Macgyvering Up A Life Quotes

He couldn't work, as such, but needed to flex himself somehow in ways that felt like work, he thought. Lacking credentials and sight he could not teach, for example. Even reading a cold-call script would be out, although he'd heard of a resourceful blind man who went to the social security office and suggested, "Give me either a job or just my damned check," and received the former, skillfully handling mediation assignments. ~ Edward Hoagland

Someone told me something that stuck with me: 'You have to envision your life, and then go backwards.' I've been living by that motto for a while, so I see where I need to be. Now I'm just backtracking and trying to get back up there. ~ Bruno Mars

Our quest for safe harbor begins when we acknowledge our need to give up the independence and self-reliance of the orphan heart and humble ourselves willingly to be fathered and mothered by other men and women who have been there before, people who know how to find their way through the storms and the gales of life and who know where safe harbor lies. Safe harbor - the heart and love of the Father, along with all the riches and resources of His Kingdom - is our inheritance when we enter in with a heart of sons and daughters. Whose son are you? Whose daughter are you? Remember - no sonship, no inheritance. ~ Jack Frost

Christ never intended to cover up the dark side of life, but rather to illuminate a path through it. ~ Dan B. Allender

Thus I must contradict you when you go on to argue that men are completely unable to do without the consolation of the religious illusion, that without it they could not bear the troubles of life and the cruelties of reality. That is true, certainly, of the men into whom you have instilled the sweet -- or bitter-sweet -- poison from childhood onwards. But what of the other men, who have been sensibly brought up? Perhaps those who do not suffer from the neurosis will need no intoxicant to deaden it. They will, it is true, find themselves in a difficult situation. They will have to admit to themselves the full extent of their helplessness and their insignificance in the machinery of the universe; they can no longer be the centre of creation, no longer the object of tender care on the part of a beneficent Providence. They will be in the same position as a child who has left the parental house where he was so warm and comfortable. But surely infantilism is destined to be surmounted. Men cannot remain children for ever; they must in the end go out into 'hostile life'. We may call this 'education to reality. Need I confess to you that the whole purpose of my book is to point out the necessity for this forward step? ~ Sigmund Freud

I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal. ~ George MacDonald

It was a problem that needed squaring away and I squared it away for them. By now it seemed like it was something I was doing all my life. If you count my father sending me out to beat up other boys so he could win beer bets, maybe it was. Evidently ~ Charles Brandt

Many quite popular films are filled with violence. I think the difference between those and my films is that I show the cause and effect of violent activity. It's not a Donald Duck situation where he get a brick in the back of the head and gets up and walks away in the next frame. Mine have violence which keeps Donald Duck in the hospital for six months and creates a trauma which he will remember for the rest of his life. ~ Peter Greenaway

Confession is the God-given remedy for self-deception and self-indulgence. When we confess our sins before a brother-Christian, we are mortifying the pride of the flesh and delivering it up to shame and death through Christ. Then through the word of absolution we rise as new men, utterly dependent on the mercy of God. Confession is thus a genuine part of the life of the saints, and one of the gifts of grace. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

What I am very, very moved and struck by is that so many people in the world are often living a life that they hadn't planned for themselves. And they wake up one day and say, 'Hang on. Who am I? Is this really me? Is this what I really wanted?' And also, 'Can I change it? Have I got the courage to change it?' ~ Kate Winslet

There'll be moments in life, sweet pea, that stand out in your memories like a photograph. Scenes captured perfectly in your mind, frozen in time with each detail as colorful as it was that first time you saw it. 'Flashbulb memories,' some people call them," she'd told me, her eyes crinkling up and nearly disappearing in a face etched with too many laugh lines to count. "Most people don't recognize those moments as they happen. They look back fifty years later, and realize that those were the most important parts of their entire life. But at the time, they're so busy looking ahead to what's coming down the line or worrying about their future, they don't enjoy their present. Don't be like them, sweet pea. Don't get so caught up in chasing your dreams that you forget to live them. ~ Julie Johnson

When fog is dense, everything slows down because you can't see. If I cast a fog over the land, it will quickly fall in its superiority. The people will rise up and blame my brother for their problems. He will become afraid of them and will fear for his life. Unless he changes, the surrounding lands will also take advantage of his weakness and attack. ~ L.R.W. Lee

