Momentary Quotes

And if I die sometime – I'm going to die very soon – I know I'll die as I am,
without accepting this world, perceiving it close up and far away, inside and out,
perceiving but not accepting it. I'll die and He will ask me: "Was it good there for
you? Was it bad there for you?" I will be silent, with lowered eyes. I'll be silent
that muteness familiar to everyone who knows the outcome of days of hard
boozing. For isn't the life of man a momentary boozing of the soul? And an eclipse
of the soul as well? We are all as if drunk, only everybody in his own way: one
person has drunk more, the next less. And it works differently on each: the one
laughs in the face of this world, while the next cries on its bosom. One has already
thrown up and feels better, while the next is only starting of feel like throwing up.
But me, what am I? I've partaken of much, but nothing works on me. I haven't
really laughed properly, even once, and I've never thrown up, even once. I, who
have partaken of so much in this world that I've lost count and the sequence of it
all, I am soberer than anyone else in this world; ~ Venedikt Erofeev

By not doing what I needed to do over and over again for a long time, by playing small, giving in to momentary impulses, instant gratification, and procrastination and being overly comfortable, I was chipping away one tiny insignificant surrender at a time that eventually stacked up into a force that completely jeopardized my relationship with myself. I had no self-worth left ~ Monjyoti Bhattacharyya

The momentary darkness gave way to scores of small glowing lights. Blaise stepped into a candlelit room filled with people and furniture.
'Where are we?" he asked Livia. "How can a whole other room be here? There were only two rooms on the top floor. ~ Teresa Flavin

They walked off on the earthy path, laughing not quite naturally, for they could hardly help being pleased by the momentary attention of descending passengers and by their own almost meritorious youth. ~ Shirley Hazzard

Ordinary psyches often react to bad news with a momentary thrill, seeing the world, for once, in jagged clarity, as if lightning has just struck. But then darkness and dysfunction rush in. A mind such as Beethoven's remains illumined, or sees in the darkness shapes it never saw before, which inspire rather than terrify. This altered shape (raptus, he would say) makes art of the shapes, while holding in counterpoise such dualities as intellect and intuition, the conscious and the unconscious, mental health and mental disorder, the conventional and the unconventional, complexity and simplicity. ~ Edmund Morris

I e-mail or phone my best girlfriend daily. Having people who know you well helps you stay grounded and gives perspective to whatever momentary drama you're going through. ~ Soledad O'Brien

Here is a story of a young prince who suddenly sees that the ambitious world is a big game of king
of the mountain, a boy scrambling up a pile of sand to call out, "I am king"; then another
throws him off to make his momentary claim, then another and so on. ~ Rumi

There is no reward beyond the moment. Each moment contains life's reward. ~ Bryant McGill

My name is Nick Sinclair," he said, and watched the young man's curious smile change to open animosity. "I would like to see Lauren."
"I'm Lauren's brother," the young man retorted, "and she doesn't want to see you."
Her brother! Nick's momentary relief was followed by an absurd impulse to smash the younger man's face for stealing Lauren's allowances when she was a little girl. "I've come to see her," Nick stated impacably, "and if I have to walk over you to get to her, I will. ~ Judith McNaught

Because of the gospel, throwing away my idols feels less like a painful sacrifice and more like a liberating dance. For all my "empty nothings" have ever given me is momentary pleasure and lasting regrets. Remind me of this all year long when I'm tempted to think otherwise. ~ Scotty Smith

What is a hobby anyway? Where is the line of demarcation between hobbies and ordinary normal pursuits? I have been unable to answer this question to my own satisfaction. At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant. Certainly many of our most satisfying avocations today consist of making something by hand which machines can usually make more quickly and cheaply, and sometimes better. Nevertheless I must in fairness admit that in a different age the mere fashioning of a machine might have been an excellent hobby... Today the invention of a new machine, however noteworthy to industry, would, as a hobby, be trite stuff. Perhaps we have here the real inwardness of our own question: A hobby is a defiance of the contemporary. It is an assertion of those permanent values which the momentary eddies of social evolution have contravened or overlooked. If this is true, then we may also say that every hobbyist is inherently a radical, and that his tribe is inherently a minority.

This, however, is serious: Becoming serious is a grievous fault in hobbyists. It is an axiom that no hobby should either seek or need rational justification. To wish to do it is reason enough. To find reasons why it is useful or beneficial converts it at once from an avocation into an industry–lowers it at once to the ignominious category of an 'exercise' undertaken for health, power, or profit. Lifting dumbbel ~ Aldo Leopold

Einstein felt that he did not have great mathematical gifts and deliberately chose not to take courses and to continue in that area.

The fact that I neglected mathematics to a certain extent had its causes not merely in my stronger interest in science than in mathematics but also in the following strange experience....I saw that mathematics was split up into numerous specialties, each of which could easily absorb the short lifetime granted to us....In physics, however, I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things that clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential.

This capacity to pick out important issues dovetailed with Einstein's search for the most general possible conception. "In a man of my type," he declared, "the turning point of the development lies in the fact that gradually the major interest disengages itself to a far reaching degree from the momentary and the merely personal and turns toward the striving for a mental grasp of things. ~ Howard Gardner

Sahara knew she should be worried about the fact that she'd been in bed with a man who'd caused that kind of damage with a momentary and, according to him, minor loss of telekinetic control during intimacy, but she felt her lips kick up at the corners. So we literally made the earth move?
A slight pause, before Kaleb said, I suggest we don't engage in sex in populated areas.
The cool comment made her burst into laughter. ~ Nalini Singh

Sometimes during the day, I consciously focus on some ordinary object and allow myself a momentary "paying-attention." This paying-attention gives meaning to my life. I don't know who it was, but someone said that careful attention paid to anything is a window into the universe. Pausing to think this way, even for a brief moment, is very important. It gives quality to my day. ~ Robert Fulghum

So vast is that Being that there's enough room for every sensation to have its momentary play. ~ Mooji

In presenting a mathematical argument the great thing is to give the educated reader the chance to catch on at once to the momentary point and take details for granted: two trivialities omitted can add up to an impasse). The unpractised writer, even after the dawn of a conscience, gives him no such chance; before he can spot the point he has to tease his way through a maze of symbols of which not the tiniest suffix can be skipped. ~ John Edensor Littlewood

In a fully functional organism, an emotion has a very short life span. It is like a momentary ripple or wave on the surface of your Being. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Artistic qualities that once seemed undeniable don't seem so now. Sometimes these fluctuations are only fickleness of taste, momentary glitches in an artist's work, or an artist getting ahead of his audience (it took me ten years to catch up to Albert Oehlen). Other times, however, these problems mean there's something wrong with the art. ~ Jerry Saltz

When we give of ourselves, our time, and our money, we're also giving up control. As a control freak myself, I know that sounds scary, but I've learned that the momentary lack of control forces me to look at what I do have and truly count my blessings. I have clean drinking water. I have food on my table. I have a roof over my head and clothes on my back. Suddenly, my panic-stricken mindset is replaced with gratitude. ~ Jen Lilley

So we do not lose heart...Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal...So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. (Second Corinthians) ~ John Irving

A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain
to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower
to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary
that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water's wishes and this tale
hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail

if only I a passerby could pass
as clear as water through a plume of grass

to find the sunlight hidden at the tip
turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip

then I might know like water how to balance
the weight of hope against the light of patience

water which is so raw so earthy-strong
and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along

drawn under gravity towards my tongue
to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

which is the story of the falling rain
that rises to the light and falls again ~ Alice Oswald

Diplomacy matters. Burden-sharing matters. Follow-through matters. And yes, sustaining the peace is harder, more complex and often costlier than winning the war itself. No matter the surge of momentary machismo
as gratifying as it may be for some
it's short-sighted and wrong to simply go it alone. ~ Dick Gephardt

Peat believes that synchronicities are therefore "flaws" in the fabric of reality, momentary fissures that allow us a brief glimpse of the immense and unitary order underlying all of nature. ~ Michael Talbot

