Standstill Quotes

A journey, after all, neither begins in the instant we set out, nor ends when we have reached our door step once again. It starts much earlier and is really never over, because the film of memory continues running on inside of us long after we have come to a physical standstill. Indeed, there exists something like a contagion of travel, and the disease is essentially incurable. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

SPIDER-MAN (thinking): I can bench press a car. I can climb up the
side of a wall. Fight twenty guys to a standstill. Swing across chasms thirty stories deep. Feel a bullet coming my way and move fast enough to get clear. But something in her makes me gentle. Makes me shy. Makes me strong. Makes me happy to be alive. And maybe that's it. Maybe that's what it really comes down to. She makes me. Makes me whole ... She completes me ...
So here's the thing, God ... I know I complain a lot, and I know that you and me, we've got issues, but right now, just for tonight ... Thank you for her. Thank you. Amazing Spider-Man #53 (Volume 2) ~ J. Michael Straczynski

If we continue to focus solely on the sinner/saint duality in our person and conduct, while ignoring the raging opposition between the Pharisee and the child, spiritual growth will come to an abrupt standstill. ~ Brennan Manning

I started working on a line of clothes last year, but right now we're kind of at a standstill. ~ Beverley Mitchell

We're going nowhere, " Joan said grimly. Traffic on the narrow street was at a complete standstill.
A chill settled in Sophie's stomach: it was the appalling fear that her brother was going to die.
"Sidewalk," Nicholas said decisively. "Take it."
"But the pedestrians - "
"Can get out of the way. Use your horn. ~ Michael Scott

Quick, somebody call the caretaker!' Gemma's stage voice rang out loud and clear. 'There's some trash here that needs to be taken out.' She earned a chorus of laughs as she walked towards us, then came to a standstill right beside me. 'Christ, it reeks, too,' she said, pinching her nose. 'What did you do, Malice? Douse yourself in the whole bottle? Oh, never mind. I don't expect you to have heard of the adage "less is more". ~ Aurelia B. Rowl

Give up all the wild ideas that buzz round you like wasps. Or like bluebottles. […] Find a nice, ordinary girl, not too attractive or you'll be jealous all the time, not too bright or you'll be anxious all the time, not too rich or you'll have nothing to strive for, not too original or she'll upset people. There are plenty of them, and all of them are available to a young postman like you. Those are the terms offered."

The terrier had come to a sudden standstill, as if he had been a white gun dog on one of the estates.

"You don't live like that," said Robin from the bed.

"I don't live at all," replied Rosetta. "Haven't you realized?"

"Perhaps I have." Now Robin was staring at her: momentarily still that muggy evening; for seconds rigid as the dog.

Rosetta smiled. "I am the person every postman meets in the end."

"I'm a provisional postman only. I told you that clearly," remarked Robin, starting once more to relax.

"Do what I tell you. What else is there for you? Only wasps and bluebottles. ~ Robert Aickman

I become like a boulder on the beach in a time-lapse video. The sun and moon and stars cross the sky again and again, shadows lengthen and shrink, the tide rushes in and out. The sea heaves in the background, crabs and seabirds flicker in and out of view. Meanwhile, the boulder sits there, stolid, unmoving, all alone, as life whizzes past. ~ Misa Sugiura

In the folklore of science, there is the often-told story of the moment of discovery: the quickening of the pulse, the spectral luminosity of ordinary facts, the overheated, standstill second when observations crystallize and fall together into patterns, like pieces of a kaleidoscope. The apple drops from the tree. The man jumps up from a bathtub; the slippery equation balances itself.
But there is another moment of discovery - its antithesis - that is rarely recorded: the discovery of failure. It is a moment that a scientist often encounters alone. A patient's CT scan shows a relapsed lymphoma. A cell once killed by a drug begins to grow back. A child returns to the NCI with a headache. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves. ~ Haruki Murakami

Such colourless phrases as he achieved were produced with a difficulty, a hesitancy, simulated perhaps, but decidedly effective in their unconcealed ineptness. Like most successful men, he had turned this apparent disadvantage into a powerful weapon of offense and defense, in the way that the sledge-hammer impact of his comment left, by its banality, every other speaker at a standstill, giving him as a rule complete mastery of the conversational field. A vast capacity for imposing boredom, a sense of immensely powerful stuffiness, emanated from him, sapping every drop of vitality from weaker spirits.
"So you were at school together," he said slowly. ~ Anthony Powell