You love the accidental. A smile from a pretty girl in an interesting situation, a stolen glance, that is what you are hunting for, that is a motif for your aimless fantasy. You who always pride yourself on being an observateur must, in return, put up with becoming an object of observation. Ah, you are a strange fellow, one moment a child, the next an old man; one moment you are thinking most earnestly about the most important scholarly problems, how you will devote your life to them, and the next you are a lovesick fool. But you are a long way from marriage. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

If I were to list all the positive attributes about Ryan Lilly, I'd run out of superior adjectives to use. I mean seriously, how big do you think my vocabulary is? I only know about a hundred million words, and with that small of a sample size, how could I accurately describe someone as great as Ryan? Ryan is the most amazing guy I've ever met. Seriously, I'm insanely jealous and I just want to stab him. But I won't, because everybody loves Ryan, including me. Ryan is a big inspiration in my life. Not only is Ryan fiercely intelligent - on the level of Newton, da Vinci, and Nietzsche's mustache - but he is the most open, honest, and understanding guy I've ever met. He's the kind of guy who'd give you the shirt off his back if you asked. I know, because I'm wearing his shirt now. If you don't know who Ryan Lilly is, you soon will. He'll probably be one of the most talked about people in history, and just the other day I came across this quote from Pliny (I don't know how old Pliny is, so I don't know if it was Pliny the Older or Pliny the Younger) which said, "Everything good I have written about can be summed up in two words: Ryan Lilly." That's a real quote I read in a real book. Trust me, I'm a writer. ~ Jarod Kintz

Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath. ~ Theodore Roethke

The people they had been last summer, the person she had been
Dicey guessed she'd never be afraid again, not the way she
had been all summer. She had taken care of them all, sometimes well, sometimes badly. And they had covered the distances.
For most of the summer, they had been unattached. Nobody knew who they were or what they were doing. It didn't matter
what they did, as long as they all stayed together. Dicey remembered that feeling, of having things pretty much her own way.
And she remembered the feelings of danger. It was a little bit like being a wild animal, she thought to herself.
Dicey missed that wildness. She knew she would never have it again.
And she missed the sense of Dicey Tillerman against the whole world and doing all right. ~ Cynthia Voigt

Magine a trust in yourself, or another person, or in life itself, that doesn't need to be proved or demonstrated, that is able to contain uncertainty. People sometimes put their trust in a spiritual leader and are terribly betrayed if that person then fails to live up to ideals. But a real trust of faith would be to decide whether to trust someone, knowing that betrayal is inevitable because life and personality are never without shadow. The vulnerability that faith demands could be matched by an equal trust in oneself, the feeling that one can survive the pain of betrayal. ~ Thomas Moore

The bad psychological material is not a sin but a disease. It does not need to be repented of, but to be cured. And by the way, that is very important. Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. When a neurotic who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God's eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man may have shown in winning the V.C. When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing does dome tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.

It is as well to put this the other way round. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man's psychological makeup is probably d ~ C.S. Lewis

She ran, and leaned to the wall, until her face was close to mine and her breath came on me.
I said, 'I'll do it. I'll go with you. I love you, and I cannot give you up. Only tell me what I must do and I will do it!'
Then I saw her eye, and it was black, and my own face swam in it, pale as a pearl. And then, it was like Pa and the looking-glass. My soul left me - I felt it fly from me and lodge in her. ~ Sarah Waters

In life, you can blame a lot of people and you can wallow in self-pity, or you can pick yourself up and say, 'Listen, I have to be responsible for myself.' ~ Howard Schultz

Memories particularly of when they weren't being what parents are nine-tenths of the time, the taskmasters, the examples, the moral authorities, the nags of pick-that-up and you're-going-to-be-late, keepers of the diary of her duties and routines, memories, rather, of when they found one another afresh, beyond the tensions between parental mastery and inept childish uncertainty, of those moments of respite in a family's life when they could reach one another in calm ~ Philip Roth

In life, many things don't go according to plan. If you fall, get back up. If you stumble, re-gain your balance. Never give up and keep believing in yourself.
Never react when you are angry
Never make a promise when you are happy
Never make a decision when you are sad ~ Vishnu Aravind

If you think the dress is right for you, where are you going to wear it? Does it fit into the kind of life you lead? (If you live in the country, what are you doing with all those town suits and hostess pajamas?) Supposing the dress is all right. If so, what shoes do you wear with it? What hat, gloves? Handbag, jewelry? […] So many women fall in love with a dress, bring it home, and find absolutely nothing that will go with it. ~ Joan Crawford