Is true freedom even possible? It certainly is in a momentary sense, as any mature practitioner of meditation knows, and those moments can increase in both number and duration with practice. Therefore, I see no reason why a person couldn't perfectly banish the illusion of the self. However, just the ability to meditate - to rest as consciousness for a few moments prior to the arising of the next thought - can offer a profound relief from mental suffering. ~ Sam Harris

At last Anne was at home again, and happier than any one in that house could have conceived. All the surprise and suspense, and every other painful part of the morning dissipated by this conversation, she re-entered the house so happy as to be obliged to find an alloy in some momentary apprehensions of its being impossible to last. An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of every thing dangerous in such high-wrought felicity; and she went to her room, and grew steadfast and fearless in the thankfulness of her enjoyment. ~ Jane Austen

We all see very clearly in others tendencies which we, ourselves, have overcome. The older and wiser we grow, the more we can see the arrogance of youth. The more authentic we become, the more we can see the lies of insecurity. The more vulnerable we allow ourselves to be, the more we see the dangerous symptoms of unexpressed emotions.

There is no finish line to learning.

There is no point where we're done growing, and all we will ever do is look down upon others who are behind us. No one is ever at the top. We are all growing at our own rates, and no matter how terrible or how enlightened we fancy ourselves to be today, the future will be sure to give us a different perspective.

There is really no use in comparing yourself to others. There will always be someone ahead and someone behind, and there will be dozens (if not hundreds) of different scales and gradients to be behind and ahead on.

To be number one is never final. It is and always will be a momentary, fleeting instant. But to be a growing version of yourself? That, you can be. You can be that every single day. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of wildrose beauty, and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over thirty years. At the end of it she was still singing. ~ George Orwell

Amazement and astonishment express the momentary overwhelming of the mind by something beyond expectation. Amazement is an emotional response, astonishment an intellectual one. ~ Dean Koontz

For when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says You are here. ~ Douglas Adams

When we choose to engage reality as the best each moment can be, we are shaping more positive experiences for others. ~ Bryant McGill

Before that night, I didn't grasp that the shadows that sometimes crossed her face weren't momentary clouds passing in front of the sun. Her deep silences were more than daydreams. And her habit of standing with her arms wrapped around her ribs was a way of holding herself together.

I didn't get there must be balance.
She couldn't hold so much life, light and joy without also containing their opposites. ~ Chelsey Philpot

There's something about Lily that makes all the terrible parts of me seem irrelevant. That makes a bad day momentary and a good one infinite.
It's love like this that's worth living for. ~ Krista Ritchie

I don't want to know what's good, or bad, or true. I let God worry about the truth. I just want to know the momentary fact about things. Life isn't good, or bad, or true. It's merely factual, it's sensual, it's alive. My idea of living sensual facts are you, a home, a country, a world, a universe, in that order. ~ James Garner

Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains. ~ Diane Ackerman

Math is a weave of many threads: the formal and the intuitive, the simple and the profound, the momentary and the eternal. Love the thread you love. But never mistake it for the tapestry. ~ Ben Orlin

The whole incident could not have taken as much as half a minute. Not to let one's feelings appear in one's face was a habit that had acquired the status of an instinct, and in any case they had been standing straight in front of a telescreen when the thing happened. Nevertheless it had been very difficult not to betray a momentary surprise, for in the two or three seconds while he was helping her up the girl had slipped something into his hand. ~ George Orwell

Peace is not in itself a dream, but we know it only as the result of a momentary equilibrium
an accident. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I lookj into the depths of thif unfathomable wather, wherein, as momentary lights glanced nto it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. ~ Charles Dickens

God is using the difficulties of the here and now to transform you, that is, to rescue you from you. And because he loves you, he will willingly interrupt or compromise your momentary happiness in order to accomplish one more step in the process of rescue and transformation, which he is unshakably committed to. ~ Paul David Tripp

I've tasted the deep satisfaction of God and I know all other things are but cheap imitations. And I don't want to be enamored by the lesser things wrought with momentary pleasure. ~ Lysa TerKeurst

There was a momentary lull in the shooting and spellslinging, and the kid started scrambling to his feet. I grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. In my family that's not silence; it's reloading. ~ Lisa Shearin

And the heart of it is this. Real conversions are marked by the fruit of the Spirit, not the gifts of the Spirit. Regeneration has a tell, and that tell is love. As John Owen noted, the gifts of the Spirit are not the saving grace of the Spirit.11 And the love we are talking about is not a momentary thing. Love is not a walk around the block, but rather a long-haul trucking trip. ~ Douglas Wilson

Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi') ~ Dogen

He awoke, opened his eye. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come. If he had not the energy to ascertain his position in time and space, he also lacked the desire ... In utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank back into on the the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one. ~ Paul Bowles

Gratitude is a "nice" habit to adopt, warming your heart and all, but the Kumbaya effect is just the beginning. Gratefulness goes wayyyyyyy beyond the momentary feeling good, offering plenty of long-term and "practical" benefits we may never have intuited. ~ Kelly Corbet

Want to know who I am?
Your responses indicate that you have a normal desire to share yourself with others. However, this need is not being adequately fulfilled at present.
As a result, you unconsciously attempt to treat this emptiness with momentary interests and temporary passions. If left unaddressed, this imbalance leads to impulsive behavior and unnecessary risks.
Past betrayals have left you generally suspicious of others' behavior, particularly regarding romantic relationships. You fear you may be exploited if you open yourself too fully. Consequently, you often seek some proof of a new friend's or lover's sincerity before you decide to trust them.
Further complicating your relationships is the anxiety you have about your unfulfilled personal and professional goals. You fear that you've made decisions that weren't in your own best interest, or failed to take advantage of opportunities when they presented themselves.
The desire to overcome these challenges sometimes lead you to seem pushy or even arrogant. Because this competitive urge is not always apparent to others, they are often surprised by it.
However, the passion that underlies your desire for success is unique. This makes you unlike others. You cannot simply accept what life has to offer; you aspire for more.

Between each inhale and exhale we die and are reborn. ~ Micheal Tsarion

Interesting, but futile,' said his diary,
Where day by day his movements were recorded
And nothing but his loves received inquiry;
He knew, of course, no actions were rewarded,
There were no prizes: though the eye could see
Wide beauty in a motion or a pause,
It need expect no lasting salary
Beyond the bounds' momentary applause.

He lived for years and never was surprised:
A member of his foolish, lying race
Explained away their vices: realised
It was a gift that he possessed alone:
To look the world directly in the face;
The face he did not see to be his own.

- A Writer ~ Philip Larkin

There was a momentary added weight in my stomach, almost like a sickness. There's a name for that sort of sickness. I think it's called falling in love with your best friend's girl. "You've ~ Stephen King

Our tissues change as we live: the food we eat and the air we breathe become flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, and the momentary elements of our flesh and bone pass out of our body every day with our excreta. We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves ~ Norbert Wiener

... Perhaps this momentary life of ours is only the light that divides our infinite origin from our infinite end. ~ Juan Ramon Jimenez

Outbox and its inherent transient nature - is it a take on life itself ? momentary, independent, fleeting and somewhat meaningless dwelling for all creations on their way out - to sent items. ~ Sunil Raina

We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary. From one point of view, each moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before it has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment than the present moment. It is always dying, always becoming past more rapidly than imagination can conceive. Yet at the same time it is always being born, always new, emerging just as rapidly from that complete unknown we call the future. Thinking about it almost makes you breathless. ~ Alan Watts

Falling in love is like getting hit by a truck and yet not being mortally wounded. just sick to your stomach, high one minute, low the next. Starving hungry but unable to eat. hot, cold, forever horny, full of hope and enthusiasm, with momentary depressions that wipe you out.
It is also not being able to remove the smile from your face, loving life with a mad passionate intensity, and feeling ten years younger.
Love does not appear with any warning signs. You fall into it as if pushed from a high diving board. No time to think about what's happening. It's inevitable. An event you can't control. A crazy, heart-stopping, roller-coaster ride that just has to take its course. ~ Jackie Collins

But they knew, either instinctively or from their own experience, that our early impulsive emotions have but little influence over our later actions and the conduct of our lives; and that regard for moral obligations, loyalty to our friends, patience in finishing our work, obedience to a rule of life, have a surer foundation in habits solidly formed and blindly followed than in these momentary transports, ardent but sterile. ~ Marcel Proust

My films are the expression of momentary desires. I follow my instincts, but in a disciplined way. ~ Roman Polanski

While she wasn't looking, he subtly adjusted the erection straining against his jeans.
"How big is it?" She broke the momentary silence between them.
Wes froze. Apparently, he hadn't been as discreet as he'd thought, but he hadn't expected such a blunt ques...
"You do know the acreage of your own ranch, don't you?" she asked. ~ Kait Ballenger

There were momentary visitations. I was a visitor, not an inhabitant. I think I say that at the beginning of the book: "I have made visits to the earth in my body, but it's always been as a visitor." ~ Eve Ensler

As V dropped the bomb, there was a momentary period of silent saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay-whaaaaaaaaaaaaat. Then a shit-ton of gasps and cursing in the room, all kinds of WTF hitting the airwaves. ~ J.R. Ward

It's to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek, knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It's what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy… we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What's left? What else is there that hasn't been dealt out like a deck of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what's shared - she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she's everybody's and it don't mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it's held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it's gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part o ~ Tom Stoppard

Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion. And the greatest Art is that which excites the greatest impersonal emotion in an hypothetical perfect human being.

Impersonal emotion! And what - I thought - do I mean by that? Surely I mean: That is not Art, which, while I am contemplating it, inspires me with any active or direct impulse; that is Art, when, for however brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by interest in itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a carved marble bath. If my thoughts be: 'What could I buy that for?' Impulse of acquisition; or: 'From what quarry did it come?' Impulse of inquiry; or: 'Which would be the right end for my head?' Mixed impulse of inquiry and acquisition - I am at that moment insensible to it as a work of Art. But, if I stand before it vibrating at sight of its colour and forms, if ever so little and for ever so short a time, unhaunted by any definite practical thought or impulse - to that extent and for that moment it has stolen me away out of myself and put itself there instead; has linked me to the universal by making me forget the individual in me. And for that moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art. The word 'impersonal,' then, is but used in this my definition to signify momentary forgetfulness of one' ~ John Galsworthy

Baseball can have its perfect dimensions, its undeniable drama, but hockey, for all its wrongs, still has the potential to deliver a momentary, flashing magic that is found in no other game we play. ~ Roy MacGregor

I had a momentary vision of Brooklands' entire middle class, its prosperous lawyers, doctors and senior managers, being confined to their own ghetto, with nothing to do all day except groom their ponies and swing their croquet mallets. ~ J.G. Ballard

Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world. ~ Robert Frost

The most emphatic place in a clause or sentence is the end. This is the climax; and, during the momentary pause that follows, that last word continues, as it were, to reverberate in the reader's mind. It has, in fact, the last word. ~ F.L. Lucas

The best part of being blonde is forgivable momentary lapses of common sense. ~ Caity Lotz

Indeed, analyst Robert Bak calls orgasm "the perfect promise between love and death," the means by which we repatriate separation of mother and child through the momentary extinction of the self. It is true that few of us consciously climb into a lover's bed in the hope of finding our mommy between the sheets. But the sexual loss of our separateness (which may scare people so badly they cannot have orgasm) brings us pleasure, in part, because it unconsciously repeats our first connection. ~ Judith Viorst

Socrates: Yes mercy and grace are all linked with Love. Let your tears of gratitude wash away the dark dirt of ignorance obscuring your own dear Self which is Love.
Charmides: So Love has nothing to do with lust then?
Socrates: No! Lust is from the selfish false sense of a 'me' desperate for some pleasurable, momentary relief from its anguish and boredom. Love is refined, and her amorous advances are from the spirit, not the body. ~ Alan Jacobs

He was having one of those lucid moments that make you, as a loved one of an Alzheimer's victim, forget for a minute or two that this is all really happening.

