One Foot In The Grave Quotes

We've always done it this way" is invalid when that way hasn't led to more life, greater growth, or maximum efficiency. Take that how you will...business, personally, church, or family. Complacency is too easy to breed, and already has one foot in the grave. ~ Aaron W. Matthews

When I have one foot in the grave, I will tell the whole truth about women. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me and say, "Do what you like now." ~ Leo Tolstoy

Let it all go, one foot in the grave and one bag packed. We shall go to our end in the warm glow of the past, burning up the memories, all the clutter given back. ~ Peter R. Pouncey

You either trust me or you don't. I've never let you down, and I won't walk away unless you make me. Period. Now, unless you have a real emergency, I'd like to get back to my vacation. And my corpse, thanks. ~ Jeaniene Frost

It had been written with one foot in the grave and a finger in heaven. These lines, falling one by one onto the paper, were what could be called soul drops. Who could these pages come from? Who could have written them? Cosette did not hesitate for a second. There was only one man it could have come from. Him! ~ Victor Hugo

While play-acting grim scenarios day in and day out may sound like a good recipe for clinical depression, it's actually weirdly uplifting. Rehearsing for catastrophe has made me positive that I have the problem-solving skills to deal with tough situations and come out the other side smiling. For me, this has greatly reduced the mental and emotional clutter that unchecked worrying produces, those random thoughts that hijack your brain at three o'clock in the morning.

While I very much hoped not to die in space, I didn't live in fear of it, largely because I'd been made to think through the practicalities: how I'd want my family to get the news, for instance, and which astronaut I should recruit to help my wife cut through the red tape at NASA and the CSA. Before my last space flight (as with each of the earlier ones) I reviewed my will, made sure my financial affairs and taxes were in order, and did all the other things you'd do if you knew you were going to die. But that didn't make me feel like I had one foot in the grave. It actually put my mind at ease and reduced my anxiety about what my family's future would look like if something happened to me. Which meant that when the engines lit up at launch, I was able to focus entirely on the task at hand: arriving alive. ~ Chris Hadfield

We usually say of ancient persons, that they have already one foot in the grave, and the rest of their life is nothing else but the bringing of these feet together. ~ John Pearson

This is the posture of fortunes slave: one foot in the gravy, one foot in the grave. ~ James Thurber

One thing I hear from fans is, 'My Dad's got one foot in the grave, and he wants to see the Pirates win ' I've heard that more than anything. That's our goal. ~ Clint Hurdle

There's a saying in Africa: 'To find out you are pregnant is to have one foot in the grave.' ~ Liya Kebede

I drive back into town with the two crinkly notes in my pocket and wonder if I could support a family this way, doomed to play dinner dances until I too have one foot in the grave. I shudder at the possibility, and think about poor Meg in her sickbed. What am I going to do? On the way back I pass a big roundabout at the end of the Coast Road. It is March, and the roundabout is covered in daffodils. I circle it twice, an idea forming in my head. I park in a nearby street. It is early morning and there is no one around. I check for police cars and head across the road to the roundabout. Half an hour later I let myself into Megan's flat and slowly open her bedroom door. My arms are full of daffodils, maybe a hundred all told, their drooping yellow trumpets lighting up the entire room. Meg starts to cry, and so do I. The next morning our prayers are answered, but our relief is mixed with a subtle, unspoken regret. ~ Sting

I slide my feet onto the seat next to him, my ankle brushing against his thigh. "No shallowness of breath? No rapidly beating heart?"
He rests one hand on my foot as he continues to mess with his phone. His eyes meet mine in amusement. "Are those the indicators? I might have an issue after all. ~ Kasie West

The useless sentries in the watchtower are now all half in love with you," he lied. "One said he wanted to marry you."

A low snarl. He yielded a foot but held eye contact with her as he grinned. "But you know what I told them? I said that they didn't stand a chance in hell. Because I am going to marry you," he promised her. "One day. I am going to marry you. I'll be generous and let you pick when, even if it's ten years from now. Or twenty. But one day, you are going to be my wife."

He shrugged. "Princess Lysandra Ashryver sounds nice, doesn't it? ~ Sarah J. Maas

Danes, Norse... all were from the northlands in the eyes of her people. To their fright-frozen minds, Hakan was another of the dreaded Norse, sweeping over the land like a plague and leaving little in the wake. But summer had yielded a different crop for her: not all Norse were vicious raiders out for death and plunder.
Hakan braced one foot on a rock. "And now the Norse wolf brings you safely home."...
"Aye," she said. ~ Gina Conkle

My parents both left school at 14, but my parents are incredibly smart, successful, thoughtful people. So one of the lessons I learned from my parents is that the fancy degree is just a foot in the door, and there are a lot of very smart people out there who don't necessarily have the fancy degrees. And given the opportunity, they can do amazing things. ~ Harry West

Sitting there that day, I knew that the only thing I could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other, hoping none of the secrets on my shoulders would make me lose my balance. ~ Ally Carter

I really like to watch a porn, but mostly my dream is to fuck a woman. It's interesting to see how her lips touch your dick, I'm sure that the feeling, incrediable. But this isn't anything with she to have orgasm! To watch you right in the face, right in the eyes is interesting and not freaky, but it's more awesome to be such position to be in orgasm + to suck your cock gently. It's interesting, how woman watch the end proccess of jerk off, how they lick the dick like it's hot and they want to make it cold!
Ooh, that's one of my favourite faces how the sperm from the dick goes right on the face. It's really interesting the dick to be more large and big from a woman foot and hands, even from her mouth that's one of my favourite parts in the porn. It's interesting to look the dick like a pussy cat or more awesome the dick to goes slowly in the pussy! When a woman is getting fucked she to laugh that's the interesting part. ~ Deyth Banger

Ellis smiled at her concern and kissed her cheek once more. "I promise. I'll come home if I need help." He stepped back and gave them a bow, showing his respect.
With their permission, he left the counsel room and headed straight to his room. He packed supplies for the journey. His mother had warned him that no magic worked inside of The Forbidden Woods or even in the outskirts of it. He would have to walk there on foot and hope that no one loyal to Walter caught up with him on his way. ~ Elaine White

Sweeping the dorm soon's it's empty, I'm after dust mice under his bed when I get a smell of something that makes me realize for the first time since I been in the hospital that the big dorm full of beds, sleeps forty grown men, has always been sticky with a thousand other smells - smells of germicide, zinc ointment, and foot powder, smell of piss and sour old-man manure, of Pablum and eyewash, of musty shorts and socks musty even when they're fresh back from the laundry, the stiff odor of starch in the linen, the acid stench of morning mouths, the banana smell of machine oil, and sometimes the smell of singed hair - but never before now, before he came in, the man smell of dust and dirt from the open fields, and sweat, and work. ~ Ken Kesey

What did one see if one looked in any depth into the world of this writer's fiction? Elegant self-control concealing from the world's eyes until the very last moment a state of inner disintegration and biological decay; sallow ugliness, sensuously marred and worsted, which nevertheless is able to fan its smouldering concupiscence to a pallid impotence, which from the glowing depths of the spirit draws strength to cast down a whole proud people at the foot of the Cross and set its own foot upon them as well; gracious poise and composure in the empty austere service of form; the false, dangerous life of the born deceiver, his ambition and his art which lead so soon to exhaustion
~ Thomas Mann

Why there isn't any drama in my life
So I'll crawl on the cottonfield with a fife
Why to have a dream in vain my life begs
Am a house gecko, I eat flies and lay eggs
My death surely doesn't yield a headline and all
I'll break law by pissing on a castle's wall
For my death there wouldn't be a weeping meni
From the name of Lady Canning there's ledikeni
One foot on heaven and one foot on hell, hanging
One cannon and two cannonballs dangling. ~ Nabarun Bhattacharya

Grief is a process to go through, not a destination in which to wallow. In a process, you keep putting one foot in front of the other, and each little step is part of your healing. ~ Phil McGraw

You just have to start putting one foot in front of the other, making an effort to get healthy every day. ~ Ali Vincent