The Kingdom of Heaven," said the Lord Christ, "is among you." But what, precisely, is the Kingdom of Heaven? You cannot point to existing specimens, saying, "Lo, here!" or "Lo, there!" You can only experience it. But what is it like, so that when we experience it we may recognize it? Well, it is a change, like being born again and relearning everything from the start. It is secret, living power - like yeast. It is something that grows, like seed. It is precious like buried treasure, like a rich pearl, and you have to pay for it. It is a sharp cleavage through the rich jumble of things which life presents: like fish and rubbish in a draw-net, like wheat and tares; like wisdom and folly; and it carries with it a kind of menacing finality; it is new, yet in a sense it was always there - like turning out a cupboard and finding there your own childhood as well as your present self; it makes demands, it is like an invitation to a royal banquet - gratifying, but not to be disregarded, and you have to live up to it; where it is equal, it seems unjust; where it is just it is clearly not equal - as with the single pound, the diverse talents, the labourers in the vineyard, you have what you bargained for; it knows no compromise between an uncalculating mercy and a terrible justice - like the unmerciful servant, you get what you give; it is helpless in your hands like the King's Son, but if you slay it, it will judge you; it was from the foundations of the world; it is to come; it is her ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defences and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very long, a quarter of an hour perhaps; but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, through all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then. Sometimes for a minute or two I saw it clearly, threading my life like a divine and golden track. But nearly always it was blurred in dirt and dust. Then again it gleamed out in golden sparks as though never to be lost again and yet was soon quite lost once more. ~ Hermann Hesse

I feel to that the gap between my new life in New York and the situation at home in Africa is stretching into a gulf, as Zimbabwe spirals downwards into a violent dictatorship. My head bulges with the effort to contain both worlds. When I am back in New York, Africa immediately seems fantastical – a wildly plumaged bird, as exotic as it is unlikely.

Most of us struggle in life to maintain the illusion of control, but in Africa that illusion is almost impossible to maintain. I always have the sense there that there is no equilibrium, that everything perpetually teeters on the brink of some dramatic change, that society constantly stands poised for some spasm, some tsunami in which you can do nothing but hope to bob up to the surface and not be sucked out into a dark and hungry sea. The origin of my permanent sense of unease, my general foreboding, is probably the fact that I have lived through just such change, such a sudden and violent upending of value systems.

In my part of Africa, death is never far away. With more Zimbabweans dying in their early thirties now, mortality has a seat at every table. The urgent, tugging winds themselves seem to whisper the message, memento mori, you too shall die. In Africa, you do not view death from the auditorium of life, as a spectator, but from the edge of the stage, waiting only for your cue. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal.

Maybe that is why you seem to live more vividly in A ~ Peter Godwin

Oh, without prayer what are the church's agencies, but the stretching out of a dead man's arm, or the lifting up of the lid of a blind man's eye? Only when the Holy Spirit comes is there any life and force and power. ~ Charles Spurgeon

And George Farr had the town, the earth, the world to himself and his sorrow. Music came faint as a troubling rumor beneath the spring night, sweetened by distance: a longing knowing no ease. (Oh God, oh God!)
At last George Farr gave up trying to see her. He had 'phoned vainly and time after time, at last the telephone became the end in place of the means: he had forgotten why he wanted to reach her. Finally he told himself that he hated her, that he would go away; finally he was going to as much pains to avoid her as he had been to see her. So he slunk about the streets like a criminal, avoiding her, feeling his his very heart stop when he did occasionally see her unmistakable body from a distance. And at night he lay sleepless and writhing to think of her, then to rise and don a few garments and walk past her darkened house, gazing in slow misery at the room in which he knew she lay, soft and warm, in intimate slumber, then to return to home and bed to dream of her brokenly. ~ William Faulkner

Yet she was so sweet. She wasn't a hard-ass, wasn't jaded after all that had been done to her. In bed, she was giving and generous. And she smiled a lot. She seemed to enjoy life.
Whereas he'd been nothing but a giant pain in the ass, taking for granted everything that had been given to him. He'd had it so easy, while his parents had struggled to give him a good life so all he had to do was go out and live his dream.
He and Savannah were as different as night and day. How could she tolerate being around him? He was nothing but a spoiled football player who craved the spotlight. He didn't deserve to be sharing a bed with her. She needed someone who cared for her, who thought of nothing but her, who'd give up everything just to give her the kind of life she deserved.
He sucked in a breath and realized it was time he made some serious life changes. It was time to go all in and stop hesitating about the things he really wanted in his career. In his life.
It was time to start taking some chances. ~ Jaci Burton

In all my life I'd never been approached this way, the car pulling up, the Where you going? It was something I wish had happened hundreds of times. I was a looker - someone who looked over at every car at every traffic light, hoping something would happen, and almost never finding anyone looking back - always everyone looking forwards, and every time I felt stupid. Why should people look at you? Why should they care? ~ Dave Eggers

Perhaps there is more understanding and beauty in life when the glaring sunlight is softened by the patterns of shadows. Perhaps there is more depth in a relationship that has weathered some storms. Experience that never disappoints or saddens or stirs up feeling is a bland experience with little challenge or variation of color. Perhaps it's when we experience confidence and faith and hope that we see materialize before our eyes this builds up within us a feeling of inner strength, courage, and security. We are all personalities that grow and develop as a result of our experiences, relationships, thoughts, and emotions. We are the sum total of all the parts that go into the making of a life. ~ Virginia Mae Axline

I was outside St. Cecelia's Rectory smoking a cigarette when a goat appeared beside me. It was mostly black and white, with a little reddish brown here and there. When I started to walk away, it followed. I was amused and delighted, but wondered what the laws were on this kind of thing. There's a leash law for dogs, but what about goats? People smiled at me and admired the goat. "It's not my goat," I explained. "It's the town's goat. I'm just taking my turn caring for it." "I didn't know we had a goat," one of them said. "I wonder when my turn is." "Soon," I said. "Be patient. Your time is coming." The goat stayed by my side. It stopped when I stopped. It looked up at me and I stared into its eyes. I felt he knew everything essential about me. We walked on. A police- man on his beat looked us over. "That's a mighty fine goat you got there," he said, stopping to admire. "It's the town's goat," I said. "His family goes back three-hundred years with us," I said, "from the beginning." The officer leaned forward to touch him, then stopped and looked up at me. "Mind if I pat him?" he asked. "Touching this goat will change your life," I said. "It's your decision." He thought real hard for a minute, and then stood up and said, "What's his name?" "He's called the Prince of Peace," I said. "God! This town is like a fairy tale. Everywhere you turn there's mystery and wonder. And I'm just a child playing cops and robbers forever. Please forgive me if I cry." "We forgive you, Officer," I ~ James Tate

This emphasis is directed primarily at the here and now, as Christ-embodying communities of active love in the midst of the world. All of creation is caught up in the restorative work. The mission of God's people is not simply directed at saving people's souls from a bad life-after-death into a good life-after-death, but it addresses and hopefully touches the injustice and violence around us - poverty, racism, sexism, economic exploitation, war, environmental destruction - where salvation, justice, and peace can merge. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

This, no doubt, was the call 33 had heard. Bored with his balanced diet of maize and maple peas, tired of the pecking order of the loft and the predictability of each day - the bird had wanted out; wanted up and away. A day of high life; of food that had to be chased a little, and tasted all the better for that; of the companionship of wild things. All this went through Cal's head, in a vague sort of way, while he watched the circling flocks. ~ Clive Barker

I know I should try harder to make her feel necessary in my life. It totally freaked her when I said I didn't need her anymore. But isn't that the whole point of growing up? A healthy bird can fly the nest? Roots and wings and all that Hallmarky crap? ~ Kate Klise

Surely it is an odd way to spend your life - sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist, except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice. ~ Paul Auster

I want you to always think of Mrs. Martin. And I want you always to remember that donkey. Never forget that fear and desire can lead you into life's biggest trap if you're not aware of them controlling your thinking. To spend your life living in fear, never exploring your dreams, is cruel. To work hard for money, thinking that it will buy you things that will make you happy is also cruel. To wake up in the middle of the night terrified about paying bills is a horrible way to live. To live a life dictated by the size of a paycheck is not really living a life. Thinking that a job makes you secure is lying to yourself. That's cruel, and that's the trap I want you to avoid. I've seen how money runs people's lives. Don't let that happen to you. Please don't let money run your life. ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki