Lost Potential Quotes

The Hoodmen are far from being the worst of the servants of the Cult of the Unwritten Book, but they are among the most peculiar. You know when you're trying to remember a word and it's on the tip of your tongue but you can't seem to get it out? Well, that's because the Hoodmen have eaten it. They eat all the words that are on the tips of other people's tongues. They thrive on misplaced words, savoring all the lost potential of each expression. They're also able to convert words into electricity. Mr. Steele took an entire phrase. ~ Grant Morrison

There is no point in honoring the dead. I have seen too much to believe otherwise.
Grieve for lost potential, the end of possibilities, the eternally silence demise of promise.
Grieve for that, Fear Sengar, and you will understand, finally, how grief is but a mirror, held close to one's own face. ~ Steven Erikson

If your potential mate does not have the same perspective that you do then you're going to be lost. ~ Eva LaRue

The tragedy of Tupac is that his untimely passing is representative of too many young black men in this country....If we had lost Oprah Winfrey at 25, we would have lost a relatively unknown, local market TV anchorwoman. If we had lost Malcolm X at 25, we would have lost a hustler named Detroit Red. And if I had left the world at 25, we would have lost a big-band trumpet player and aspiring composer--just a sliver of my eventual life potential. ~ Quincy Jones

What a glorious title, Nature, a veritable stroke of genius to have hit upon. It is more than a cosmos, more than a universe. It includes the seen as well as the unseen, the possible as well as the actual, Nature and Nature's God, mind and matter. I am lost in admiration of the effulgent blaze of ideas it calls forth. ~ James Joseph Sylvester

Young ghetto boys thought that in this society, the good guys lost and the bad guys won. ~ Eartha Kitt

(Matty) 'I'm going to a corn maze.'
(Elliot) 'Oh, bitch. You've lost your ever-loving mind. ~ Leta Blake

It's not the hurt pride. It's the lack of love. It's gut wrenching. I mean, a family is an attempt to create a private world of trust in a storm and then it just all gets blown to shit and all the bits get scattered and lost. Everything falls apart. ~ Daniel Watkins

He had always despised people who thought about the past. To live was to leave behind; to be as free as a shipwrecked man who has lost everything. ~ Graham Greene

You can't reach your potential without haters. ~ Grant Cardone

He explained how once we began to chime the hour, we lost the ability to be satisfied. There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between sunrises was gone. ~ Mitch Albom

You actually do not know your true potential unless you are liberated from the Procrasdemon. ~ Neeraj Agnihotri

You thought you were found but you realize that you were lost, and someday you may discover that you're lost now. ~ Walter Kirn

...always remember one thing, life is and will always be meant to be lived. Taste it, savor it, consume it and let it consume you. Get lost in it. Life is intoxicating if it's lived right. You should never be afraid of life. ~ Nicole Banks

The lost, the lonely, the bicultural misfits with a foot in two worlds and a place in neither. ~ Don Winslow

The more you replicate the spiritual practice of another, the more disconnected you become from your own power, potential and possibility ~ Panache Desai

The meanings get lost and the teachings get tossed and you don't know what you're going to do next. ~ Dan Fogelberg

By now, Kate has released her hair and lost her shoes. My tie is off, the top two buttons of my shirt open. Our appearance could make things feel friendly - intimate - like an all-night study session in college.
If we weren't trying to rip each other's thraots open, of course. ~ Emma Chase

There are other kinds of people in this world. There is the kind like Tris, who, after suffering and betrayal, could still find enough love to lay down her life instead of her brother's. Or the kind like Cara, who could still forgive the person who shot her brother in the head. Or Christina, who lost friend after friend but still decided to stay open, to make new ones. Appearing in front of me is another choice, brighter and stronger than the ones I gave myself. ~ Veronica Roth

If you're lost and alone
Or you're sinking like a stone
Carry on ...
May your past be the sound
Of your feet upon the ground
Carry on ~ Fun

Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority ... other than through the tragic logic of history ... No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Why does anyone fight a war? To protect a way of life, to find or support loved ones. To avenge those lost. Or maybe because it's a calling. Because someone has to. Because there's a line no enemy should be allowed to cross. ~ Tracy Banghart

Human potential is the ability of a person or humanity to put their theoretical abilities into practice ~ Sunday Adelaja

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

The human element, the human flaw and the human nobility - those are the reasons that chess matches are won or lost. ~ Viktor Korchnoi

I think it's really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted. I'd say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a do over. Just say, 'This was a horrible disaster and we're sorry and we're going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it'. ~ Gabe Newell

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe? ~ Allen Ginsberg

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. ~ Rutger Hauer

Matches are won and lost so many times in the locker room. ~ Lleyton Hewitt

I have been
hanging here
headless
for so long
that the body has forgotten
why
or where or when it
happened
and the toes
walk along in shoes
that do not
care

and although
the fingers
slice things and
hold things and
move things and
touch
things
such as
oranges
apples
onions
books
bodies
I am no longer
reasonably sure
what these things
are

they are mostly
like
lamplight and
fog

then often the hands will
go to the
lost head
and hold the head
like the hands of a
child
around a ball
a block
air and wood -
no teeth
no thinking part

and when a window
blows open
to a
church
hill
woman
dog
or something singing

the fingers of the hand
are senseless to vibration
because they have no
ears
senseless to color because
they have no
eyes
senseless to smell
without a nose

they country goes by as
nonsense
the continents

the daylights and evenings
shine
on my dirty
fingernails

and in some mirror
my face
a block to vanish
scuffed part of a child's
ball

while everywhere
moves
worms and aircraft
fires on the land
tall violets in sanctity
my hands let go let go
Charles Bukowski

Why are those who knew him, when they pass from the memory of a young man, sensitive and gay, to the work – novels and writings – surprised to pass into a nocturnal world, a world of cold torment, a world not without light but in which light blinds at the same time that it illuminates; gives hope, but makes hope the shadow of anguish and despair? Why is it that he who, in his work, passes from the objectivity of the narratives to the intimacy of the Diary, descends into a still darker night in which the cries of a lost man can be heard? Why does it seem that the closer one comes to his heart, the closer one comes to an unconsoled center from which a piercing flash sometimes bursts forth, an excess of pain, excess of joy? Who has the right to speak of Kafka without making this enigma heard, an enigma that speaks with the complexity, with the simplicity, of enigma? ~ Maurice Blanchot

Across galaxies of time and space
Travelling just to see your face
Lost amidst the countless stars
To bring me back to where you are. ~ Bryce Anderson

...of the emperor whose gorgeous clockwork bird had seized up in the end; on his deathbed he'd called for the dark-feathered nightingale, knowing he never should have chosen a shiny substitute, because nothing but her real song could save him now. Was there any music that would bring back memories once they were lost in the fog? What were we, once our stories had drifted off like smoke? ~ Emma Donoghue

Everything ended in silence. The beasts and spirits heaved a deep breath, broke up their encirclement, and returned to the depths of a forest that had lost its heart. ~ Haruki Murakami

As a boy I had liked both drawing and physics, and I always abhorred the role of being a spectator. In 1908, when I was 15, I designed, built and flew a toy model airplane which won the then-famous James Gordon Bennett Cup. By 16 I had discovered that design could be fun and profitable, and this lesson has never been lost on me. ~ Raymond Loewy

I'm an alien 'cause I'm not of this world. I have a name but I've been changed and now I can't stay the same.
And I'm a loser if that means I've been lost before ...
I'm a monster if that means I'm misunderstood. 'Cause it's alive and I can't hide it. The energy is rising.
And I'm a traitor if that means I've turned on myself. I can't deny it, it's like a riot. I can't keep it quiet. ~ Thousand Foot Krutch

I think Seattle has a great sort of luxury and comfort sensibility, which I oftentimes think is lost in fashion for fashion's sake. ~ Chris Benz

Very often in everyday life one sees that by losing one's temper with someone who has already lost his, one does not gain anything but only sets out upon the path of stupidity. He who has enough self-control to stand firm at the moment when the other person is in a temper, wins in the end. It is not he who has spoken a hundred words aloud who has won; it is he who has perhaps spoken only one word. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

You see, this is a problem all over the world. Man is seeking a new response, a new approach to life, because the old ways are decaying, whether in Europe, in Russia, or here. Life is a continual challenge, and merely to try to bring about a better economic order is not a total response to that challenge, which is always new; and when cultures, peoples, civilizations are incapable of responding totally to the challenge of the new, they are destroyed. Unless you are properly educated, unless you have this extraordinary confidence of innocence, you are inevitably going to be absorbed by the collective and lost in mediocrity. You will put some letters after your name, you will be married, have children, and that will be the end of you. You see, ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Success is the potential destiny of all created things ~ Myles Munroe

In the middle of my heart, a star appeared, and the seven heavens were lost in its brilliance. ~ Rumi

the cruel forgetfulness of old age, when the most ancient of memories stand out with agonizingly clear precision and the nearest of incidents are lost beyond recall. With ~ Cassandra Clare

Go back' Taran shouted at the top of his voice.'Have you lost your wits?'
Eilonwy, for it was she, half-halted. She had tucked her plaited hair under a leather helmet. The Princess of Llyr smiled cheerfully at him. 'I understand you're upset,' she shouted back, 'but that's no cause to be rude.' She galloped on.
For a time, Taran could not believe he had really seen her. ~ Lloyd Alexander

She did not belong to the healthy group of widows and widowers who, after mourning, would nurture the seed of their grief into growing from loss - perhaps continuing the dreams of the lost, or learning to cherish alone the things they'd cherished together.

She belonged instead to the sad lot who clung to grief, who nurtured it by never moving beyond it. They'd shelter it deep inside where the years padded it in saudade layers like some malignant pearl. ~ Darrell Drake

Life, just the nature of it,
presents different levels of challenge.
No one gets to exit without first taking some sort of test.

―Toni Harper, LOST SOULS ~ Anne Francis Scott

I lost my balance when the train pulled away, but a human crumple zone buffered my fall. We stayed like that, half fallen. Diagonal People. ~ David Mitchell

Man corrupt everything, say Shug. He on your box of grits, in your head, and all over the radio. He try to make you think he everywhere. Soon as you think he everywhere, you think he God. But he ain't. Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up the flowers, wind, water, a big rock. ~ Alice Walker