Sojourn Quotes

Whatever thought grips the mind at the time of death is the one which will propel it and decide for it the nature of its future birth. Thus if one wants to attain god after death, one has to think of him steadfastly ... This is not as simple as it sounds, for at the time of death the mind automatically flies to the thought of an object (i.e. money, love) which has possessed it during its sojourn in the world. Thus one must think of god constantly. ~ Stephen Mitchell

The only profit from their sojourn on Earth would be the memory of this mad species, which had somehow become intelligent without ever learning how to understand themselves. ~ Orson Scott Card

It is a common saying, and in everybody's mouth, that life is but a sojourn. ~ Plato

Muhammad Iqbal, who had spent three rewarding years as a student in Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century, now wrote of it in the satirical tradition of the Illahabadi:
The West develops wonderful new skills
In this as in so many other fields
Its submarines are crocodiles
Its bombers rain destruction from the skies
Its gases so obscure the sky
They blind the sun's world-seeing eye
Dispatch this old fool to the West
To learn the art of killing fast- and best
On his previous trips to the West, Liang, like Tagore and Iqbal, had been a qualified admirer. During his longest sojourn there, he began to develop grave doubts about the civilization that had so blithely thrown away the fruits of progress and rationalism and sunk into barbarism. The 'materialist' West had managed to subdue nature through science and technology and created a Darwinian universe of conflict between individuals, classes and nations. But to what effect? Its materialistic people, constantly desiring ever-new things and constantly being frustrated, were worn out by war, were afflicted with insecurity, and were as far from happiness as ever. ~ Pankaj Mishra

Quote from the 2nd book in the Sojourn Series:

It's funny how quickly things can change, how fragile life is. I still can't come to terms with those six days. I don't know if I ever will, but I do know that I'm not the same person I used to be.

Rayn Mirago ~ B.D. Messick

Contemplating while barefoot on the grounds my father and grandfather walked, I saw my life clearly. With African sun nibbling on my dark skin and gentle winds soothing my foreboding, my past life and current responsibilities overwhelmed me occasionally. Abundant tears flowed freely. Dripping on my face and clothes. Travelling through the ancient roads created by my forefathers, grasslands, trees and anthills kept me company. A lonely journey. I knew that nothing remains the same, but ones past never changes. Even in the loneliness of my past, I accepted that you cannot effectively go forward without knowing how and where you started your journey. Even in that state of near dejection I was aware that my sojourn in foreign lands is not forever, but my lording of this beautiful land, my own Africa, where my spent body will finally rest someday, is for eternity. Nothing remains the same, but nothing ever changes. It depends on how you look at your life. ~ Fidelis O. Mkparu

Of all the exotic aromas and experiences from my sojourn in Ethiopia, it's the frankincense I miss most. ~ Cathleen Falsani

SWEETEST IN THE GALE
by
Michelle Valois

After Emily Dickinson

You won't lose your hair, I heard at the start of treatment, and though I didn't, I lost a litany of other lesser and greater luxuries - saliva, stamina, taste buds, my voice - but my hair, during that chilly sojourn in the land of extremity to which I had sailed on a strange and stormy sea, my hair was not taken from me.

Had it been, I would have perched one of those 18th century wigs on my head, such as those worn by the French aristocracy, measuring three, four, even five feet high and stuffed, as they were known to be, with all sorts of things: ribbons, pearls, jewels, flowers, tunes without words, reproductions of great sailing vessels, my soul inside a little bird cage - ornaments selected to satisfy a theme: the signs of the Zodiac (à la Zodiaque) or the discovery of a new vaccine (à l'inoculation) or, as was the case in June of 1782, the first successful hot air balloon flight by the brothers Michel and Etienne Montgolfier.

Regarde, I exclaim to my ladies in waiting, pointing to the sky on that bright afternoon as the balloon, made of linen and paper, rises some 6,000 feet. Later, a duck, then a sheep, and finally a human is carried away. I watch, inspired, hopeful, whispering, lest my doctors overhear: when the storm turns sore, and that little bird escapes her little bird cage and is abashed without reckoning, I will sail away in my balloon, prepared, ~ Michelle Valois

Thus, in truth, a sojourn in Rome means an expansion of view that is beyond words. Whereas up to that time I had been accustomed to image Christianity to myself as a delicate flower, divine because of its supernatural fragility, now I saw that it was a tree in whose branches the fowls of the air, once the enemies of its tender growth, can lodge in security - divine since the wideness of its reach and the strength of its mighty roots can be accounted for by nothing else. Before I had thought of it as of a fine, sweet aroma, to be appreciated apart; now I saw that it was the leaven, hid in the heavy measures of the world, expressing itself in terms incalculably coarser than itself, until the whole is leavened. ~ Robert Hugh Benson

In the following pages I have endeavoured to describe all that appeared to me most important and interesting among the events and the scenes that came under my notice during my sojourn in the interior of Africa. ~ John Hanning Speke

It had been so brief a sojourn, not even a full century. He had been a guest in a mansion and he was not ungrateful. He was at once exhausted and refreshed. His stay was ended. Now he must gather up the shabby impedimenta of his mind and body and be on his way again. ~ Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

In the human life time is but an instant, and the substance of it a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of certainty. And, to say all in a word, everything that belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after- fame is oblivion. What then can guide a man? One thing and only one, philosophy. ~ Marcus Aurelius

From the beginning of my sojourn in this world there was a persistent vacancy in me where the industry ought to be. (Ought to was is better, perhaps, though the most of the authorities differ as to this. ~ Mark Twain

X.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - "La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
XI.
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.
XII.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing. ~ John Keats

Mind you, I have had in my sojourn on earth as good a time of it as any man, so I can speak with some knowledge. A writer in the Manchester Guardian who is unknown to me lately described me as "the richest man in the world." That sounds a pretty big order, but when I come to think it out I believe he is not far wrong. A rich man is not necessarily a man with a whole pot of money but a man who is really happy. And I am that. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

Science is getting knocked on all sides these days, not only from religious fundamentalists, but from all kinds of people who perceive science as arrogant, one-sided, and the source of the troubles that come with the technology it produces. It's true that individuL scientists can be so arrogant and narrowly focused, they're blind to any but their own truths, and that new discoveries bring new problems with them. Still, I don't know many people who would refuse a biopsy for a newly discovered lump because they think science needs to be taken down a peg or two.

Religion gets knocked for the same kinds of reasons as science: for its arrogance, narowmindedness, and tendency to create more trouble than it's worth. Religion is also accused of concealing reality under a comforting blanket of measureless faith -- the flip side, perhaps of the scientist for whom nothing can be real until she has measured it.

My own sojourn into religion convinced me that good religion reveals rather than conceals. Religion is the soul in search of itself and its relationship to the cosmos. This journey requires looking at all of it: the joy, the sorrow, the beauty and the horror of life. We hope for the best. We want meaning and love to exist not only in ourselves, but in the very soul of the universe. At times this great hope might tempt us to pick and choose only the data that supports our desires. But in religion as in boat-building, the design must be tested in all conditions ~ Margaret D. McGee

She didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?" Akos demanded.
"Cyra was working with us," Teka said. "During the attack on the sojourn ship, I was supposed to take her out--take our Ryzek's Scourge while announcing his fate on the intercom, see?"
"Don't call her that," Akos said. He felt Isae's eyes on him, and his cheeks went hot.
"Yeah, yeah." Teka waved him off. "Well, she bested me, and she let me go. And then she found me, requested a meeting. She offered to give us whatever we wanted--information, help, whatever--if we did something for her in exchange: get you out of Shotet." Teka looked at Jorek. "That's why she didn't tell him. Because she wanted to get him out, but he wouldn't leave without his brother."
Jorek clicked his tongue.
Those weeks after Ryzek had threatened him, after Cyra tortured Zosita and kept up appearances on Pitha, she had let him think she was just doing whatever Ryzek said. Let Akos believe the worst of her. And all that time she was out working with renegades, giving whatever she could to get him out. It was like she had become someone new and he hadn't even noticed. ~ Veronica Roth

He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Ah, guilt and sorrow had dogged Juan's footsteps too, for he was not a Catholic who could rise refreshed from the cold bath of confession. Yet the banality stood: that the past was irrevocably past. And conscience had been given man to regret it only in so far as that might change the future. For man, every man, Juan seemed to be telling him, even as Mexico, must ceaselessly struggle upward. What was life but a warfare and a stranger's sojourn? ~ Malcolm Lowry

You view the gods as entities without," Montolio tried to explain. "You see them as physical beings trying to control our actions for their own ends, and thus you, in your stubborn independance, reject them. The gods are within, I say, whether one has named his own or not. You have followed Mielikki all your life, Drizzt. You merely never had a name to put on your heart. ~ R.A. Salvatore

In ancient times before the divine sojourn of the Savior took place, even to the saints death was terrible; all wept for the dead as though they perished. But now that the Savior has raised his body, death is no longer terrible; for all who believe in Christ trample on it as it were nothing and choose rather to die than deny their faith in Christ. And that devil that once maliciously exulted in death, now that its pains were loosed, remained the only one truly dead. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

I must sojourn once to the ballot-box before I die. I hear the ballot-box is a beautiful glass globe, so you can see all the votesas they go in. Now, the first time I vote I'll see if the woman's vote looks any different from the rest
if it makes any stir or commotion. If it don't inside, it need not outside. ~ Sojourner Truth

Our sojourn in mortality is a period of probation, a time of trial and testing to see if we will do whatever the Lord commands us to do. ~ Russell M. Nelson

Simply put, DHARMA is Dhya (Aim) mein (unto) raman (walkabout) - Sojourn Unto the [Ultimate] Aim [the Truth of What Is- God]. ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

Choose what will motivate you in life as a whole. Will it be Love or Fear that sets you apart in this lifetime? Karma has no hold on our souls greater than a love known as grace. Or a fear of sheer torment during this sojourn of our Earthly trek. If you choose poorly then you shall be preyed upon and easily manipulated by your peers via numerous tactics of hate at large. If again you choose wisely than keep on your guard using reason with an unconditional love. Because a
conditional love is flawed as a mixture of demands placed on it by the frail ego always. It has no place being called love in the absolute eyes of God(dess). ~ Ivan Alexander Pozo-Illas

My mother took us there once," Cyra was saying. "That's where I learned to swim, in a special suit that protected against the cold. It might have come in handy on the last sojourn."
"Yes, you went to Pitha, didn't you?" Sifa said. "You were there, weren't you, Akos?"
"Yes," he said. "Spent most of my time there on an island of trash. ~ Veronica Roth

Life in this world," he said, "is, as it were, a sojourn in a cave. What can we know of reality? For all we see of the true nature of existence is, shall we say, no more than bewildering and amusing shadows cast upon the inner wall of the cave by the unseen blinding light of absolute truth, from which we may or may not deduce some glimmer of veracity, and we as troglodyte seekers of wisdom can only lift our voices to the unseen and say, humbly, 'Go on, do Deformed Rabbit . . . it's my favorite.' ~ Terry Pratchett

Each of us is here for a brief sojourn, for what purpose he knows not, though sometimes he thinks he feels it ~ Albert Einstein

In how many families do you hear the legend that all the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms of one who is not. It is as if heaven had an especial band of angels, whose office it was to sojourn for a season here, and endear to them the wayward human heart, that they might bear it upward with them in their homewoard flight. When you see that deep, spiritual light in the eye,
when the little soul reveals itself in words sweeter and wiser than the ordinary words of children,
hope not to retain that child, for the seal of heaven is on it, and the light of immortality looks out from its eyes. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

This thing I am feeling, I'm almost certain, is the closest I'll ever come to standing somewhere in between truth and reconciliation. ~ Raquel Cepeda

I cheerfully quit from life as if it were an inn, not a home; for Nature has given us a hostelry in which to sojourn, not to abide. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

I alternate between thinking of the planet as home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners. ~ Annie Dillard

What emerged for me as purpose was the search for and cultivation of possibilities for experiencing meaningful human transactions in different languages and across cultural differences through play, sports, travel, food, literature, and conversation. I sought to establish relations of mutual understanding and love with people no matter what their culture or place of origin in the world - relations based on philia, eros, and agape, according to context and persons. I perhaps sensed instinctively that such relations were the key to being equally at home everywhere, even in la Yunai. More than an immigrant, at that time I still felt myself to be a sojourner in this country, but I wanted my sojourn to be imbued with the meaning found in earnest, sincere connections with the people and places that life brought to my experience. ~ Daniel G. Campos

Our avian brothers are back to roost on the first leg of their annual sojourn south. Why them and not us? Maybe it's because we humans are meant to be rooted in one spot. ~ Mitchell Burgess

Life is a stranger's sojourn, a night at an inn. ~ Marcus Aurelius

That is why it is often such a relief when the talk turns from "general topics" to a man's own hobby. It is like turning from the landscape in the parlor to the ploughed field outdoors. It is a return to the three dimensional world, after a sojourn in the painter's portrayal of his own emotional response to his own inattentive memory of what he imagines he ought to have seen. ~ Walter Lippmann

This is our one and only chance at mortal life-here and now. The longer we live, the greater is our realization that it is brief. Opportunities come, and then they are gone. I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not. I plead with you not to let those most important things pass you by. As you plan for that illusive, nonexistent future when you will have time to do all that you want to do. Instead, find you in the journey now. ~ Thomas S. Monson

It was curious how like a tree she looked, lying motionless in the hull. How slender and delicate and twig-like her long fingers were, how lissom her long arms and legs, like the branches of a young tree. How luxuriant and green her long hair as it curled around her face and shoulders. Her skin, if skin it was, appeared smooth and unwrinkled, unmarred by the cares and worries that beset them. Her gown melded to her lithe body like a second skin. It was odd he could not tell where her legs began and the gown ended; both melded seamlessly. What he couldn't help but notice was that she was very beautiful, a delicate, fragile creature who needed help. Wonder what your name is?
Sojourn. ~ Elizabeth Klein

all the statements made about God that imply body have some hidden meaning and teach us what is above us by means of something familiar to ourselves, with the exception of any statement concerning the bodily sojourn of the God-Word. ~ John Damascene

Man is in his short sojourn on earth equal to God in His eternity. ~ Zygmunt Bauman

It was a long time since he'd done any actual clinical work, and obviously his sojourn among the academics at Saro University had attenuated the professional detachment that allows members of the healing arts to confront the ill without being overwhelmed by compassion and sorrow. He was surprised at that, how tenderhearted he seemed to have become, how thin-skinned. ~ Isaac Asimov

Sanctification is at base a tenacious grip on the robe of Christ, a wrestling with the Lord to bless us, a sojourn in the valley of death in pursuit of a city we cannot see. ~ Kevin DeYoung

What is done cannot be undone,
Knowing that, face it but do not run. ~ Rupansh Gupta

When we begin to understand the magnitude of [the Messiah's] sacrifice and service to us individually and collectively, we then cannot consider anything else to be of more importance or to approach His significance in our lives. For most of us, this understanding does not come all at once and likely will not be fully complete during our mortal sojourn. We do know, however, that as we learn line upon line, our appreciation for the Savior's contributions will increase and our knowledge and assurance of their truthfulness will grow. ~ Cecil O. Samuelson

We see--
Them.
Older. The silverskin shining on one side of her head. His gray eyes crinkled at the corners as he looks at her.
They stand in a crowd beneath a mammoth ship. It towers, in patchwork metals, over the other ships on the loading bay. A new sojourn ship.
He takes her hand. They walk toward the ship together. ~ Veronica Roth

And so, the Book of Khalid was written. It is the only one I wrote in this world, having made, as I said, a brief sojourn in its civilised parts. I leave it now where I wrote it, and I hope to write other books in other worlds. ~ Ameen Rihani

Life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion. ~ Marcus Aurelius

God is inscrutable, mysterious and unknowable. We do not understand what life is about, what it means, why we are here and what will happen to us after our brief sojourn on the planet ends. We are saved, in the end, by faith--faith that life is not meaningless and random, that there is a purpose to human existence, and that in the midst of this morally neutral universe the tiny, seemingly insignificant acts of compassion and blind human kindness, especially to those labeled our enemies and strangers, sustain the divine spark, which is love. ~ Chris Hedges

I'd been in New York for nearly eighteen months, now - though I still felt a transient, passing through, and that this apartment, this address, my job and my salary were very temporary aspects of my autobiography and whatever significance this sojourn would have in any retrospective view was impossible to discern. ~ William Boyd

The clatter of pans stopped when I walked into the kitchens. A smaller selection of our staff worked on the sojourn ship than in Noavek manor, but I recognized some of the faces. And the gifts, too--one of the scrubbers was making the pots float, suds dripping on the backs of his hands, and one of the choppers was doing the task with her eyes closed, the knife strokes clean and even.
Otega had her head in the coldbox. When silence fell, she straightened, and wiped her hands off on her apron.
"Ah, Cyra," she said. "No one makes a room quiet like you."
The other staff stared openly at her for her familiarity, but I only laughed a little. Even when I hadn't seen her in a while--I had surpassed her capacity to teach me last season; now we saw each other only rarely, in passing--she fell back into our old rhythms without trouble.
"It's a unique talent," I replied. ~ Veronica Roth

Sometimes when we awaken from the bad dream of disowning ourselves, we think that the sojourn to self-discovery is a new one. But it is an ancient quest. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

Rats may scamper across it and remain rats. Birds may fly above it and remain
birds; they may alight and tear and eat and prick up their heads to stare motionless
and beady for a moment before pecking and eating again, and remain birds. But no
man may venture into this space between the lines and remain a man. That is the
difference. No man may enter, either stealthily on his belly alone, or noisily on two
feet racing through glue with a thousand versions of himself firing, falling, on either
side as far as the eye can see, and remain a man. It is possible to become a man
once more if you make it back behind your line again, but you suspend your
humanity for your sojourn in between. That is why the place is called No Man's Land. ~ Ann-Marie MacDonald

Akos had appeared in my doorway, his short brown hair sticking out in all directions, leaning into the wood.
"What," he said, eyes wide, "is that sound?"
In spite of the current's pain shooting through me, I laughed. I had never seen him this disheveled before. His drawstring pants were twisted halfway around, and his cheek bore the red imprint of creased sheets.
"It's just the start of the Sojourn Festival," I said. "Relax. Untwist your pants."
His cheeks turned faintly pink, and he righted the waistband of his pants.
"Well, how was I supposed to know that?" he replied irritably. "Next time, when something that sounds remarkably like war drums is going to wake me at dawn, could you maybe warn me?"
"You're determined to deprive me of fun."
"That's because apparently, your version of 'fun' is making me believe I'm in mortal peril. ~ Veronica Roth

Come on, Akos. I think I see something useful."
She put her hand in his like it was natural. And maybe it should have been, just him relieving her pain, like he was supposed to. But after the way she had touched him in her room on the sojourn ship, fervently, reverently--after that, how could he possibly lay a casual hand on her again? All he could think about was how hard he was squeezing--too hard? Not hard enough? ~ Veronica Roth

a life

a journey
a play
a sojourn

a challenge
a gift
a curse

a chance
a choice
a recess

a struggle
a stride
a voyage

a puddle
a stream
a sea

a pain
a pleasure
a penance

a prayer
a sport
a search

it's all about
living in an eternal presence,
in the moment,
right here and right now. ~ Chandrashekar

First, it is not unimportant that the legislative texts of the Old Testament are placed in the mouth of Moses and within the narrative framework of the sojourn at Sinai. ~ Paul Ricoeur

From everything that I've read, people before the collapse were what I would politely call "weak". I'm sure they were nice enough, smart enough, and probably thought they had everything under control, but it doesn't take much to shatter your world. Luk and I had been training for this our entire lives, preparing to enter a world of harsh realities and it's nearly been the end us both multiple times. Back in the day, when chaos reigned, it was kill or be killed, there was little middle ground. The weak definitely did not inherit the Earth. Strength is survival.

Sojourn Book III - The Beastlands ~ B.D. Messick

Most people don't get their soul mates in their designated lifetime or if ever they do, they let them go. It doesn't matter to me who you are, who you love, as long as they love you back. That is what's important. The world seems to have forgotten that and have conducted themselves all based on the concept of love that is both selfish, misguided and outdated. And if the world saw what we see, things would be a whole lot better. ~ C.J. Edmunds

Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the Earth during your sojourn. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

We must live life in the present as shaped by the past. The option to begin afresh does not exist. The past days and nights were the sacrificial coals that fired an internal furnace. The dying embers fueled my present being. I need to locate new nutrients to revitalize an unfulfilled soul. I seek to unearth fresh energy sources and forge a renewed resoluteness to slog through the remainder of this gaseous and hard-pressed sojourn. Any prior personal inspiration for living righteously was lost on a remote outpost somewhere along the fractured trail. I go on because I must. I trust that if I industrially seek, I shall ascertain a purpose in life that currently eludes me. If I tread long enough, if I assiduously track sufficient true miles, I shall discover a purpose that fits me. I continue to push forward with an unbowed determination, navigate into the deep unknown with the confidence of an experienced admiral who knows that if he endures the gale forces of self-doubt and persist despite all setbacks that he will discover what he seeks. A person must rely upon personal consciousness as a guiding compass into penetrating the unalleviated obscurity that shrouds the way. I shall always resist the easy path, because it leads to an apocalyptic demise. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster