Retreat Quotes

Dear Night! this world's defeat; The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb; The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat Which none disturb! Christ's progress, and His prayer-time; The hours to which high Heaven cloth chime. ~ Henry Vaughan

The first truth about mortals is that none of us wants to die, but all of us are going to. It's in the name – mortals – the dying ones. If you don't understand that bit, you won't understand the rest of it. Here you are, some 5-hundred years old and you haven't yet figured out something that a 3 year old human is starting to understand. You see, as soon as we can even think, our brains are wrapping themselves around that One Truth, that one offensive, undeniable, irrevocable Truth. The rest of our existence grows up in the shadow of a dead leaning tree, which will at one point in the not unimaginable future fall and crush all that has grown up beneath it…



…Rescue them for what? Why from dying! Does that mean they won't die? No, it just means they won't die today. At best, we're talking about delaying the inevitable death sentence laid on our friends. Now how does this particular truth strike you, Mister Immortal…?



…And why? Why not merely stand now and fall sooner rather than later? Because there is something precious and sacred about rearguard action. It's an active retreat that's been repeated valiantly and ceaselessly from the beginning of mortal time. It just seems wrong to give up. It seems invalid and invalorous. More importantly, it's indecent to simply lie down and be overrun…



…Instead we rage against it and sing our defiance through bloodied teeth. Somehow, in our pointless battle, we find moment ~ J. Robert King

If hemp could supply the energy needs of the United States, its value would be inestimable. Now that the drug czar is in final retreat, America has an opportunity to, once and for all, say farewell to the Exxon Valdez, Saddam Hussein and a prohibitively expensive brinkmanship in the desert sands of Saudi Arabia. ~ Hugh Downs

In the world God wills work, marriage, government, and church, and God wills all these, each in its own way, through Christ, toward Christ, and in Christ. God has placed human beings under all these mandates, not only each individual under one or the other, but all people under all four. There can be no retreat, therefore, from a "worldly" into a "spiritual" "realm." The practice of the Christian life can be learned only under these four mandates of God. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When one illusion vanishes, another shall appear, and, still leading me forward towards an horizon that retreats as I advance, the happy prospect of futurity shall vanish only with my existence. ~ Maria Edgeworth

Age should fly concourse, cover in retreat defects of judgment, and the will subdue; walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore of that vast ocean it must sail so soon. ~ Edward Young

My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack. ~ Ferdinand Foch

When strong, appear weak. Brave, appear fearful. Orderly, appear chaotic. Full, appear empty. Wise, appear foolish. Many, appear to be few. Advancing, appear to retreat. Moving quickly, appear to be slow. Taking, appear to leave. In one place, appear to be in another. ~ Sun Tzu

We were facing a great number of uncertainties and dangers. First, whether the Russians would treat us decently, us who had lived through the German occupation; whether the survivors from Transnistria would come back; how many had survived the retreat of the Germans; whether our friends and relatives in the Russian army and those who had fled voluntarily would come home; whether any of them had survived the almost three years of war; whether we'll have food to survive. The Russian military, in pursuit of the retreating Germans, were angry, aggressive and contemptuous of the local population. The ubiquitous question: Why did they kill all the other Jews and left you alive? That thought implied that the survivors were all collaborators of the Nazis, whether they were Jewish or not. ~ Pearl Fichman

The particular thing about science is to combine that [the dreams of obtaining power] with a retreat from the world. Other people want to obtain power by going out into the world, but the scientist really wants to obtain power by retreating from the world. ~ Max Delbruck

By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness ... I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory ... Let "desire" be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping ~ Emil Cioran

When you view (or think about) porn, a crummy feeling comes over you. It's the feeling of shame, or something like it. Shame changes your self view. It changes who you think you are, how you see yourself. You see yourself as ugly, and an undercurrent of resentment may start boiling up underneath. When you have this kind of self perception, you can't be vulnerable and open to the world. You can't allow yourself to be who you are. You have to keep your true self hidden from the world. You can't have intimacy. Intimacy is key to having a real relationship with anybody. When you view pornography, you destroy the possibility of intimacy with a partner and others, so a real relationship becomes impossible. You retreat out of interdependence with the world and into isolation where you can indulge in your addiction.

Along with the feeling of shame is the annihilation of boundaries. You can't defend yourself emotionally in the world. Words strike your soul while you're reeling from addiction. Everything hits you where it hurts. Minor inquiries by others feel like investigations of you. Your soul can't bear being seen, yet it's exposed entirely. The only recourse in a big, hurtful world, it seems, is to retreat and lick your wounds with the addiction again. ~ Fahad Shah

When you've had a life of overthinking, you have the same reaction time and time again. Shyness becomes habitual. When you're put in an unfamiliar situation, all you want to do is retreat and hide by default. You watch but don't participate. You listen but don't respond. You read, but rarely comment. You take a photo, but you rarely post. You write, but you rarely publish. All of this is because your overthinking mind cannot stop thinking about how you will be perceived by the outside world. ~ Joel Annesley

How about we never talk about what happened and why I feel the way I feel. We just pretend that everything is fine and I just scrub myself red every night, allowing my mind and body to retreat into oblivion. Yup sounds like the perfect plan. ~ Astrid Lee Miles

What do we suppose the damned find harder to bear - the justice of God, or the sheer childlike innocence of his mercy? Old and hardened sinners can talk about debts and payment and vengeance. But before the clear brow of the child they must retreat in shame. Be advised, fellow sinners. Our God is younger than we. ~ Peter John Cameron

Let no man deceive you with vain words or vain hopes or false notions of a slight and sudden repentance. As if heaven were a hospital founded on purpose to receive all sick and maimed persons that, when they can live no longer to the lusts of the flesh and the sinful pleasures of this world, can but put up a cold and formal petition to be admitted there. No, no, as sure as God is true, they shall never see the Kingdom of God who, instead of seeking it in the first place, make it their last refuge and retreat. ~ John Tillotson

The last night of retreat, after Mass, the hundreds of them sat by candlelight in the huge gymnasium. It smelled like incense and whatever hope was made out of. ~ Jenny Bravo

But you must decide whether you are going to pursue reality and health or to retreat into your fantasies . You have the right to retreat , but do it all the way and take up residency at the state hospital . You will be well cared for there . If you decide for reality , you will have a long fight ahead , but I can assure you that reality is worth the fight . When you make up your mind , let me know . ~ Talitha Day Fair

In his fitful eastward progress through Belgium and Germany that winter, my grandfather had shared all manner of billets: with dogfaces and officers, in misery and in comfort, in attack and in retreat, and pinned down by snow or German ordnance. He had bedded down under a bearskin in a schloss and in foxholes flecked pink with the tissue of previous occupants. If an hour's sleep were to be had, he seized it, in the bedrooms or basements of elegant townhouses, in ravaged hotels, on clean straw and straw that crawled with vermin, on featherbeds and canvas webbing slung across the bed of a half-truck, on mud, sandbags, and raw pine planks. However wretched, accommodations were always better or no worse than those on the enemy side. ~ Michael Chabon

Nansen had moreover introduced a startling new concept into Polar exploration. He had deliberately cut off his lines of retreat. His route was from the desolate east coast to the inhabited west. This was not bravado, but calculated exploitation of the instinct of self-preservation. It drove him on; there was no incentive to look back. ~ Roland Huntford

Rachel shook her head, as if casting out the memories from her mind. Something he'd been unable to do in one hundred and ninety-eight years. Memories, painful and stark, failed to retreat, instead they clung to him like a Rottweiler to a bone. ~ D.A. Rhine

Every act of kindness, each moment spent in prayer, and every expression of love in the name of Christ pierces the heart of the enemy and sends him into retreat. These are the gentle weapons of the kingdom. ~ Richard Stearns

Theology can be useful only when it does not retreat from the divine judgment that accompanies the work of all men, but, instead unreservedly exposes and submits itself to this judgment. Only by not rejecting or resisting the threat that encounters it, but, instead, acknowledging it propriety, reconciling itself to it, and enduring and bearing it, can theology become useful. ~ Karl Barth

I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat. ~ Sylvester Stallone

I retreat to my room and lock the door. Lying on my bed, my brain cyclones with thoughts of men and boys and boys and men. All making the wrong choices. ~ S.M. Parker

Being the Stream
Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the
stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream,
so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies.
Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally
into it. ~ Gary Snyder

He found on the spot the image of his recent history; he was like one of the figures of the old clock at Berne. THEY came out, on one side, at their hour, jigged along their little course in the public eye, and went in on the other side. He too had jigged his little course
him too a modest retreat awaited. ~ Henry James

Across a golden Autumn tapestry appear the spirits of our ancient selves demanding recognition and reward for one haunted night. Sated, they retreat from winter's onslaught and retire to subconscious hibernation for another twelvemonth. ~ Stewart Stafford

A fool shouts charge when he should retreat, A coward shouts retreat when he should charge and a wise man knows the difference. I charge. ~ Tonny K. Brown

What I couldn't make sense of, what I couldn't figure out in any way, shape, or form, was why Lucy Cutting had found nothing in the neat-to-the-point-of-anal records on Natalie and Todd's nuptials. And why the hell had no one heard of the Creative Recharge retreat? I couldn't get that to mesh. So now what? I had come here in hopes of . . . of what? Of learning Todd's last name for one thing. That could end this pretty quickly. If not, perhaps someone here still kept in touch with Natalie. That could end this all pretty quickly too. "Promise ~ Harlan Coben

He was silent. Well! Now she knew how right she had been. He was not in the least in love with her, and very happy she was to know it, All she wanted was a suitable retreat, such as a lumber-room, or a coal-cellar, in which to enjoy her happiness to the full. ~ Georgette Heyer

We all retreat into ourselves in some way. ~ Dan Simmons

Where one, without fault is placed under circumstances sufficient to excite the fears of it reasonable man that another designs to commit it felony, or some great bodily injury upon him, and to afford grounds for reasonable belief that there is imminent clanger of the accomplishment of his design, lie may, acting under these fears alone, slay his assailant and be justified by the appearances. And as where the attack is sudden and the danger inuninent, lie may increase his peril by retreat; so situated, he may stand his ground ... and .slay his aggressor, even if it he proved lie might more easily have gained by Jli~rht. ~ Richard Maxwell Brown

On the heels of his words, the front window exploded. As if time slowed down, he watched the shards of glass scatter across the floor, luminous crystals dancing about the wooden slats of the floor like insects scurrying in choreographed retreat. ~ Barry Brennessel

Two chimpanzees were observed maltreating a chicken: One would extend some food to the fowl, encouraging it to approach; whereupon the other would thrust at it with a piece of wire it had concealed behind its back. The chicken would retreat but soon allow itself to approach once again
and be beaten once again. Here is a fine combination of behavior sometimes thought to be uniquely human: cooperation, planning a future course of action, deception and cruelty. ~ Carl Sagan

Two of us in this room, Ace, two keycards," he said and my eyes went to him. When they did, he jerked his hand, finger extended to the door. "Know what this is?"
"A door?" I asked stupidly.
"A peephole," he bit back then moved his hand to flick the security latch closed. "Know what that is?"
"Captain -"
He advanced and the aggressive way he did it made me retreat. It was dawning on me he was pissed and he wasn't pissed at Brad (that's her ex). He was pissed at me.
I stopped when my legs hit the chair to the desk. He stopped when he was in my space. I tilted my head way back to look at him.
"You got great hair, babe."
"Tate -"
"Thick."
"Tate -"
"Soft."
"Tate," I whispered.
"Shame it gets hacked off with a knife after some guy rapes you with that knife!" He finished on a roar.
My body jolted.
"Tate!"
"There's bad guys out there, Ace. Bad. Do things to you that'll make you glad you end up dead. You don't open a goddamned door not knowin' who's behind it."
"I thought it was you."
"Well it wasn't."
"Tate - ~ Kristen Ashley

The classic decision is always the same, whether to retreat or go on. There comes a time when it is easier to continue upward, when the summit, in fact, is the only way out. At such a moment one must still have strength. ~ James Salter

She is playing a game that she doesn't want to play, but can't seem to quit. As a player she wishes to see how the game concludes, but she also wishes the other player would retreat. She wants to win after-all and she makes for a sore loser, but her combatant uses his moves to keep her off-guard and primed for his advance. Should she block him, outmaneuver him, or just play dead until his back is turned? Isn't the last the way of the female? ~ Donna Lynn Hope

The choice to avoid risk is the choice to avoid living, and to avoid living is one of the greatest risk of all. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I shall never surrender or retreat. ~ William B. Travis

Presumably, the bells of the Church of the Ascension had been reclaimed by the Bolsheviks for the manufacture of artillery, thus returning them to the realm from whence they came. Though for all the Count knew, the cannons that had been salvaged from Napoleon's retreat to make the Ascension's bells had been forged by the French from the bells at La Rochelle; which in turn had been forged from British blunderbusses seized in the Thirty Years War. From bells to cannons and back again, from now until the end of time. ~ Amor Towles

Time ... advances like the slowest tide, but retreats like the swiftest torrent. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Maybe poets express more directly a sense of sympathy for other human beings. Painting is a little bit more of a retreat from human beings in real life; painting is more about the extreme moments when speech doesn't help anymore. ~ Francesco Clemente

He wanted to bring up his plan for a retreat, but something told him not to. "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" he opened instead. "Yes," Grant replied chewing on a cigar. "Lick 'em tomorrow, though."75 ~ Robert L. O'Connell

The difficult is what takes a little time. The impossible is what takes a little longer. ~ Fridtjof Nansen

[A] person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if: (1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself. ~ Lisa Bloom

Our challenge as introverts is to adopt the attitude, based on the introversion assumption, that your need to retreat requires no explanation - it is self-evident. ~ Laurie A. Helgoe

Protect your heart from thoughtless people
who have no regard
for the damage they cause.
For they are reckless in their pursuit and
hasty in their retreat,
taking only what they wanted and leaving
you to deal with the aftermath. ~ Liz Newman

David Cameron's approach has left Britain weakened and weary because to retreat from the world is as foolish as it is futile. ~ Douglas Alexander

For several days, I slept. Whether this was a necessary part of physical recovery, or a stubborn retreat from waking reality, I do not know, but I woke only reluctantly to take a little food, falling at once back into a stupor of oblivion, as though the small, warm weight of broth in my stomach were an anchor that pulled me after it, down through the murky fathoms of sleep. ~ Diana Gabaldon

It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. ~ Jodi Picoult

Then everyone would retreat for a nap, after which we would have coffee and cake, sometimes an argument. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

This attitude of mind - this attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, we cannot retreat from it anymore. ~ Richard P. Feynman

To be set on fire, you must get close to God. When you feel cold, distant, and "out of it" spiritually, it's time to retreat to the closet, place yourself before the fireplace of His word, and allow the intensity of His face to restore your fervency. ~ Bob Sorge

The ongoing changes in the distribution of global power and mounting global strife make it all the more imperative that America not retreat into an ignorant garrison-state mentality or wallow in self-righteous cultural hedonism ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

So if anyone is to declare how the all was in this way genuinely born, he must also mix in the form of the wandering cause-how it is its nature to sweep things around. In this way, then, we must retreat, and, by taking in turn another, new beginning suited to these very matters, just as in what was before us earlier, so too in what is before us now, we must begin again from the beginning. ~ Plato

Within you is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself. - Hermann Hesse ~ Steve Martin

There are countries in which the communal provision of housing, transport, education and health care is so inferior that inhabitants will naturally seek to escape involvement with the masses by barricading themselves behind solid walls. The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where 'ordinary' life fails to answer a median need for dignity or comfort.

Then there are communities - far fewer in number and typically imbued with a strong (often Protestant) Christian heritage - whose public realms exude respect in their principles and architecture, and whose citizens are therefore under less compulsion to retreat into a private domain. Indeed, we may find that some of our ambitions for personal glory fade when the public spaces and facilities to which we enjoy access are themselves glorious to behold; in such a context, ordinary citizenship may come to seem an adequate goal. In Switzerland's largest city, for instance, the need to own a car in order to avoid sharing a bus or train with strangers loses some of the urgency it has in Los Angeles or London, thanks to Zurich's superlative train network, which is clean, safe, warm and edifying in its punctuality and technical prowess. There is little reason to travel in an automotive cocoon when, for a fare of only a few francs, an efficient, stately tramway will provide transport from point A to point B at a level of comfort an emperor might have envied.

One insight to be drawn from Christia ~ Alain De Botton

The heavy casualties, the constant retreat, the shortage of food and munitions, the difficulty of receiving reinforcements ... all this had a very bad effect on morale. Many longed to get across the Volga, to escape the hell of Stalingrad. ~ Vasily Chuikov

Tell yourself that the world is outside, that it's not to be hidden from you, that you are going to thrust yourself forward and be relaxed in the world. You have chosen a field where you're going to be hurt to the blood. But to retreat from the pain is death ~ Stella Adler

A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety nine retreat; That is progress. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

He understood privacy and freedom of expression were paramount to liberty, as incompatible as they may appear. One promoted yelling and screaming, while the other encouraged people to retreat and pull within. Yet, cornerstones to American democracy, people needed them both for the lives they took for granted. ~ Shelter Somerset

I sat on a bench and did what, as a girl, I had done whenever I needed to calm myself: instead of pressing the button with the number 4 on it, I let myself go up to the sixth floor. That space had been empty and dark for many years, ever since the lawyer who had his office there had left, taking with him even the light bulb from the landing. When the elevator stopped, I let my breath glide into my stomach and then return slowly to my throat. As always, after a few seconds, the light in the elevator went out, too. I thought of reaching my hand out to one of the door handles: you had only to pull it and the light would return. But I didn't move and continued to send my breath deep into my body. The only sound was that of the woodworms eating into the panelled walls.

Just a few months earlier (five, six?), on a sudden impulse, I had revealed to my mother, during one of my brief visits, that as an adolescent I used to retreat to that secret place, and I brought her up there, to the top. Maybe I wanted to try to establish an intimacy that there had never been, maybe I wanted to let her know in some confused way that I had always been unhappy. But she seemed to me only amused by the fact that I had sat suspended in the void, in a dilapidated elevator. ~ Elena Ferrante

Sometimes advance is the best form of retreat. ~ Mark Lawrence

Almost everyone stopped when he did, but Enaila and Jalani exchanged glances and kept on right past him toward the garden. He raised his voice a fraction and hardened it considerably more. "The Maidens here will come with me. Anyone who wants to put on a dress and discuss matchmaking can stay behind."
..................................
Bashere motioned, and one of the younger Saldaeans loped ahead in that rolling stride of a man more used to a saddle. "A man must know when to retreat from a woman," Bashere said to the air, "but a wise man knows that sometimes he must stand and face her."

"Young men," Bael said indulgently. "A young man chases shadows and runs from moonlight, and in the end he stabs himself in the foot with his own spear." Some of the other Aiel chuckled, Maidens and Knife Hands alike. The older ones did.

Irritated, Rand looked over his shoulder again. "Neither of you would look well in a dress." Surprisingly, the Maidens and Knife Hands laughed again, more loudly. Maybe he was getting a grip on Aiel humor. ~ Robert Jordan

Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment. ~ Andre Maurois

I am running away but I prefer to call it a strategic retreat. ~ Tennessee Williams

The energies that make us act out of anger,fear,insecurity and doubt are extremely familiar. They are like an old,dark house we return to whenever things get too hard to handle.It feels risky to leave this house and see what's outside,yet we have to leave if we expect to be loved.

So we take the risk.We walk out into the light and offer ourselves to the beloved.This feels wonderful;it's like nothing we have imagined in our old,dark house.But when things get tough,we run back inside,we choose familiarity to fear and lovelessness over the vulnerability of love, until finally we feel safe enough to go back and try love again.

This is essentially the rhythm of every intimate relationship-risk and retreat. Over and over we repeat this rhythm,accepting love and pushing it away until finally something miraculous happiness. The old,dark house isn't necessary anymore.We look around, and we have a new house, a house of light. Where did it come from?How did we build it? It was built from the love of the heart.It has silently been weaving our higher and lower natures,blending fear,anger,survival and protection into the energies of devotion,trust,compassion and acceptance. ~ Deepak Chopra

This is where we can find the greatest relief and joy everyday: falling under thought, anxiety, worry and all forms of me, into stillness; losing oneself in compelling engagements that transcend ambition, strategy, self-gain and self-consciousness. ~ Darrell Calkins

In a position of this sort, even though the enemy should offer us an attractive bait, it will be advisable not to stir forth, but rather to retreat, thus enticing the enemy in his turn; then, when part of his army has come out, we may deliver our attack with advantage. ~ Sun Tzu

Solitary. But not in the sense of being alone. Not solitary in the way Thoreau was, for example, exiling himself in order to find out where he was; not solitary in the way Jonah was, praying for deliverance in the belly of the whale. Solitary in the sense of retreat. In the sense of not having to see himself, of not having to see himself being seen by anyone else. ~ Paul Auster

How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer them suitable nesting retreats! ~ John Burroughs

Stomach-sleepers like me were in retreat from reality, given to dark perception and the meditative arts. This ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

The Nazis have no sense of humor, so why should they want television? Anyhow, they killed most of the really great comedians. Because most of them were Jewish. In fact, she realized, they killed off most of the entertainment field. I wonder how Hope gets away with what he says. Of course, he has to broadcast from Canada. And it's a little freer up there. But Hope really says things. Like the joke about Goring . . . the one where Goring buys Rome and has it shipped to his mountain retreat and then set up again. And revives Christianity so his pet lions will have something to - ~ Philip K. Dick

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tereza lives with Tomas, but her love requires mobilization of all her strength, and suddenly she can't go on, she longs to retreat down below, to where she came from. And I ask myself: What is happening with her? And this is the answer I find: She is overcome by vertigo. But what is vertigo? I look for a definition and I say: "A heady, insuperable longing to fall." But immediately I correct myself, I sharpen the definition: Vertigo is "the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down. Vertigo is one of the keys to understanding Tereza ~ Milan Kundera

It is the favourite stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own. ~ George Eliot

Sadism dominates the culture. It runs like an electric current through reality television and trash-talk programs, is at the core of pornography, and fuels the compliant, corporate collective. Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice and diminishing the individual to force him or her into an ostensibly harmonious collective. This hypermasculinity has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our lack of compassion for our homeless, our poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed, and the sick ... We accept the system handed to us and seek to find a comfortable place within it. We retreat into the narrow, confined ghettos created for us and shut our eyes to the deadly superstructure of the corporate state. ~ Chris Hedges

It is generally the trustful and optimistic people who can afford to retreat. The loveless and faithless ones are compelled by their pessimism to attack. ~ T.H. White

What would happen if you couldn't forget, if every emotion from every person whose grief you'd eaten came back up? It could happen if something went wrong with the formula millions and millions of permutations down the line. A thousand falling men landing on you.
Nneoma tried to retreat, to close her eyes and unsee, but she couldn't. Instinct took over and she raced to calculate it all. The breadth of it was so
vast, too vast. It was just her and Kioni together, their burden excessive, even for two. The last clear thought she would ever have was of her father, how crimson his burden had been when she'd tried to shoulder it, and how very pale it all seemed now. ~ Lesley Nneka Arimah

You'll do fine if you have any strength at all, but listen to your Green angel and give yourself more exit points. You're in for some rude awakenings in battle, and young souls often retreat under fire. You'll end up trying to find a shortcut back home and that always makes a big mess. ~ Dawn Jayne

No, what numbed these fields, peopled with bad dreams was not the oppressive grip of a plague but rather an ailing retreat, a sort of sad widowhood. Man had started to subdue these vacant expanses, then had grown weary of eating into it, and now even the desire to preserve what had been claimed had perished. He had established everywhere an ebb, a sorrowful withdrawal. His cuttings into the forest, which were seen at long intervals, had lost their hard edges, their distinct notches: now a thick brushwood had driven its sabbath into the broad daylight of the glades, hiding the naked trunks as high as their lowest branches. ~ Julien Gracq

I think a lot of Hollywood is in retreat right now trying to figure out how to make money and make the safest bets. ~ Judd Apatow

If I'm upset, hold me and tell me how beautiful I am.
If I growl, retreat to a safe distance and throw chocolate.
- BEST. ADVICE. EVER. ~ Darynda Jones

The life of Dumas is not only a monument of endeavour and success, it is a sort of labyrinth as well. It abounds in pseudonyms and disguises, in sudden and unexpected appearances and retreats as unexpected and sudden, in scandals and in rumours, in mysteries and traps and ambuscades of every kind. ~ William Ernest Henley

Most fathers don't see the war within the daughter, her struggles with conflicting images of the idealized and flawed father, her temptation both to retreat to Daddy's lap and protection and to push out of his embrace to that of beau and the world beyond home. ~ Victoria Secunda

Had Martha Foley returned William [James Sidis]'s passion as Margaret [Engemann] did Norbert [Wiener]'s, perhaps the two prodigies would have had more in common in the long run. ... In the life of a prodigy, perhaps more than in the average life, a marriage or a requited love is the greatest single factor that can heal the old childhood wounds. William and Norbert's response to their childhood and teenage rejections and humiliations was to retreat into the painless world of ideas, where successes and satisfactions abounded. A successful love affair could be the key to reentry into the world of feeling, bridging the gap between the cerebral and the emotional lives. ~ Amy Wallace

All over the world, as governments retreat from their traditional duty to foster the common good and reconceive of themselves as mere managers of national economies, universities have been coming under pressure to turn themselves into training schools equipping young people with the skills required by a modern economy, ~ J.M. Coetzee

Denied a Lenin and deprived of Napoleon, France retreated into the last and, we must hope, indestructible redoubt, the world of Astérix. The postwar vogue for Parisian thinkers barely concealed their collective retreat into Hexagonal introversion and into the ultimate fortress of French intellectuality, Cartesian theory and puns. ~ Eric J. Hobsbawm

It is painful to remember what and who we've lost, but it's also comforting. Grief can become its own comfort...the moment when grief itself overtakes the one grieved. When they become one and the same, so that we fear grief's retreat as much as we feared the beloved's passing. ~ Jessica Mesman Griffith

Haiti was founderd by a righteous revolution in 1804 and became the first black republic. It was the first country to break the chains of slavery, the first to force Emperor Napoleon to retreat, and the only to aid Simón Bolívar in his struggle to liberate the indigenous people and slaves of Latin America from their colonial oppressors. ~ Paul Farmer

More options, even good ones, can freeze us and make us retreat to the default plan, ~ Chip Heath

That first night, I didn't have it all. And I still don't have it all but every piece you give me, baby, I like. So now I want it all and I'm gonna fuckin' get it, Trya. You aren't gonna hold back, you aren't gonna retreat, you aren't gonna push me away and I sure as fuck am not gonna let go. ~ Kristen Ashley

Better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to speak out and confirm that you didn't do the assigned readings before the strategic planning retreat. ~ Abraham Lincoln

In any case, Klossowski, mentioned again during Acéphale's sessional meeting of 25 July 1938, would later return to his opposition between Nietzsche and Bataille in a lecture given in 1941 at the end of a retreat in a Dominican monastery, 'Le Corps du néant', later printed in the first edition of his book Sade my Neighbour (1947) and which Bataille later told him he 'does not like'. Here Klossowski recapitulated the two stages in the evolution of Nietzsche's thought outlined in Löwith's essay 'Nietzsche and the doctrine of the Eternal Return', which he had reviewed in Acéphale 2:
1. Liberation from the Christian YOU MUST to achieve the I WANT of supra-nihilism;
2. Liberation from the I WANT to attain the I AM of superhumanity in the eternal return.
It is precisely in this 'cyclical movement', according to Klossowski, that man 'takes on the immeasurable responsibility of the death of God'. Furthermore, he associates Bataille's negation of God with the negation of utility upon which the notion of expenditure was founded, and hence the source of his 'absolute political nihilism'. His conclusion, however, was a little more ambiguous: 'In his desire to relive the Nietzschean experience of the death of God [...] he did not have the privilege [...] of suffering Nietzsche's punishment: the delirium that transfigures the executioner into a victim [...] To be guilty or not to be, that is his dilemma. His acephality expresses only the unease of a guilt in which conscience ~ Georges Bataille

I look at decisions like - it's like an Indiana Jones movie. The guy comes to a rope ladder, and he's being chased. There's uncertainty on the other side, but he knows when he gets to the other side, he's going to take his machete and cut the rope ladder behind him. He has no retreat. ~ Mark Burnett

Search for the truth. I tell you things and I always ask you to verify what I say. I told you yesterday that there was an attack and a retreat at Saddam's airport. ~ Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

uncaged
it's easy to push people away to retreat into yourself to give only the bare minimum. it's much harder to take that risk to splay open your chest to peel each rib back one by one and bare your heart and soul to a world that might not handle them with the care they deserve. but when you find a person whose mind complements yours, you'll see the reward was well worth the risk. ~ Cyrus Parker

I decided to lock myself in. A forced segregation. Sabbatical. A retreat into myself. My selves. Play hide and go seek in the looking-glass. The mirror angled at the foot of my bed. Twisted reflections bouncing off into infinity. Obsessed with my image, the myriad of distored figurines who danced in front of me in rapid succession, every feature exaggerated, every slight imperfection a new delicacy. ~ Lydia Lunch

Carlo had learned much from his pilgrimage-retreat, and the most important of his insights was the realization that it is essential to make Jesus the focus of the church's life and not the institution, which unfortunately had been the emphasis for the last several centuries. The church is merely the vehicle for bringing Jesus to the world.

Carlo realized that the countries of Europe have turned secular mostly because the people are tired of hearing about church. They hunger for spirituality and intimacy with God, and all we give them is church. Carlo was determined to make Jesus real again for the people, knowing from his own experience that when he preached Jesus to the people, it changed their lives. ~ Joseph F. Girzone

It costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in ... and if he [the sun] is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided. ~ Henry David Thoreau