You can forget about the disease and its toll and confusion and suddenly engage with the same person with whom you conversed profoundly for so many years, until it all started to go haywire. In that moment I wanted to know what I think so many Alzheimer's caregivers crave to understand: Do you know what has become of you? Can you, so lucid now, see how you act when you are not like you are now? Does it make you sad? Does it make you ashamed?

The reprieve right there at the red light was momentary, even illusory. But there for the taking, right in front of me--so obvious that I almost panicked over what to talk about. Do we discuss his beloved baseball? His beloved grandchildren? Me--how I'm doing, how much I miss him?

No. As much out of curiosity as concern, I wanted to talk about him.

"Dad," I said, "you are losing your mind. You know that. How does that make you feel? How are you doing with that?"

"I'm doing the best I can with what God has given me," he said. ~ Mark Shriver

I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary
you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous. ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

In its rational form [dialectic] is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary. ~ Karl Marx

As C. S. Lewis pointed out, it is not that our desires are too strong (as Stoicism would have it), but that they are too weak. 3 The irony of our lives is that we demand the ephemeral, momentary glories of this fading age, too easily amused and seduced by the trivial, when ultimate joy is held out to us. ~ Michael S. Horton

I suppressed my fury at his verbal probings
As he attempted entry
Of my inner self. My anger was
A thing he wanted too much
As if it pleasured him, his touch
Sent ants marauding
Beneath my teenage skin.
My instincts clawed me back
From the precipice of him;
His vile dark eyes accompanied his oh,
Too personal breath upon my face
As he studied my reaction to his question,
As if to say 'I'm a man
And I am touching you, I am, I am.'
My momentary sorrow taught me
That in future visits I'd present
A show of mediocrity.
I'd be blank, without a trait,
Devoid of personality
For him to finger and manipulate. ~ Frieda Hughes

No woman ever yet either reasoned or acted long together consequentially; but some little thing, some love, some resentment, somepresent momentary interest, some supposed slight, or some humour, always breaks in upon, and oversets their most prudent resolutions and schemes. ~ Lord Chesterfield

In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger who approached or attempted to approach him. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The soul's maladies have their relapses like the body's. What we take for a cure is often just a momentary rally or a new form of the disease. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

When a feeling hits, keep breathing. Let air flow through your body. Let your heart beat as it always faithfully does. And let the feeling pass through you.

Maybe it will be momentary, or maybe it will spend the night. But it will not last forever.

If you can be with it, sit with it, even if "it" brings a lot of discomfort, that feeling will keep moving. It will move through you, and you will move on. You will move forward. ~ Stephen Lovegrove

Here's to love at first sight, and here's to getting over it the moment you blink. ~ Ahmed Mostafa

My woman. She had a momentary image of a caveman, hanging on to his woman by the hair with one hand while in the other he wielded a club to beat back caveman number two. Perhaps she would sketch it one day. ~ Mary Balogh

The decisions that we write off as momentary, insignificant, incidental, everyday encounters are exactly when we have a chance to define ourselves. To find beauty. To engage the world around us. To create memories. ~ Teri Hatcher

Winning is very tangible, it's very exciting, it's very pleasing, but it's momentary. If you can do things that last, that each generation can build upon, then that's when you're cooking. ~ Billie Jean King

Defeat is a momentary thing. A defeat doesn't last. We were defeated and now we attack. Defeat means nothing. Can't you understand that? Do you know what they are whispering behind doors? ~ John Steinbeck

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. (53)
(Quote is actually Robert A F Thurman but Huston Smith, who only wrote the introduction to my edition, seems to be given full credit for this text.) ~ Huston Smith

You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

I cannot decide whether it is an illness or a sin, the need to write things down and fix the flowing world in one rigid form. Bear believed writing dulled the spirit, stilled some holy breath. Smothered it. Words, when they've been captured and imprisoned on paper, become a barrier against the world, one best left unerected. Everything that happens is fluid, changeable. After they've passed, events are only as your memory makes them, and they shift shapes over time. Writing a thing down fixes it in place as surely as a rattlesnake skin stripped from the meat and stretched and tacked to a barn wall. Every bit as stationary, and every bit as false to the original thing. Flat and still and harmless. Bear recognized that all writing memorializes a momentary line of thought as if it were final.
But I was always word-smitten. ~ Charles Frazier

