Out Of Balance Quotes

Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

But there was a sense of something tipping out of balance. The times seemed out of joint. There was too much decadence. Too much intensity. Too much change. Too much happiness juxtaposed with too much misery. Too much wealth next to too much poverty. The world was becoming faster and louder, and the social systems were becoming as chaotic and fragmented as jazz scores. So there was a craving, in some places, for simplicity, for order, for scapegoats and for bully-boy leaders, for nations to become like religions or cults. It happened every now and then.
It seemed, in the 1930s, that the whole course of humanity was at stake. As it very often does today. Too many people wanted to find an easy answer to complicated questions. It was a dangerous time to be human. To feel or to think or to care. ~ Matt Haig

Dudes who look dangerous should just be dangerous. Period. The end. They should not be dangerous and beautiful all at the same time. It leaves the universe out of balance, and it makes me do stupid things like stare. ~ Cora Carmack

Who can break the law? If I break this glass, it will fall down. If anyone succeeds in throwing one atom out of place, every other atom will go out of balance ... The law can never be broken. Each atom is kept in its place. Each is weighed and measured and fulfils its [purpose] and place. Through His command the winds blow, the sun shines. Through His rule the worlds are kept in place. Through His orders death is sporting upon the earth. Just think of two or three Gods having a wrestling match in this world! It cannot be. ~ Swami Vivekananda

I do not trust technology. I mean, I don't think we're in any danger of kids, you know, doing without video games in the future, but I am saying that their lives are largely out of balance. ~ Richard Louv

When your life is out of balance your cheque bounces ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

The ocean makes up roughly 70% of the planet; living on land, we fail to recognize the importance of our ocean and the marine life that inhabit it. Ocean acidification is making phytoplankton toxic, which is bad news for the organisms that depend on them as a source of food and oxygen. Phytoplankton generates a large portion of the world's O2. If they're out of balance, the rest of life on Earth is going to be out of balance. ~ Joseph P. Kauffman

... Not that it was unjust; not that the scales were forced out of balance. Where there had been good, it showed as clearly. Kindnesses, accomplishments, all those were present, too. ~ Richard Matheson

Eating more than you need is not necessarily a sign of a chemical imbalance or eating the wrong types of food. It is a sign that you are fundamentally out of balance. ~ Nancy Dale

We can easily get our lives out of balance. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

Life is a constant battle of fighting your own fears and not absorbing others. Don't fill the empty spaces of your heart with the fears of others in your life. It is the highly anxious person that will tell you that certain people and experiences need to be labeled and kept either close or at a distance. They go to great lengths to categorize things, in order to feel balance in their life because they are out of balance. Life to them is about control and making you believe that their perfect world is normal when there is nothing normal about it. Highly anxious people live through manipulating their world into what is easy and palatable to them and they can easily pull you into an unrealistic view of the world around them. You constantly have to reassess what is reasonable and what is over exaggerated because fear drives their every action. ~ Shannon L. Alder

A perfect balance is possible to imagine, but impossible to reach, so one is always trembling along an arc from too excited to too bored and back again. Everything we love most - be it sweetheart or flower - looks majestic because it seems to be trembling out of balance. While ~ Diane Ackerman

Depression, we are told over and over again, is a brain disease, a chemical imbalance that can be adjusted by antidepressant medication. In an informational brochure issued to inform the public about depression, the US National Institute for Mental Health tells people that 'depressive illnesses are disorders of the brain' and adds that 'important neurotransmitters - chemicals that brain cells use to communicate - appear to be out of balance'. This view is so widespread that it was even proffered by the editors of PLoS [Public Library of Science] Medicine in their summary that accompanied our article. 'Depression,' they wrote, 'is a serious medical illness caused by imbalances in the brain chemicals that regulate mood', and they went on to say that antidepressants are supposed to work by correcting these imbalances.
The editors wrote their comment on chemical imbalances as if it were an established fact, and this is also how it is presented by drug companies. Actually, it is not. Instead, even its proponents have to admit that it is a controversial hypothesis that has not yet been proven. Not only is the chemical-imbalance hypothesis unproven, but I will argue that it is about as close as a theory gets in science to being dis-proven by the evidence. ~ Irving Kirsch

Often the lack of clear direction and goals can waste away our time and energy and contribute to imbalance in our lives. A life that gets out of balance is much like a car tire that is out of balance. It will make the operation of the car rough and unsafe. Tires in perfect balance can give a smooth and comfortable ride. So it is with life. The ride through mortality can be smoother for us when we strive to stay in balance. ~ M. Russell Ballard

The emotion you feel is always about the vibrational variance between where you want to be and where you are. If you're out of balance, there are only two ways to bring yourself into alignment: Either raise your expectation to match your desire -or lower your desire to match your expectation. ~ Abraham Hicks

Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now. ~ Joss Whedon

When you're clinically depressed the serotonin in your brain is out of balance and probably always will be out of balance. So I take medication to get that proper balance back. I'll probably have to be on it the rest of my life. ~ Terry Bradshaw

She remembered all too well how time had dragged without him, how she had shuffled about feeling waylaid, out of balance. How shr could ever cope with his permanent absence? ~ Khaled Hosseini

Concentration and mindfulness are the internal ways in which the mind restores itself from being out of balance and lost in confusion to a condition of ease, clarity, and wisdom. No external action needs to happen. ~ Sylvia Boorstein

All drama is about lies. All drama is about something that's hidden. A drama starts because a situation becomes imbalanced by a lie. The lie may be something we tell each other or something we think about ourselves, but the lie imbalances a situation. If you're cheating on your wife the repression of that puts things out of balance; or if you're someone you think you're not, and you think you should be further ahead in your job, that neurotic vision takes over your life and you're plagued by it until you're cleansed. At the end of a play the lie is revealed. The better the play the more surprising and inevitable the lie is. Aristotle told us this ~ David Mamet

The male ego had spent two millennia running unchecked by its female counterpart. The Priory of Sion believed that it was this obliteration of the sacred feminine in modern life that had caused what the Hopi Native Americans called koyanisquatsi - "life out of balance" - an unstable situation marked by testosterone-fueled wars, a plethora of misogynistic societies, and a growing disrespect for Mother Earth. ~ Dan Brown

The fact that she was still alive felt wrong, out of balance. She didn't feel special, or protected, or gods-bound. She thought the gods had acted to protect the roan, and she had just been along for the ride. It was the roan who was special, not she.
I should be dead, she thought. If she was dead, then all would have been settled. The warlord's men would have been satisfied to see her body swept away, the roan would have been safe from Beck's whip, the ghost of tyhe man she had killed could have gone to his rest. There was a rounding off - a justice - in her death. But alive, no one was satisfied and no one was safe. ~ Pamela Freeman

What doesn't feel okay to me, what feels a little bit out of balance, is when you want to turn yourself into something else - when you want to be another person. ~ Zoe Saldana

It's a tradition my great-grandfather started almost a hundred years ago, after my father was born. He gave my father fifty newly minted silver dollars and explained that each time something really amazing happened to him, he had to return one of the dollars to the universe so that someone else could wish on it.
I smile, recalling how Patrick had once told me a story of his grandfather standing on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1936 and throwing a silver dollar into the water after his beloved Yankees won the World Series. They won it for the next three years too, and his grandfather always believed that it was his coins - good luck returned to the universe - that kept their streak alive ...
... My father always used to tell me that if you keep the coins, you throw things out of balance ... It's all about passing the luck on and thanking the world for whatever good things have happened to you. ~ Kristin Harmel

It's the basic obstacle of artificial ecosystems. In a normal evolutionary environment, there's enough diversity to cushion the system when something catastrophic happens. That's nature. Catastrophic things happen all the time. But nothing we can build has the depth. One thing goes wrong, and there's only a few compensatory pathways that can step in. They get overstressed. Fall out of balance. When the next one fails, there are even fewer paths, and then they're more stressed. It's a simple complex system. That's the technical name for it. Because it's simple, it's prone to cascades, and because it's complex, you can't predict what's going to fail. Or how. It's computationally impossible." Holden ~ James S.A. Corey

The early Triassic was a period when the planet was recovering from the worst mass extinction it had ever known - that was the end Permian extinction, where climate change caused in part by mega-volcanic eruptions wiped out ninety-five percent of life on Earth. It took about ten or twenty million years for the planet's ecosystems to stabilize. During that time you saw a lot of weird, out-of-balance ecosystems where, for example, crocodile-like predators ripped the crap out of each other along the coasts. ~ Annalee Newitz

Narcissism isn't vanity, Anna. We're all narcissists to a degree. A measure of narcissism is healthy. But out of balance, what was once appropriate self-confidence becomes grandiose, pathological, and destructive. You have little regard for those around you. You do what you will with a libertine's abandon. Boredom sets in. A bored woman is a dangerous woman. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Purpose, meaning, significance - these are what make a successful life. Seek them and you will most certainly live your life out of balance, criss-crossing an invisible middle line as you pursue your priorities. The act of living a full life by giving time to what matters is a balancing act. ~ Gary Keller

In order to tell you a story about who I am and why I am here, I must spend a little time asking myself...questions. This is usually done at a superficial level as quickly as possible."

