspired, or animated, or given a new push into life because of the Communist Party, and this is true of all countries where there has been even a tiny Communist Party. In our own small town, a year after Russia entered the war, and the left had recovered because of it, there had come into existence (apart from the direct activities of the Party which is not what I am talking about) a small orchestra, readers' circles, two dramatic groups, a film society, an amateur survey of the conditions of urban African children which, when it was published, stirred the white conscience and was the beginning of a long-overdue sense of guilt, and half a dozen discussion groups on African problems. For the first time in its existence there was something like a cultural life in that town. And it was enjoyed by hundreds of people who knew of the communists only as a group of people to hate. And of course a good many of these phenomena were disapproved of by the communists themselves, then at their most energetic and dogmatic. Yet the communists had inspired them because a dedicated faith in humanity spreads ripples in all directions. ~ Doris Lessing

The people come from everywhere, from five hundred miles, to find their fortunes. By fortune is an ugly, two-faced goddess. When you have lived with her handiwork for half a generation, you hardly notice anymore. You forget that this is not the way life has to be. You cease to marvel at just how much evil man con conjure by existing. ~ Glen Cook

He faces the burdens of belittlement a third time as he grows older, and settles into an existence that he has embraced, or that has been forced upon him. A carapace of routine, of compromise, of silent surrenders, of half-term solutions, and of diminished consciousness begins to form around him. He turns himself over to the rigidified version of the self: the character. He begins to die small deaths, many times over. He fails to die only once, which is what he would desire if he were able fully to recognize the value of life. This third encounter with belittlement reveals belittlement for what it in fact is: death by installments. ~ Roberto Mangabeira Unger

My mom said that when you become a parent you understand for the first time what a parent feels. But…but what you really need to understand what you really shouldn't forget is what you felt like as a child. The first time you did a somersault, the first time someone got really mad at you…If you can really remember how you felt when you were a child even when you're an adult or a parent, then you can understand each other. Even if it's not 100% you can meet each other half-way…she said. Because thinking that way reminds you that life is fun. ~ Natsuki Takaya

My mom's smile is genuine,
A lilac beaming
In the presence of her Sun.

Indentions in the sand prove
Time's linear progression,

Her hair yet unblighted,
Carrying midnight's consistency.

Clear tracks fading as the
Movement slips further
In the past.

Cheekbones
High, soft,
In summer's hue,
Hopeful.

Each step's unknown impact,
A future looking back.

My father's strength:
One whose
Life is in his arms.

Squinting past the camera,
He rests upon a rock
Like caramel corn half eaten,

Just to the left
Of man-made concrete convention

Daylight's eraser
Removing color to his right.

Dustin sits
In my father's lap,
Open mouth of a drooling
Big mouth bass;

Muscle tone
Of a well exercised
Jelly fish,

He looks at me
Half aware;

His wheelchair
Perched at the edge
Of parking lot gravel grafted
Like a scar on nature's beach,

Opening to the ironic splendor
Of a bitter tasting lake.

I took the picture.

Age 11.

Capturing the pinnacle arc
Of a son
To my lilac
Who
Outlived him and weeps,

Still.

Their sky has staple holes –

Maybe that's how the
Light
Leaked out. ~ Darcy Leech

He who lacks imagination lives but half a life. He has his experiences, he has his facts, he has his learning. But do any of these really live unless touched by the magic of the imagination? ~ Paul Fenimore Cooper

I've had an absolutely charmed life in every aspect of it. I do for my job what I would do for a hobby if it wasn't my job. Half the secret of happiness, I'm ecstatically happily married with three great kids, you know. It's been a blessed life. ~ Graeme Base

Born down in a dead man's town; The first kick I took was when I hit the ground. You end up like a dog that's been beat too much 'Til you spend half your life just covering up. ~ Bruce Springsteen

Tamina serves coffee and calvados to the customers (there aren't all that many, the room being always half empty) and then goes back behind the bar. Almost always there is someone sitting on a barstool, trying to talk to her. Everyone likes Tamina. Because she knows how to listen to people.

But is she really listening? Or is she merely looking at them so attentively, so silently? I don't know, and it's not very important. What matters is that she doesn't interrupt anyone. You know what happens when two people talk. One of them speaks and the other breaks in: "It's absolutely the same with me, I..." and starts talking about himself until the first one manages to slip back in with his own "It's absolutely the same with me, I..."

The phrase "It's absolutely the same with me, I..." seems to be an approving echo, a way of continuing the other's thought, but that is an illusion: in reality it is a brute revolt against a brutal violence, an effort to free our own ear from bondage and to occupy the enemy's ear by force. Because all of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ear of others. The whole secret of Tamina's popularity is that she has no desire to talk about herself. She submits to the forces occupying her ear, never saying: "It's absolutely the same with me, I... ~ Milan Kundera

A cup of coffee, a cigarette, the penetrating aroma of its smoke, myself sitting in a shadowy room with eyes half-closed...I want no more from life than my dreams and this...It doesn't seem much? I don't know. What do I know about what is little and what is a lot? ~ Pessoa, Fernando

Uncle Vernon's face worked furiously. The idea of being taught consideration by a man who had just blasted away half his living-room wall seemed to be causing him intense suffering. ~ J.K. Rowling

Linc didn't know if it was his imagination, but the streets seemed to have gotten older and dirtier - more so, surely, then was possible in the time that had gone by. What he remembered as the center of where the action was, and where all of life happened had turned into tired and shabby remnants of an age that was running down.

Had the store fronts always been so grubby with their cloudy windows, half hearted displays, the paint around the doors dulled and peeling like the once-high hopes of some forgotten opening day long ago? Had trash always stunk like this, piled in alleys and strewn along the gutters?

Above it all, high-rental buildings that had once thrust proudly toward the sky crumbled silently amid the winds, the rain, and the corrosive fames eating into them. They had degenerated into cheap hotels and apartments while business fled the cities for manicured office parks by the interstates.

But the people no longer stopped to gaze at these buildings, in any case. The figures on the sidewalks hurried on, avoiding each other's eyes, enwrapped in their own isolation.

Even those who stood or walked together aimed words at each other from behind facades that had become so second nature that even they themselves now mistook them for the persons atrophying within.

A city of brooding shells, inhabited by beings who hid inside shells. ~ James P. Hogan

You're the best man I ever met," I said. "I only meant...it's such a strain, to try and live for two people. To try to make them fit your ideas of what's right...You do it for a child, of course, you have to, but even then, it's dreadfully hard work. I couldn't do it for you - it would be wrong even to try."
I'd taken him back more than a little. He sat for some moments, his face turned half away.
Do ye really think me a good man?" he said at last. There was a queer note in his voice, that I couldn't quite decipher.
Yes," I said, with no hesitation. Then added, half jokingly, "Don't you?"
After a long pause, he said, quite seriously, "No, I shouldna think so."
I looked at him speechless, no doubt with my mouth hanging open.
I am a violent man, and I ken it well," he said quietly. He spread his hands out on his knees; big hands, which could wield a sword and dagger with ease, or choke the life from a man. " So do you - or ye should."
You've never done anything you weren't forced to do!"
No?"
I don't think so." I said, but even as I spoke, a shadow of doubt clouded my words. Even when done from the most urgent necessity, did such things not leave a mark on the soul?

{Claire Fraser & Jamie Fraser. Drums of Autumn} ~ Diana Gabaldon

One of my colleagues in Duke, Ralph Keeney, noted that America's top killer isn't cancer or heart disease, nor is it smoking or obesity. It's our inability to make smart choices and overcome our own self-destructive behaviours. Ralph estimates that about half of us will make a lifestyle decision that will ultimately lead us to an early grave. And as if this were not bad enough, it seems that the rate at which we make these deadly decisions is increasing at an alarming pace.

I suspect that over the next few decades, real improvements in life expectancy and quality are less likely to be driven by medical technology than by improved decision making. Since focusing on long-term benefits is not our natural tendency, we need to more carefully examine the cases in which we repeatedly fail, and try to come up with some remedies for these situations. For an overweight movie loved, the key might be to enjoy watching a film while walking on the treadmill. The trick is to find the right behavioural antidote for each problem. By pairing something that we love with something that we dislike but that is good for us, we might be able to harness desire with outcome - and thus overcome some of the problems with self-control we face every day. ~ Dan Ariely

I remember the first time I saw you," Allie said.
"I thought you smelled me first."
"Right," said Allie. "The chocolate. But then I saw you as I sat up in the dead forest, thinking I knew you. At the time, I thought I must have seen you through the windshield when our cars crashed…. But that wasn't it. I think, way back then, I was seeing you as you are now. Isn't that funny?"
"Not as funny as the way I always complained, and the way you always bossed me around!"
They embraced and held each other for a long time.
"Don't forget me," Nick said. "No matter where your life goes, no matter how old you get. And if you ever get the feeling that someone is looking over your shoulder, but there's nobody there, maybe it'll be me."
"I'll write to you," said Allie, and Nick laughed. "No really. I'll write the letter then burn it, and if I care just enough it will cross into Everlost."
"And," added Nick, "it will show up as a dead letter at that the post office Milos made cross into San Antonio!"
Allie could have stood there saying good-bye forever, because it was more than Nick she was saying good-bye to. She was leaving behind four years of half-life in a world that was both stunningly beautiful, and hauntingly dark. And she was saying good-bye to Mikey. I'll be waiting for you, he had said…. Well, if he was, maybe she wasn't saying good-bye at all.
Nick hefted the backpack on his shoulder. "Shouldn't you be heading off to Memphis?" he said. ~ Neal Shusterman

I was living in Paris for, like, a year and a half, and I couldn't speak French, so it was just hard to get a baguette or a pastry or whatever. All the stores close at 6 o'clock, and they're not very into hospitality, so it's not a convenient city. It's so pretty, though, but I was raised in Tokyo, so it was hard to understand. ~ Tao Okamoto

Let us look at the bright side of life and believe that God means us to be always ascending, always getting nearer to Himself, always learning something new about Him, always loving Him better and better...

It gives one such a conception of the seeming ills of life: to think of Him as our Physician, the ills all remedies, the deprivations only a wholesome regimen, the losses all gains... see how patiently and persistently He tries now this remedy now that, and how infallibly He cures the souls that submit to His remedies, I love Him so!

...I am so astonished that we are restive under His unerring hand! Think how He dealt with me. My soul was sick unto death, sick with worldliness and self-pleasing folly. There was only one way of making me listen to reason and that was just the way He took. He snatched me right out of the world and shut me up in one room, crippled, helpless, and alone and set me to thinking, thinking, thinking till I saw the emptiness and shallowness of all in which I had hitherto been involved. And then He sent you and your mother to show me the reality of life and to reveal to me my invisible, unknown Physician. Can I love Him with half my heart? ~ Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

Titus, have you ever had your heart broken?"
"Oh, son. How could you ask a man who used to play the blues a question like that?"
"How long does it take to go away?"
"A broken heart?"
"Yeah."
"There's no precise formula, Sammy."
"Just give me an estimate."
"A good rule of thumb is at least half the time that you were in love. Or twice the time. It all just depends. ~ Zack Love

...we are changed as technology offers us substitutes for connecting with each other face-to-face. We are offered robots and a whole world of machine-mediated relationships on networked devices. As we instant-message, e-mail, text, and Twitter, technology redraws the boundaries between intimacy and solitude. We talk of getting "rid" of our e-mails, as though these notes are so much excess baggage. Teenagers avoid making telephone calls, fearful that they "reveal too much." They would rather text than talk. Adults, too, choose keyboards over the human voice. It is more efficient, they say. Things that happen in "real time" take too much time. Tethered to technology, we are shaken when that world "unplugged" does not signify, does not satisfy. After an evening of avatar-to avatar talk in a networked game, we feel, at one moment, in possession of a full social life and, in the next, curiously isolated, in tenuous complicity with strangers. We build a following on Facebook or MySpace and wonder to what degree our followers are friends. We recreate ourselves as online personae and give ourselves new bodies, homes, jobs, and romances. Yet, suddenly, in the half-light of virtual community, we may feel utterly alone. As we distribute ourselves, we may abandon ourselves. Sometimes people experience no sense of having communicated after hours of connection. And they report feelings of closeness when they are paying little attention. In all of this, there is a nagging question: Does vir ~ Sherry Turkle