Stagnant Lives Quotes

Mr. Brooker, though out of work for two years, was a miner by trade, but he and his wife had been keeping shops of various kinds as a side line all their lives. At one time they had had a pub, but they had lost their licence for allowing gambling on the premises. I doubt whether any of their businesses had ever paid; they were the kind of people who run a business chiefly in order to have something to grumble about. ~ George Orwell

Flying Home

As this plane dragged
its track of used ozone half the world long
thrusts some four hundred of us
toward places where actual known people
live and may wait,

we diminish down in our seats,
disappeared into novels of lives clearer than ours,
and yet we do not forget for a moment
the life down there, the doorway each will soon enter:

where I will meet her again
and know her again,
dark radiance with, and then mostly without, the stars.

Very likely she has always understood
what I have slowly learned,
and which only now, after being away, almost as far away

as one can get on this globe, almost
as far as thoughts can carry - yet still in her presence,
still surrounded not so much by reminders of her
as by things she had already reminded me of,
shadows of her
cast forward and waiting - can I try to express:

that love is hard,
that while many good things are easy, true love is not,
because love is first of all a power,
its own power,
which continually must make its way forward, from night
into day, from transcending union always forward into difficult day.

And as the plane descends, it comes to me
in the space
where tears stream down across the stars,
tears fallen on the actual earth
where their shining is what we call spirit,
that once t ~ Galway Kinnell

Before we had the kids, my husband and I were traveling a lot and working and really enjoying our lives and each other. We both love the theater and books and travel and so we were really having a lot of fun. ~ Patricia Heaton

Listening to them, I realized how much of who I was, what I was, had been defined by Baba and the marks he had left on people's lives. My whole life, I had been "Baba's son." Now he was gone. Baba couldn't show me the way anymore; I'd have to find it on my own. The thought of it terrified me. ~ Khaled Hosseini

I think the notion of dreaming in a time where we are told that it is foolish, futile or not useful is one of the most revolutionary things we can do. To have our lives determined by our dreams of a free world
instead of reactions to a state-imposed reality
is one of the most powerful tools of decolonization. ~ Harsha Walia

She had always known that all lives are in common, rejoicing in her kinship to the fish in the tanks of her laboratories, seeking the experience of existences outside the human boundary. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Eight days the light continued on its own:
A miracle, they say, but not more so
Than ordinary lives of flesh and bone,
Consuming wicks burned ashen long ago ... ~ Nick Gordon

We can look at our tattoos from cancer treatment as awful reminders of a ghastly time in our lives, or we can use them as reminders of what God brought us through. ~ Shirley Corder

Even in the lives of fishes, sensation is seldom a matter of one thing or another. Senses overlap. The lines between them often tend to be blurred, and the best that we can manage, by way of description from the outside, is to say that the senses of fishes appear to dominate one at a time. ~ Lyall Watson

But you will not spare a drop of pity because I am rich? We have death in our gilded courts, too. We have disease and cruelty, and not a breath of air or freedom. You cannot say our lives are easy, any more than I can say yours is. They are lives, and so they are HORRID! ~ Stefan Bachmann

We have a very real enemy who thrives on our silence. He doesn't want us to be in fellowship, sharing our hearts and seeking wisdom on how to live lives that glorify God in spite of the darkness we feel. ~ Angie Smith

People don't lose their lives, Your Majesty. Their lives are taken from them, or else they lay them down themselves."
And which will be your fate, Gabriel?"
I'll lay mine down, Lady. ~ Sherryl Jordan

Let any lady who is inclined to be hard on Mrs. Cadwallader inquire into the comprehensiveness of her own beautiful views, and be quite sure that they afford accommodation for all the lives which have the honor to coexist with hers. With ~ George Eliot

Kuan Yin is showing me picture of a windsurfer skimming effortlessly along the ocean's surface," describes Ms. Lees.
"While quite skilled, he is nevertheless very focused on the elements around him. The windsurfer is focused upon how to turn the sail. His question must always be, 'what am I going to do with the wind that is blowing right now,'" instructs Kuan Yin: "There are the waves and there is the wind, seen and unseen forces. Everyone has these same elements in their lives, the seen and unseen: karma and free will. The question is, 'how are you going to handle what you have?' You are riding the karmic wave underneath and the wind can shift. Everyone must take what they see and deal with that which is unseen. ~ Hope Bradford

One man lives out his life beating his fears into submission, while another lives out his life letting his fears beat him into submission. And while the fears are the same, the kind of men that they produce are not. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Love is a choice - not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guide. Love is a conversion to humanity - a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life. ~ Carter Heyward

But what's a writer for? The whole point is to put yourself into other lives, other heads-writers have always done that. If you screw up, so someone will tell you, that's all. ~ Grace Paley

Men like you happen once. Women like me prefer to live our lives cautiously with your after taste, lessons and splinters of broken heart underneath our tongues. ~ Ayushee Ghoshal

Every day I've lived
lives in the day
I wake up in.

- Ketamine for Breakfast ~ Kae Tempest

If we seek the most happiness we can as individuals, it sort of bleeds into other people's lives. ~ Tyler Blackburn

The real evidence is not practically speaking in scholarship but in how Jesus and the Christianity based on him manifest themselves in the lives of practising Christians. Their lives are the proofs of their beliefs. ~ Lionel Blue

At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with other people, but in what we agree with them. ~ John Ruskin

Children must receive music instruction as naturally as food, with as much pleasure as they derive from a ball game, and this must happen from the beginning of their lives. ~ Leonard Bernstein

We may be little, insignificant servants in the eyes of a world motivated by efficiency, control and success. But when we realize that God has chosen us from all eternity, sent us into the world as the blessed ones, handed us over to suffering, can't we, then, also trust that our little lives will multiply themselves and be able to fulfill the needs of countless people? ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

I love to cook; I cook every day. Chicken features a lot in our lives. ~ Kate Winslet

Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth. ~ Walter Savage Landor

The CRAFT approach, developed by Bob Meyers at U of New Mexico, is one set of important tools that DO work, and it feels great to see families using these strategies and getting results, feeling hopeful again, feeling empowered, getting support, learning to trust themselves again, getting their lives and the lives of their children back. ~ Jeff Foote

God was in control. She had nothing to fear. No matter what happened next or how the outcome played in their lives, whatever triumph or tragedy might take place, God loved them. Nothing could ever change that. ~ Karen Kingsbury

I went into a church and simply said, 'Goodbye.' It is the terrible unfairness of life. How could God allow cancer, poverty, the sheer unfairness of so many lives? That is the question which finishes it for me. ~ Ruth Rendell

We open the halves of a miracle, and a clotting of acids brims into the starry divisions: creation's original juices, irreducible, changeless, alive: so the freshness lives on ~ Pablo Neruda

Technology does more than delight, entertain and make our lives more convenient, it's also an agent for social good. That is why it's important for tech startups to stay informed about, and make a mark on, policies that impact them. ~ Ron Conway

Whether a character in your novel is full of choler, bile, phlegm, blood or plain old buffalo chips, the fire of life is in there, too, as long as that character lives. ~ James Alexander Thom

Cardinal Raymond Burke is a 66-year-old guy who lives in Rome, dresses like Queen Elizabeth, and talks like someone who majored in misogyny at some bogus, backwoods, Bible-banging tent school. ~ Mike Barnicle

There are moments in our lives when we summon the courage to make choices that go against reason, against common sense and the wise counsel of people we trust. But we lean forward nonetheless because, despite all risks and rational argument, we believe that the path we are choosing is the right and best thing to do. We refuse to be bystanders, even if we do not know exactly where our actions will lead.
This is the kind of passionate conviction that sparks romances, wins battles, and drives people to pursue dreams others wouldn't dare. Belief in ourselves and in what is right catapults us over hurdles, and our lives unfold.
"Life is a sum of all your choices," wrote Albert Camus. Large or small, our actions forge our futures and hopefully inspire others along the way. ~ Howard Schultz

He who has money, lives long: he who has authority, can do no wrong: he who has might, establishes right. Such is history! Ecce historia! ~ Gottfried Benn

Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness God brings us, the newness God asks of us. We are like the apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God's surprises. ~ Pope Francis

What are we doing to each other? Because I know that I am doing to him exactly what he is doing to me. We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness. ~ Graham Greene

Cancer is something that touches everyone's lives. ~ Ellen Pompeo

You haven't been smiling much. I missed it, so I decided to reward you for doing it." "Reward me?" I laughed. "God, only you would think kissing someone is a reward." "You know it is. My lips change lives, baby. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think. In fact, one can even get killed for giving me information. I am not the only one in danger. I have examples that prove it. ~ Anna Politkovskaya

If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space? Those of us who are forced by their own sensibilities to view their lives in this perspective - who recognize that there is no purpose they can comprehend and that amidst a countless myriad of stars their existence goes unknown and unchronicled - can fall prey all too easily to the ultimate anomie. The world's religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache. ~ Stanley Kubrick

Attacks on cities are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and so preserve the lives of allied soldiers. ~ Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

On my last ride on the RR train I looked almost as lovingly at the faces and expressions of my fellow passengers as if I were staring a a photograph of times long past. They did not know that they made a photograph. They did not understand the vanishing background of their lives ... ~ Mark Helprin