The self-diagnostic process that finds meaningful stories scares the hell out of people who aren't sure they are living meaningful lives. Once they reflect, most people do find that their lives are plenty meaningful (if a little out of balance). However, the process of self-examination tests your faith that your organization and your group are basically good people with good intentions. Groups that avoid deep examination seem to be anxious that honest self-examination might expose hypocrisy or emptiness. I've found that anxiety to be overstated in most cases."

First attempts at group stories are often highly aspirational in that the story is more about who we wished we were, rather than who we are. Stories that aspire to more than we can back up risk sounding hypocritical."

When our stories are sought and found from the subjective statement that "I have a lot to learn from other people", they invite difference...Gathering stories teaches you how to get outside your own experiences and experience life as others might. ~ Annette Simmons

It's almost as if we're made of the same messed-up clockwork, ticking and ticking out of balance ~ Adam Silvera

Your attachment to unhealthy people and bad habits, which offer you no real control, is why you're spiritually dying and living a life out of balance. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Maintain balance in life; not unlike a tire, a life out of balance results in a rough ride and needless wear and tear. ~ Glenn A. Maltais

He is the sun, and I am the moon. We must stay apart or the world will be thrown out of balance. ~ Jessica Khoury

Many age-related diseases are caused by an immune system out of balance. Excessive or unnecessary inflammation accelerates heart disease, bone loss, ~ Dan Buettner

A strongly accentuated zoophilism, such as an inordinate love of horses or dogs, throws the emotional nature out of balance; and those who are possessed by it are not likely to care very much for people. ~ W.E. Woodward

A wise woman recognizes when her life is out of balance and summons the courage to act to correct it, she knows the meaning of true generosity, happiness is the reward for a life lived in harmony, with a courage and grace. ~ Suze Orman

If I don't write, I hate myself. Simple as that. My life is out of balance. ~ Harlan Coben

Illness is something out of balance, rather than something within balance. It's been something that is created and it's been created for a purpose and a reason, and that purpose or reason may not be obvious to the person that has the disease. Nevertheless, there is something going on and it's not always easy to find that out. ~ Fred Alan Wolf

Falling out of balance doesn't matter, really and truly. How we deal with that moment and how we find our way back to center, every day, again and again - that is the practice of yoga ... it's about trusting that you will find your way. ~ Cyndi Lee

You might think you're connecting with your friends on Facebook but when was the last time you went out with your friends and asked them how they were doing? When was the last time you called them and prayed with them and really had a conversation? Go ahead and do those things (with social media). I get it. I really do. But if you're lacking the other things, that's when it's out of balance and you're not really connected. ~ Jeremy Camp

I think again we're way out of balance. We've got to rein in what has become almost an article of faith that almost anybody can have a gun anywhere at any time. And I don't believe that is in the best interest of the vast majority of people. ~ Hillary Clinton

(There was an idea much beloved and written about by this country's philosophers that magic had to do with negotiating the balance between earth and air and water; which is to say that things with legs or wings were out of balance with their earth element by walking around on feet or, worse, flying above the earth in the thin substance of air, obviously entirely unsuitable for the support of solid flesh. The momentum all this inappropriate motion set up in their liquid element unbalanced them further. Spirit, in this system, was equated with the fourth element, fire. All this was generally felt to be a load of rubbish among the people who had to work in the ordinary world for a living, unlike philosophers living in academies. But it was true that a favourite magical trick at fetes was for theatrically-minded fairies to throw bits of chaff or seed-pods or conkers in the air and turn them into things before they struck the ground, and that the trick worked better if the bits of chaff or seed-pods or conkers were wet.)

Slower creatures were less susceptible to the whims of wild magic than faster creatures, and creatures that flew were the most susceptible of all. Every sparrow had a delicious memory of having once been a hawk, and while magic didn't take much interest in caterpillars, butterflies spent so much time being magicked that it was a rare event to see ordinary butterflies without at least an extra set of wings or a few extra frills and iridescences, or bodie ~ Robin McKinley

Mindfulness is the ability to do physical things in a harmonious way; it is a way to remain centered in a physical world that is out of balance. ~ Frederick Lenz

I see exercise taking this perverted detour. The original intention of exercise was to heal and maintain health. Now I see it as having nothing to do with health. I see most exercises based on looking good. They actually make you less healthy. You overdevelop the obvious muscles. You take drugs to enhance that. You ignore the rest, and you become more out of balance. ~ Bryan Kest

I think that we've had an economy that's been out of balance for too long. So the general principle of raising taxes on higher income Americans, like myself, and providing relief to those who haven't benefited as much from this new global economy, I think is a sound one. ~ Barack Obama

The trend toward the ownership of land by fewer and fewer individuals is, it seems to me, a disastrous thing. For when too large a proportion of the populace is supporting itself by the indirections of trade and business and commerce and art and the million schemes of men in cities, then the complexity of society is likely to become so great as to destroy its equilibrium, and it will always be out of balance in some way. But if a considerable portion of the people are occupied wholly or partially in labors that directly supply them with many things that they want, or think they want, whether it be a sweet pea or a sour pickle, then the public poise will be a good deal harder to upset. ~ E.B. White

I believe as human beings we are out of balance, out of synch with the earth. ~ Kevin Richardson

Misogyny ... is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who is confronted with it. ~ Joss Whedon

I saw that all aspects of my life had been pulling me out of balance because I hadn't perceived them as part of a "whole," or the totality that was "me." ~ Brenda Strong

Relaxing the shoulders is vital for relaxation in general. However, owing to the effects of gravity, relaxation is problematic unless we let the shoulders remain in their natural place. Let the shoulders drop, or settle in harmony with gravity, into their most comfortable position. It isn't too difficult to do this for a moment, but to sustain this condition unconsciously in our lives is another matter. We raise our shoulders unnaturally when we lean on a desk or hold the telephone between our shoulders and ears, when we are shocked by a loud noise, and who knows how many other times throughout the day. And the unsettling of the shoulders doesn't have to be large to produce anxiety, stiff necks, and headaches. Just slightly raising them will create tension, and this tension throws the nervous system out of balance.

When do we raise the shoulders in daily life? What are we feeling at that moment and leading up to that moment? Remembering that the body reflects the mind, and that the raising of the shoulders not only creates tension but also is a physical manifestation of psychological tension itself, what are the roots of this tension? Bringing the mind into the moment, let's observe ourselves in a state free of preconceived ideas or beliefs. Don't guess at these questions. Observe yourself in relationship to others and the universe ~ H.E. Davey

As I get older, the more I don't want my life to be emotionally out of balance in the way it was in my twenties. ~ Elliot Cowan

See yourself as the perfect creation that you are, but at the same time, recognize with sincere honesty, the areas of your life that are out of balance and get to work to improve and grow. ~ Dashama Konah Gordon

You always have to remember to take care of yourself first and foremost, because when you stop taking care of yourself you get out of balance and you really forget how to take care of others. ~ Jada Pinkett Smith

I am struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. ~ Haruki Murakami

Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography? The proportions of that notion seem ridiculously out of balance. Yet, that very idea has motivated me. ~ James Nachtwey

When the brain perceives you are no longer reproductive because your hormones are out of balance, it tries to get rid of you, and it usually activates the cancers in perimenopause. ~ Suzanne Somers

I don't think it's an ethical or moral issue, or even that people are stupid, but I do feel like as a culture things are out of balance, perverted, and inverted. Things that are ridiculous are worshipped, and things that are important are ridiculed. I think that's something worth thinking about. ~ Ian MacKaye

We become our own enemy when we are thrown out of balance by anger, hatred, grief, or any other intense emotion. We are for the time being obsessed by something alien. ~ Swami Paramananda

The world is like a seesaw out of balance: on one side is a box of big rocks, tilting it its way. On the other side is a box, and a bunch of us with teaspoons, adding a little sand at a time. One day, all of our teaspoons will add up, and the whole thing will tip, and people will say, 'How did it happen so fast? ~ Pete Seeger

When a human body is out of balance we call that disease ... Likewise, when the body of Christ becomes unbalanced, disease occurs ... Health will occur only when everything is brought back into balance. The task of church leadership is to discover and remove growth-restricting diseases and barriers so that natural, normal growth can occur. ~ Rick Warren

Invest in your work life balance. Time with friends and family is as important as times at work. Getting that out of balance is a path toward unhappiness. ~ Stephen Gillett

Most organizations only focus on WHAT they do and HOW they do it - tactics and strategies - and they aren't even aware that this thing called the WHY exists. Focusing on only two pieces of a three piece puzzle leaves an organization, or a career, inherently out of balance. Being out of balance, only operating on two of the three pieces, shows up in different ways - increased stress, loss of passion, obsession with what your competition is doing, being forced to play the price game, trouble differentiating. These are all signs that the WHY is missing. ~ Simon Sinek

By using two elephants to do the job, damage will occur just because of how large, lumbering, and unsubtle elephants are. They squash the flowers in the process of entering the playground, they strew leftovers and garbage all over the place from the frequent snacks they must eat while balancing the seesaw, they wear out the seesaw faster, and so on. This is equivalent to a pattern of stress-related disease that will run through many of the subsequent chapters: it is hard to fix one major problem in the body without knocking something else out of balance (the very essence of allostasis spreading across systems throughout the body). Thus, you may be able to solve one bit of imbalance brought on during stress by using your elephants (your massive levels of various stress hormones), but such great quantities of those hormones can make a mess of something else in the process. And a long history of doing this produces wear and tear throughout the body, termed allostatic load. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky

You know, Ella, you're not the first woman who's ever been in this shower with me
"
"I'm shocked." I leaned back against him as he soaped my back.
"
but you're for damn sure the first one who's ever worried about wasting water."
"How much, would you say?"
"Ten gallons per minute, give or take."
"Oh my God. Hurry.We can't stay in here long. We'll throw the entire ecological system out of balance. ~ Lisa Kleypas

If I am practicing on the wire, and you pushed me, I would not move, and if you take a piece of wood and beat me up on the shoulder and the head, I would not move. You would not put me out of balance. You would not be able to. I am solid as granite when I am on the tight rope, and I should be. ~ Philippe Petit

If we're following our path, then worrying about what could or should happen is a worse illness than what could or should happen. And it's more likely we're going to be out of balance if we worry. The idea is that the future will take care of itself if we remain in the present. I really don't know what I'll do and I don't think about it that much. ~ Daniel Suelo

If we don't control our schedule - our schedule will control us. If we don't find a way to live a balanced life -our lives will get out of balance. ~ Wayde Goodall

Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all that the scientist goes after the truth. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance. For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body, but when this process continues in disregard of the total organism, cells proliferate and we have disease. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Sensitive people usually love deeply and hate deeply. They don't know any other way to live than by extremes because thier emotional theromastat is broken. ~ Shannon L. Alder

To achieve an extraordinary result you must choose what matters most and give it all the time it demands. This requires getting extremely out of balance in relation to all other work issues, ~ Gary Keller

Rioting over food: how could this be? Here was all this grain, food enough to feed half the world, sitting in piles at the train station, going to waste. Something was out of balance. ~ Timothy Egan

It bothers them that instead of taking on the role of abandoned lover, I have become a happy wife. They relish seeing strong women like you and me humiliated. They cannot forgive us that we triumphed where so many others fail ... Courage is a virtue appreciated in a male but considered a defect in our gender. Bold women are a threat to a world that is out of balance, in favor of men. That is why they work so hard to mistreat and destroy us. ~ Isabel Allende

When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in my thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance. ~ Nikola Tesla

A measure of narcissism is healthy. But out of balance, what was once appropriate self-confidence becomes grandiose, pathological, and destructive. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Never think that war is a good thing, grandchildren. Though it may be necessary at times to defend our people, war is a sickness that must be cured. War is a time out of balance. When it is truly over, we must work to restore peace and sacred harmony once again. ~ Joseph Bruchac

Time is so strange and life is twice as strange. You must promise me not to live to be too old, William. It if is at all convenient, die before you're fifty. It my take a bit of doing. But I advise this is simply because there is no telling when another Helen Loomis might be born. It would be dreadful, wouldn't it, if you lived on to be very very old and some afternoon in 1999 walked down Main street and saw me standing there, aged twenty-one, and the whole thing out of balance again? ~ Ray Bradbury

Remember is the last month,' said Festival.
'Remember's not a month.'
'Of course it is,' said Festival. 'There are twelve months thirty days long and the five days at the end of the year that are left over are called Remember. It's when we all remember what happened in the past year, all the people who were born and all the people who died. You have to have Remember, otherwise you'd start the next year out of balance. ~ Colin Thompson

She's kind of funny looking. Her face is out of balance
broad forehead, button
nose, freckled cheeks, and pointy ears. A slammed-together, rough sort of face you can't ignore. Still, the whole package isn't so bad. For all I know maybe she's not so wild
about her own looks, but she seems comfortable with who she is, and that's the important thing. ~ Haruki Murakami

Certain things do not effect me anymore, which is not always good. There is always commotion, but I notice that hardly anything affects me or puts me out of balance. ~ Ruud Van Nistelrooy

We have accumulated a wealth of historical experience which confirms our belief that the scales of American justice are out of balance. ~ Angela Davis

Kirby didn't notice him immediately as she stood shyly beside Castle, looking out of place. Grip, and a few of the niggas were posted in VIP when the captain of their crew arrived fashionably late. Now that business was taken care of, they were blowing cash and sipping codeine like it was Kool-Aid. A colorful selection of women was sprinkled throughout their section, each one hoping to claim a made man. Same shit. Different state. ~ Pebbles Starr

I know you don't want to see me because I'm "dangerous," "deranged," and "possibly the worst being ever created by Zeus - or anyone." But underneath this chiseled, bronzed exterior beats a heart of gold, probably. You'll never know the truth unless you come out of hiding and take another peek under my hood. ~ Gena Showalter

Yes, I am aware that I have become a caricature. I've thought about this. Conceptually, what I'd like to do is the equivalent of writing myself out of the script. ~ Phil Collins

I just thought I should warn you that the second we walk into the apartment, I am going to maul the fuck out of you. I don't care if you're tired or bruised or scratched. You'll just be more so when I'm finished. ~ Karina Halle

Our policy is guided by the principle that we will keep unauthorized aliens out of the United States, welcome legal immigrants, and protect refugees from harm. Our solutions rely on working in partnership with States and communities. ~ William J. Clinton

Have you ever truly, keenly felt like you don't know who you are? Do you ever do something and think, Who is at the controls? Like some mad pilot has locked you out of the cockpit? I definitely do. I feel a kind of vertigo that makes me shake afterwards. I guess we all feel it when making a difficult-seeming choice, and sometimes you seriously don't know what you want because you don't know who you're supposed to be, or who you want to be. Physics, my first and second families, my philosophy degree, had all failed to help me answer that question. The former has led me to wonder whether I am one of an infinite number of Alices in multiple universes. A quantum fuck-up, which is someone who fucks up in every one of those universes but in different ways. ~ Olivia Sudjic

Carbon nanotubes are amazing because they're really good electrical conductors, yet they are only a few atoms in diameter. You can make transistors out of them in the same way you can with silicon. At Berkeley, we made the narrowest device anybody had ever made. It was basically a single molecule. ~ Paul McEuen

I'd seen so many people become stagnant in New Jersey - I had this fear I'd just stay there. They'd come out of high school, get a job, get married, have kids and die in Jersey. I wanted more. ~ Frankie Valli

For most people, having company for more than three of four days is a serious mistake, the equivalent to sawing a large hole in the roof and leaving all the doors and windows open in the middle of winter. Out of a desire to be helpful or the need to be kind, they let themselves in for prolonged spells of entertaining, forfeit their privacy and their easy understanding, knowing that the result will be an estrangement―however temporary―between husband and wife, and that nothing proportionate to this is to be gained by the giving up of beds, the endless succession of heavy meals, the afternoon drives. Either the human race is incurably hospitable or else people forget from one time to the next, as women forget the pains of labor, how weeks and months are lost that can never be recovered.
The guest also loses―even the so-called easy guest who makes her own bed, helps with the dishes and doesn't require entertaining. She sees things no outsider should see, overhears whispered conversations about herself from two rooms away, finds old letters in books, and is sooner or later the cause of and witness to scenes that because of her presence do not clear the air. When she has left, she expects to go on being a part of the family she has stayed with so happily and for so long; she expects to be remembered; instead of which, her letters, full of intimate references and family jokes, go unanswered. She sends beautiful presents to the children at a time when she really cannot afford a ~ William Maxwell

In a moment of crisis we don't act out of reasoned judgment but on our conditioned reflexes. We may be able to send men to the moon, but we'd better remember we're still closely related to Pavlov's dog. Think about driving a car: only the beginning driver thinks as he performs each action; the seasoned driver's body works kinesthetically ... A driver prevents an accident because of his conditioned reflexes; hands and feet respond more quickly than thought. I'm convinced the same thing is true in all other kinds of crisis, too. We react to our conditioning built up of every single decision we've made all our lives; who we have used as our mirrors, as our points of reference. If our slow and reasoned decisions are generally wise, those which have to be made quickly are apt to be wise, too. If our reasoned decisions are foolish, so will be those of the sudden situation. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

He felt a stab of satisfaction at the way her cheeks colored and her eyes darkened with trepidation. Her emotions showed readily on her face. She had translucent skin that colored easily, and it would be tempting to spend his time provoking a reaction out of her. She was a match for him in more ways than one. ~ Colleen Coble

But my daughter, not minding, scampered off towards the pond. I ran after her, out of breath. A weeping willow stood at the point where the side path joined the main one. As it caught the rays of the sinking sun full on, its brightness was dazzling to eyes grown accustomed to the shadows. My daughter was jumping up and down, trying to grab one of the willow's dangling branches. All right, I would wow her by grabbing a whole bunch. Shading my eyes with one hand, I approached my daughter in the light. ~ Yūko Tsushima

An even, straight path is attractive. Its predictable routine perpetuates with no extra effort required. It becomes autopilot that leads to endless same old thing.

An uneven, windy path is unavoidable to many. Its unforeseen, exciting adventures require balance, adjustment, alertness and attention. A path that leads to a rewarding dream of your life. ~ Miriam Hurdle

...so I took it out with me into the garden, because the dullest book takes on a certain saving grace if read out of doors, just as bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eaten under a tree. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

Outside I hopped into our vehicle, the taint of vampiric magic clinging to me like greasy smoke.
"I feel soiled."
"Like walking into a room after a day of work, falling into bed, and realizing the sheets are covered in cold K-Y jelly," Raphael said.
I just stared at him.
"With a funky smell," he added.
My Order conditioning failed me. "Ew."
Raphael grinned.
"I‟m not even going to ask if that‟s happened to you."
I started the vehicle. "Has that happened to you?"
"Yes."
Ew. "Where?"
"In the bouda house. I was really tired and you‟ve seen that place: everything smells like sex . . ."
"I don‟t want to know." I peeled out of the parking lot.
"So where are we going?"
"To Spider Lynn‟s house. We‟re going to dig through her trash, and if that doesn‟t work, we‟ll do some breaking and entering."
Raphael frowned. "Do you know where she lives?"
"Yes. I memorized the addresses of all the Masters of the Dead in the city. I have a lot of time on my hands."
He squinted at me, looking remarkably like a gentleman pirate from my favorite romance
novels. "What else do you store in your head?"
"This and that. I remember the first thing you ever said to me. You know, when you carried me from the cart into the tub so your mother could fix me."
"I imagine it was something very romantic," he said. "Something along the lines of „I‟ve got you‟ or „I won‟t let you die.‟
"I was ble ~ Ilona Andrews

Little gusts of sunshine blew, strangely bright, and lit up the celandines at the wood's edge, under the hazel-rods, they spangled out bright and yellow. And the wood was still, stiller, but yet gusty with crossing sun. The first windflowers were out, and all the wood seemed pale with the pallor of endless little anemones, sprinkling the shaken floor. 'The world has grown pale with thy breath.' But it was the breath of Persephone, this time; she came out of hell on a cold morning. Cold breaths of wind came, and overhead there was an anger of entangled wind caught among the twigs. It, too, was caught and trying to tear itself free, the wind, like Absalom. How cold the anemones looked, bobbing their naked white shoulders over crinoline skirts of green. But they stood it. A few first bleached little primroses too, by the path, and yellow buds unfolding themselves. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Did I go out of my way looking for trouble, you ask. Well, not exactly. Perhaps it was the inner voice that warned me that someday I would write it all down, so it better be entertaining. ~ Derek Hart

But maybe time was invented so that misery might have an end. So that it shouldn't last forever? There may be something in this. And bliss, just the opposite, is eternal? There is no time in bliss. All the clocks were thrown out of heaven. ~ Saul Bellow

The limits of prudence: one cannot jump out of a burning building gradually. ~ Mason Cooley