One small but scientifically sound study from Japan found that jogging thirty minutes just two or three times a week for twelve weeks improved executive function. But it's important to mix in some form of activity that demands coordination beyond putting one foot in front of the other.... Aerobic exercise and complex activity have different beneficial effects on the brain. The good news is they're complementary. ~ John J. Ratey

Involved. At least that was the right word, Alsana reflected, as she liftes her foot off the pedal, and let the wheel spin a few times alone before coming to a squeaky halt. Sometimes, here in England, especially at bus-stops and on the daytime soaps, you heard people say "We're involved with each other," as if this were a most wonderful state to be in, as if one chose it and enjoyed it. Alsana never thought of it that way. Involved happened over a long period of time, pulling you in like quicksand. Involved is what befell the moon-faced Alsana Begum and the handsome Samad Miah one week after they'd been pushed into a Delhi breakfast room together and informed they were to marry. Involved was the result when Clara Bowden met Archie Jones at the bottom of some stairs. Involved swallowed up a girl called Ambrosia and a boy called Charlie (yes, Clara had told her that sorry tale) the second they kissed in the larder of a guest house. Involved is neither good, nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other's pockets… one becomes involved and it is a long trek back to being uninvolved. And the woman was right, one didn't do it for one's health. Nothing this late in the century was done with health in mind. Alsana was no dummy when it came to the Modern Condition. She watched the talk shows, all day long she watched the talk shows - My wife slept with my brother, My mother won't stay out ~ Zadie Smith

And he got going from there to America. Worked his passage, I s'pose, like a lot more. And I heard he did well in America, too. Got married there. Had a family. But never came back. And you know why? 'Cause if he did, if he ever set foot in Ireland again, you know who'd be waiting for him, don't you?
That's right. The three of 'em. And their box. And the second time they'd make no mistake.
It is a much-overlooked fact that not all of the thousands who fled Ireland in former times did so to escape hunger, deprivation, and persecution. There were also those who went to escape the wrath of the Good People. Many stories illustrated this, the one here being typical. ~ Eddie Lenihan

You needn't play, Mr. Weston," Emma said. "I only agreed to play for Lizzie's sake, so . . ." "Oh, come, Miss Smallwood. Please tell me you don't shun all things athletic as you did as a girl." A teasing light shone in his eyes. "Afraid you'll lose?" Emma huffed. "I am not afraid to lose. I know I shall. This isn't chess, after all." One eyebrow rose. "Oh, ho! A shot to the heart. The lady recalls soundly trouncing me, I see. Then you must give me a chance to redeem myself." He set aside his hat and adopted a ready stance, bouncing lightly from foot to foot. He looked fifteen years old all over again. Emma felt a grin lift a corner of her mouth. "Oh, very well. But promise not to laugh too hard." "I promise. ~ Julie Klassen

I believe creeds aren't worth the paper they are written on...But I still believe in God.
I believe that if you look at my life, you'll only sometimes see what I believe.
I believe that if we have two coats, we should give one away (though I don't do it).
Today I don't believe in anything; tomorrow who knows.
I sometimes believe in God- one who existed before time, beyond gender or fathom.
Maker of heaven and earth and ginger (all good things), whales, two-hundred-foot cliffs, cloud banks, shipwrecks,
And in Jesus Christ, God's only Son our Lord,
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost- how?
Born of a fourteen-year-old, Mary, scared out of her wits.
Was crucified, dead, and buried, and I used to believe in the penal substitution theory of atonement, but now I just see a violent death and struggle to see how violence can ever be redemptive...
He descended into hell, or was hell all around him all the time?
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into safety of abstraction, away from having to feel this, from dealing with this,
And sits, maybe sprawls, on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
I believe in me; I believe in the Spirit, Sophia, wisdom...
The holy catholic (i.e., everybody) Church;
The Communion of saints; does this mean me?
LOVE
The Forgiveness of sins (but I still feel shame); (don't you?)
The Resurrection of the body.
I believe ~ Peter Rollins

I suck in a deep breath as I plop one foot over the line and then exhale, knowing I'm standing on both sides of the world at once. ~ Christine Riccio

One foot in front of the other. Repeat as often as necessary to finish. ~ Haruki Murakami

I like rainbows.

We came back down to the meadow near the steaming terrace and sat in the river, just where one of the bigger hot streams poured into the cold water of the Ferris Fork. It is illegal – not to say suicidal – to bathe in any of the thermal features of the park. But when those features empty into the river, at what is called a hot pot, swimming and soaking are perfectly acceptable. So we were soaking off our long walk, talking about our favorite waterfalls, and discussing rainbows when it occurred to us that the moon was full. There wasn't a hint of foul weather. And if you had a clear sky and a waterfall facing in just the right direction…
Over the course of a couple of days we hked back down the canyon to the Boundary Creek Trail and followed it to Dunanda Falls, which is only about eight miles from the ranger station at the entrance to the park. Dunanda is a 150-foot-high plunge facing generally south, so that in the afternoons reliable rainbows dance over the rocks at its base. It is the archetype of all western waterfalls. Dunenda is an Indian name; in Shoshone it means "straight down," which is a pretty good description of the plunge.
...
…We had to walk three miles back toward the ranger station and our assigned campsite. We planned to set up our tents, eat, hang our food, and walk back to Dunanda Falls in the dark, using headlamps. We could be there by ten or eleven. At that time the full moon would clear the east ridge of the d ~ Tim Cahill

To go down and up two hands-and-knee climbing ravines and then out into the moonlight and the long, too-steep shoulder of mountain that you climbed one foot up to the other, one foot after the other, one stride at a time, leaning forward against the grade and the altitude, dead tired and gun weary, single file in the moonlight across the slope, on up and to the top where it was easy, the country spread in the moonlight, then up and down and on, through the small hills, tired but now in sight of the fires and ~ Ernest Hemingway,

In the fall of the year I turned sixteen, I jumped out of my bedroom window and ran away. The night's black roads wound like long stretches of river. … The streets ribboned out in all directions. I lifted first one foot and then the other, ready to run down all of them ~ Lê Thi Diem Thúy

Let us consider Elfland as a great national park, a vast and beautiful place where a person goes by himself, on foot, to get in touch with reality in a special, private, profound fashion. But what happens when it is considered merely as a place to "get away to"?
Well, you know what has happened to Yosemite. Everybody comes, not with an ax and a box of matches, but in a trailer with a motorbike on the back and a motorboat on top and a butane stove, five aluminum folding chairs, and a transistor radio on the inside. They arrive totally encapsulated in a secondhand reality. And then they move on to Yellowstone, and it's just the same there, all trailers and transistors. They go from park to park, but they never really go anywhere; except when one of them who thinks that even the wildlife isn't real gets chewed up by a genuine, firsthand bear.
The same sort of thing seems to be happening to Elfland, lately. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Let's start with the basics." He pulled a worn Helios-Ra guidebook of the top of the pile of books next to his laptop. "You got one of these in your orientation packet, right?"
"I already had a copy," I replied. I'd picked Kieran's pocket this summer for it, to be precise. I had my own profile in the cream-colored pages.
Tyson flushed. "Oh. Right. I forgot you're in it."
"I'm famous," I agreed blandly. "Just this morning someone locked me in a bathroom stall."
He flushed even redder.
"Are you blushing?"
He cleared his throat. "No."
I grinned. "You are adorable."
"Uh ..."
"Relax, I'm dating the undead, remember."
"Stop teasing poor Tyson," Jenna said from behind me.
I tilted my head to look up at her. "But it's fun."
Jenna hiked her hip on the table and swung her sneaker-clad foot. "You're going to give him a coronary."
We both turned to grin at him, waiting for his retort. He just looked slightly nauseated. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

At the crest of the hill outside Agor, Henry pulled the car to the side of the road and we got out to take in the view. In the falling shadows, the little Arab village at the foot of the Jewish settlement looked nothing like so grim and barren as it had a few minutes before when we'd driven down its deserted main street. A desert sunset lent a little picturesqueness even to that cluster of faceless hovels. As for the larger landscape, you could see, particularly in this light, how someone might get the impression that it had been created in only seven days, unlike England, say, whose countryside appeared to be the creation of a God who'd had four or five chances to come back to perfect it and smooth it out, to tame and retame it until it was utterly habitable by every last man and beast. Judea was something that had been left just as it had been made; this could have passed for a piece of the moon to which the Jews had been sadistically exiled by their worst enemies rather than the place they passionately maintained was theirs and no one else's from time immemorial. What he finds in this landscape, I thought, is a correlative for the sense of himself he would now prefer to effect, the harsh and rugged pioneer with that pistol in his pocket. ~ Philip Roth

From my experience in my country, America over and over again takes itself right to the brink, it puts one foot over but it never goes over. It wakes up at the last minute and says woah, and then pulls back. ~ Robert Redford

Supposedly several years ago Egyptologist Mark Lehner spent five hours in the Aswan quarry with a dolerite hammer stone pounding against the granite bedrock (copper is too soft to cut granite). He was trying to prove that the ancient tools could do the job. He managed to excavate a one-foot square hole one-inch deep for his efforts. And yet, the video that is played in a hall at the Aswan quarry site still portrays that the hewing of the stone for the unfinished and all other obelisks was done this way [...]. The experiments of Dr. Lehner reveal, there is no way that simple stone pounders could possibly have been the main tool to quarry and shape the granite obelisks. ~ Brien Foerster

I'm an indie artist with major distribution, so one foot in the extreme major music business and one foot in the abyss of indie artists. ~ John Oates

As she went down the steps leading to the station square she noticed a priest going before her. He seemed a very upright and sturdy old man, for though his hair was white he walked steadily and strongly. At the foot of the steps he stopped and half turned, and then, to her surprise, she saw that his face was that of a young man, fine-featured and strong, with black eyebrows and very bright grey eyes. Then she passed on and began to cross the square in the direction of her aunt's house. Then without the slightest warning, except one shrill hoot from overhead, a number of things happened. A great shadow whirled across the sunlight at her feet, a sound of rending tore the air, and a ~ Robert Hugh Benson

As I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of the bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its general regularity. In the deepest part there are several acres more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun, wind, and plow. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or four inches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, ~ Henry David Thoreau

And one fine day the goddess of the wind kisses the foot of man, that mistreated, scorned foot, and from that kiss the soccer idol is born. He is born in a straw crib in a tin-roofed shack and he enters the world clinging to a ball. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The Weatherwax women have always had one foot in shadow. It's in the blood. And most of their power comes from denying it. ~ Terry Pratchett

And yet I needed to know the meaning of my own existence. Only those who, at some time in their lives, have been possessed by such a need can guess at its intensity, comparable to that of physical hunger or sexual desire. I did not see how I could put one foot in front of the other unless I understood where I was going and why. I could do nothing unless I understood what part my action played in the scheme of things. All I knew was that I knew nothing - nothing, that is to say, of the slightest importance - and I was paralyzed by my ignorance as though immobilized in a dense fog. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton

After graduating early from high school, I carefully listened to the quarterback during my first play in college spring ball. My mind was on the very basics of football: alignment, assignment, and where to stand in the huddle.

The quarterback broke the huddle and I ran to the line, meeting the confident eyes of a defensive end - 6-foot-6, 260- pound Matt Shaughnessy.

I was seventeen, a true freshman, and he was a 23-year-old fifth-year senior, a third-round draft pick. Huge difference between the two of us. Impressing the coach was not on my mind. Survival was. "Oh, Jesus," I said. I wasn't cursing. I was praying for help.

Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray ( James 5:13).

That day Matt came off the ball so fast. Bam! Next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, thrown to the ground. I got up and limped back to the huddle.

Four years later...standing on the sidelines in my first NFL game, bouncing on my toes, waiting for my chance to go in, one of the tight ends went down. My time to shine! Where do I stand? Who do I have? I look up and meet the same eyes I met on my first play in college football.
Matt Shaughnessy! ... ~ Jake Byrne