According to quantum field theory, fields alone are real. They are the substance of the universe and not 'matter'. Matter is simply the momentary manifestation of interacting fields which, intangible and insubstantial as they are, are the only real things in the universe. ~ Gary Zukav

That little, twitching, momentary clasp of acknowledgment that she gave him in her satisfaction, roused his pride unconquerable. They loved each other, and all was whole. She loved him, he had taken her, she was given to him. It was right. He was given to her, and they were one, complete. ~ D.H. Lawrence

It is not that we would oust the little people from the world,' he said, 'in order that we, who are no more than one step upwards from their littleness, may hold their world forever. It is the step we fight for an not ourselves... We are here, Brothers, to what end? To serve the spirit and the purpose that has been breathed into our lives. We fight not for ourselves - for we are but the momentary hands and eyes of the Life of the world... This earth is no resting place... We fight not for ourselves but for growth - growth that goes on forever. Tomorrow, whether we live or die, growth will conquer through us. That is the law of the spirit for ever more. To grow according to the will of God! To grow out of these cracks and crannies, out of these shadows and darknesses, into greatness and the light! Greater,' he said, speaking with slow deliberation, 'greater, my Brothers! And then - still greater. To grow, and again - to grow. To grow at last into the fellowship and understanding of God. Growing... Till the earth is no more than a footstool... Till the spirit shall have driven fear into nothingness, and spread...' He swung his arm heavenward: - 'There! ~ H.G. Wells

I suppose I do deserve it; for not noticing the nearest helpers I have. But you must admit the accumulation of incidents was rather formidable. Did you never feel just a momentary awe of the awful volume?' 'Oh, that,' said Father Brown. 'I opened it as soon as I saw it lying there. It's all blank pages. You see, I am not superstitious.' The ~ G.K. Chesterton

A thrilling, brilliant and electrifying life is yours the moment you wake-up. ~ Bryant McGill

Like the panic stricken populace of 'The War of the Worlds' and countless other 1950s invasion movies, the victims are there to provide the human ground over which monster and expert, threat and defender, disordering and ordering impulses can battle it out. Second-class citizens of the genre, they are narratively indispensable because physically entirely disposable. We are only really involved with them in the momentary tension of their capture or demise. ~ Andrew Tudor

It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity, But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable. ~ Oscar Wilde

I've never had a plan. You look for different actors you want to work with or different subjects you want to explore, or sometimes it's just a momentary fancy. ~ Michelle Forbes

Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was - only is. ~ William Faulkner

The birds of the air die to sustain thee; the beasts of the field die to nourish thee; the fishes of the sea die to feed thee. Our stomachs are their common sepulchre. Good God! with how many deaths are our poor lives patched up! how full of death is the life of momentary man! ~ Francis Quarles

Everybody thinks I'm this delicate little girl. But you can't tell a book by it's cover.' To which she added a momentary smile. ~ Haruki Murakami

The momentary confusion experienced by everyone in the vicinity when a cell phone rings and no one is sure if it is his/hers or not: conphonesion, phonundrum, ringchronicity, ringxiety, fauxcellarm, pandephonium. ~ Steven Pinker

I saw her note the way I hovered over the various ethnicities on the form. First the 'white' box, then to the airspace over the 'black' box, a kind of momentary hesitation, a protest of stillness, a staring into the abyss of everything I did not know about myself. She, like me, was made of halves. ~ Olivia Sudjic

The aphorism offers a momentary sense of mastery over some confusion or unhappiness. ~ Mason Cooley

I think you should celebrate whenever you can. Take that momentary feeling of being lucky, that feeling of being on the right track, and enjoy it. It won't last. ~ Kate Morgenroth

Statesmen should remember that they have been elected to persuade and to lead, and not just to accept as fixed the momentary moods and pernicious prejudices of the public. ~ Stanley Hoffmann