Living In Regrets Quotes

It's not good to dig in the past, raise the ghost up from the grave, and have it walk with the flesh. ~ Anthony Liccione

Picnic, Lightning

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Safes drop from rooftops
and flatten the odd pedestrian
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.

And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body's rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows

the limp roots of red impatiens -
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.

Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,
the clouds a brighter white,

and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next. ~ Billy Collins

May be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of you reads ME that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to ME, as a pilot of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As ~ Herman Melville

The clichés are, of course, disguised; essentially, they are the same throughout all cheap reading matter, whether it spans the universe or the living room. They are like those 'assorted' cookies that differ from one another only in shape and shade. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a lonely cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. I see them enjoying lectures in beautiful halls, erected in every village. I see them gather like the Saxons of old upon the green at evening to sing and dance. I see cities rising near them with schools, and churches, and concert halls, and theaters. I see a day when the farmer will no longer be a drudge and his wife a bond slave, but happy men and women who will go singing to their pleasant tasks upon their fruitful farms. When the boys and girls will not go west nor to the city; when life will be worth living. In that day the moon will be brighter and the stars more glad, and pleasure and poetry and love of life come back to the man who tills the soil. ~ Hamlin Garland

A guy said to a girl he liked; ' I am scared of loving again'
The girl responded ; ' the only thing that scares me is living a life of regret, in never chasing that things that once took my breath away ~ Nikki Rowe

As an actor, you act in order to make a living. Then, when you can make a living, you start acting because you want to do what you love to do. I need to remind myself of that a lot. ~ Ty Simpkins

No substitute for the living, perhaps, but I wasn't given a choice. I could take solace in their presence or I could fall down in a heap, lamenting what I'd lost. The ghosts whispered to me, telling me to go on. ~ Christina Baker Kline

There are a lot of artists in Gowanus, and certain things come into your visual vocabulary from living there - the scale of the subway and the canal, sometimes it almost looks like a de Chirico painting, with the intense angles of the shadows and everything. ~ Dana Schutz

All living beings have to take incarnations. Companions are just like pedestrians in the way. ~ Shiv Sangal

I record my life, sifting and trying to separate what is real from what I've dreamed. I have decided not to tell you what is fact versus what is unfact primarily because (a) I am giving you a portrait of the essence of me, and (b) because, living where I do, living in the chasm that cuts through thought, it is lonely… come with me, reader. I am toying with you, yes, but for a real reason. I am asking you to enter the confusion with me, to give up the ground with me, because sometimes that frightening floaty place is really the truest of all. Kierkegaard says, 'The greatest lie of all is the feeling of firmness beneath our feet. We are most honest when we are lost.' Enter that lostness with me. Live in the place I am, where the view is murky, where the connecting bridges and orienting maps have been surgically stripped away. ~ Lauren Slater

If you can be aware that you have a living body, and notice when there's tension in your body, that's already an important insight. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

He wasn't speaking to me anymore. We were living in our own worlds of little memories, and even though we were both separate, somehow we managed to feel for one another. Lonely often recognized lonely. And today, for the first time, I began to see the man behind the beard. I ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

I think what I have done is claimed the space and pushed it forward as much as I can in relationship to who I am and how I live my life. ~ Mickalene Thomas

The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity into doubt. We are like the inmates of a mental institution who must accept its inhumanity and insensitivity as caring and knowledgeableness if they hope to be regarded as sane enough to leave. The question who is sane and who is crazy was the theme of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The question, what is sanity? was clearly asked in the play Equus.
The idea that much of what we do is insane and that if we want to be sane, we must let ourselves go crazy has been strongly advanced by R.D. Laing. In the preface to the Pelican edition of his book The Divided Self, Laing writes: "In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all of our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal." And in the same preface: "Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities; that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false realities."
Wilhelm Reich had a somewhat similar view of present-day human behavior. Thus Reich says, "Homo normalis blocks off entirely the perce ~ Alexander Lowen

The government of India regulates nearly everything, so there's very little progress; whereas in Hong Kong the government keeps its hands off ... and the standard of living has multiplied. ~ John Templeton

Living in New York after 14 years, I'm such an outdoors kind of person. I love gardening and building things. I like restoring old furniture. ~ Paige Butcher

He grasped her chin, tilted her face toward him, and kissed her deeply. She was wearing no perfume today, but her skin carried a faint scent that reminded him of apples. It could be because they had been living in an apple orchard, but Michael knew it was simply the way her skin naturally smelled. When he withdrew, he smiled at the attractive flush that darkened her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle. "If you had looked at me like that the first time I saw you," he murmured, "I would have flung you over my shoulder and carried you off to the nearest church. No man can have a woman look at him like that and not want to marry her. ~ Elizabeth Camden

You cannot begin to understand the failure of marriage - or the living of these ideas commitment or covenant - without considering and factoring in the devaluing of fatherhood. The two are inextricably linked and dependent. ~ H. Kirk Rainer

In his book "Originals," the business professor Adam Grant describes how there are two kinds of failures: those centered on action and those centered on inaction--or, failing by botching the thing you tried, or failing by not trying at all. Most people think, ahead of time, that it's the failed actions they'll regret the most: the anguish of a tanked business or the humiliation of a botched marriage proposal. But guess what? When people reflect on their biggest regrets, what they regret most are the inactions--or the failure to try, not the failure itself. ~ Jessica Bennett

The Holy Spirit, in the variety of his gifts, unites us and enables us to contribute to the building up of the Church in holiness. In this great work, each of us has a part to play; each of us, as a "living stone", is needed for the growth and the beauty of God's holy temple. Let us ask the Lord to help us to take an ever more active part in the Church's life and mission, guided by the Holy Spirit and with Jesus as our cornerstone. ~ Pope Francis

I want to hold on tight to everything and everyone I cherished and, at the same time, saw in a way I never had before that living on this earth, growing older, and growing up in the true sense of the word is really about learning how to let go. ~ Katrina Kenison

Finally, in my early 30s, I started writing fiction for the first time as an adult. That felt so scary, and I spent a few years feeling miserably 'behind' my high-achieving friends. But I persevered and obviously have no regrets. ~ Julia Glass

I look OK. I look better in person than I do on film, which is bad because it's how I make my living, but I am not a beauty and on balance I am glad. ~ Felicity Huffman

My mind was once diseased with the strange and heady ambition that I might somehow improve the world by living in it. ~ Amelia Gray

Life is like a train going in circles, the train is comfortable - it has nice scenery, it provides warmth and food & for most a loving atmosphere. Most of the people stay on the train there entire lives, maybe every now and again they may peep out the door, some might even get off only to quickly realise they want back on. Then you have the rare ones who I aspire to be, those who are bored of the train - to them - the thought of living without it, is risky but the reward of tasting life outside of doors and walls excite them enough to try. ~ Nikki Rowe

It is not the development of material need which sets the modern vocabulary of aspiration apart from anything which has gone before, but rather the transformation of our spiritual needs. It is our spirits, not our clothes and houses and cars, that set us so radically apart from our own past and form much of the rest of the world. Imagine what we must be like to the primitive peoples who receive our attentions as anthropologists. We come upon them armed with our mastery of nature, and yet they can disarm us with the simplest metaphysical inquiry: what happen when people die? where do they go? what are the duties of the living to the dead? Their cultures are as rich in answers to these questions as our culture is rich in answers to the technical and scientific problems which baffle them.

It has always been a truism of the Western bad conscience that we have purchased our mastery of nature at the price of our spirits. The conservative and romantic critique of Western progress has always used the example of the savage - rich in cosmology, poor in goods - to argue for an inverse historical relationship between the development of material and spiritual needs. Certainly this view could draw upon the dark side of the Christian theology of need. While secular optimists have trust in the permanence of spiritual need, Augustinian Christians have fixed their gaze on the nightmare of the happy slave: the being so absorbed by the material that all spiritual needs have perished.< ~ Michael Ignatieff

Charity (Daan) means to make another living being happy, whether it is a human being or some animals, giving happiness to them, that is what is called Charity. When you give happiness to everyone, happiness will indeed come to you in its 'reaction'. If you give happiness then you immediately receive happiness just sitting at home. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Sabbaths, 1982 - IV
("A gardener rises out of the ground")


Thrush song, stream song, holy love
That flows through earthly forms and folds,
The song of Heaven's Sabbath fleshed
In throat and ear, in stream and stone,
A grace living here as we live,
Move my mind now to that which holds
Things as they change.
The warmth has come.
The doors have opened. Flower and song
Embroider ground and air, lead me
Beside the healing field that waits;
Growth, death, and a restoring form
Of human use will make it well.
But I go on, beyond, higher
In the hill's fold, forget the time
I come from and go to, recall
This grove left out of all account,
A place enclosed in song.
Design
Now falls from thought. I go amazed
Into the maze of a design
That mind can follow but not know,
Apparent, plain, and yet unknown,
The outline lost in earth and sky.
What form wakens and rumples this?
Be still. A man who seems to be
A gardener rises out of the ground,
Stands like a tree, shakes off the dark,
The bluebells opening at his feet,
The light a figured cloth of song. ~ Wendell Berry

Living without virtues is to live divorced from society, seperated from the most important thing in life, community. ~ Veronica Roth

We become so focused on the individual events and circumstances of our lives, so eager to label them as "good" or "bad", when in fact, everything is just LIFE! Everything, all of it, it's all just LIFE. ~ C. JoyBell C.

In the name of economy a thousand wasteful devices would be invented; and in the name of efficiency new forms of mechanical time-wasting would be devised: both processes gained speed through the nineteenth century and have come close to the limit of extravagant futility in our own time. But labor-saving devices could only achieve their end-that of freeing mankind for higher functions-if the standard of living remained stable. The dogma of increasing wants nullified every real economy and set the community in a collective squirrel-cage. ~ Lewis Mumford

I smell guilt. There is a stench of guilt upon the air.
I see you all, whole and healthy, with your powers intact - such prompt appearances! - and I ask myself ... why did this band of wizards never come to the aid of their master, to whom they swore eternal loyalty? And I answer myself, they must have believed me broken, they thought I was gone. They slipped back among my enemies, and they pleaded innocence, and ignorance, and bewitchment ...
And then I ask myself, but how could they have believed I would not rise again? They, who knew the steps I took, long ago, to guard myself against mortal death? They, who had seen proofs of the immensity of my power in the times when I was mightier than any wizard living? And I answer myself, perhaps they believed a still greater power could exist, one that could vanquish even Lord Voldemort ... perhaps they now pay allegiance to another ... ~ J.K. Rowling

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution - they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing. ~ Paulo Coelho

Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn't funny at all. And if that wasn't funny, there were lots of things that weren't even funnier. There was nothing funny about living like a bum in a tent in Pianosa between fat mountains behind him and a placid blue sea in front that could gulp down a person with a cramp in the twinkling of an eye and ship him back to shore three days later, all charges paid, bloated, blue and putrescent, water draining out through both cold nostrils. ~ Joseph Heller

The thing for us to do is to pray without ceasing; once having come into the presence of God, never to leave it; to abide in His presence and to live, steadily, unbrokenly, continuously, in the midst of whatever distractions or trials, with and in Him. God grant such a life to every one of us! ~ Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

I get to sing and act and write and create and produce for a living and share art with people, and I feel like a piece of that is in honor of those who came before me. ~ Aaron Lazar

I have felt the inspiration of the living God directing me in my labors. ~ Heber J. Grant

I love living in the ghetto!" #PoorMindSet ~ Habeeb Akande

Pleasure is 'suffering' (vedna) and pain is distress as well. If pleasure is 'suffering', it cannot be considered a pleasure. If pleasure is enjoyed excessively, it becomes 'suffering'. How can it be considered a pleasure? These are all entanglements of those living in illusion [of the Self]. To live in the ocean of happiness and yet no dislike arises; that is known as true happiness. ~ Dada Bhagwan

I am definitely less and less interested in music made by people that exist today, people that are living. I just see them as part of the whole stupid process of the music business, desperate (even if they feign indifference) to get noticed, trying to "make it" in the stinking music business, to become "famous" etc, and it disgusts me. ~ Michael Gira

The good life is not found in dreams of progress,but in coping with tragic contingencies.We have been reared on religions and philosophies that deny the experience of tragedy.Can we imagine a life that is not founded on the consolations of action?Or are we too lax and coarse even to dream of living without them? ~ John Gray

A twenty-three-year-long study in Ohio determined that people who saw growing older as something positive lived a whopping seven and a half years longer than those who didn't. (356) ~ Victoria Moran

As I look back on my fondness for the outdoors, and specifically the elements in nature that I find visually stimulating, I am surprised at how often the theme of dead trees arise. I guess it's that each one seems to have a story of its own, representing many years of living through everything that nature could throw at them. ~ Cory Trepanier

Make sure you aren't living out your fears, but releasing them. Try to remember that there is a purpose for every hardship or opportunity in your life. ~ Demi Lovato