When I got outside, I came to a standstill and said loudly in the open street, as I clenched my hands: "I will tell you one thing, my good Lord God, you are a bungler!" and I nod furiously, with set teeth, up to the clouds; "I will be hanged if you are not a bungler. ~ Knut Hamsun

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ~ Bill Gates

Some people wait so long for their ship to come in, their pier collapses. ~ John Goddard

Trends carry on forever, until they stop. I want to be around after things come to a standstill. As a result, I tend to be pretty conservative. ~ Johann Rupert

How, then, did it happen that this same France forty years later came to be crushed on the battlefield by a nation it outnumbered fivefold? Why should its noblemen be split up into factions, its bourgeoisie in revolt, its people overwhelmed by excessive taxation, its provinces lawless and plagued by roving gangs engaged in pillaging and crime, all authority flouted, the currency weakened, trade at a standstill, and poverty and violence rife everywhere? Why this collapse? What caused this reversal of fortune? It was mediocrity. The mediocrity of just a few kings, their vanity and self-importance, their frivolousness in the conduct of their affairs, their inability to attract talented advisors, their nonchalance, their presumptuousness, their failure to draw up grand designs or even to follow those already conceived. ~ Maurice Druon

A moving wall of oxen advanced, and our mighty elephant himself was brought to a standstill. There was nothing to regret in this enforced halt, however, for a most curious spectacle was presented to our observations. A drove of four or five thousand oxen encumbered the road, and, as our guide had supposed, they belonged to a caravan of Brinjarees. "These people," said Banks, "are the Zingaris of Hindostan. They are a people rather than a tribe, and have no fixed abode, dwelling under tents in summer, in huts during the winter or rainy season. They are the porters and carriers of India, and I saw how they worked during the insurrection of 1857. By a sort of tacit agreement between the belligerents, their convoys were permitted to pass through the disturbed provinces. In fact, they kept up the supply of provisions to both armies. If these Brinjarees belong to one part of India more than to another, I should say it was Rajpootana, and perhaps more particularly the kingdom of Milwar. ~ Jules Verne

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation. ~ Emma Goldman

Listen, global warming is a real problem, but it' s not the end of the world. A 30-centimetre sea level rise is just not going to bring the world to a standstill, just like it didn't over the last 150 years. ~ Bjorn Lomborg

Fear isn't an excuse to come to a standstill. It's the impetus to step up and strike. ~ Arthur Ashe

2014 was a year of intense social upheaval. In truth, the same could be said for most every year. There is no standstill in a world filled with so many people, scrambling for so much. ~ Roxane Gay

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfilment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have known what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guess of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Then, with lots of people doing that without ever looking over their shoulders to see how they were affecting anybody else, it couldn't work, and it didn't work, and it just came to a standstill. ~ Barbara Castle

Zebra crossings have produced a peculiar new type of mentality in an increasing number of people. This has its new correlated freedom: THE RIGHT TO ZEBRA-CROSS. If Freud were still alive he would certainly be able to define this new psychological trait, this zebra-complex. For those afflicted, life is simply a huge zebra-crossing: as soon as they step into the arena they expect all movement to come to a standstill and give way to them. In very bad cases the patient expects people to watch him admiringly and wave to him with friendly smiles. ~ George Mikes

The Pandemic Sonnet

This ain't the first time you've come to haunt us,
And it won't be the last either.
You thought you could break the species,
But all you did is bring us together.
You brought the world to almost a standstill,
Yet we never stood still to let inaction take over.
Each one of us did the best we could,
And we'll keep on doing till your traces wither.
We may have our differences at times,
But when trouble knocks on our door we all stand one.
We may act selfish sometimes,
But in catastrophe we refrain from helping no one.
However thanks for reminding us to leave wildlife alone,
Otherwise all we'll have left to do is mourn. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The fact that a cloud from a minor volcanic eruption in Iceland - a small disturbance in the complex mechanism of life on the Earth - can bring to a standstill the aerial traffic over an entire continent is a reminder of how, with all its power to transform nature, humankind remains just another species on the planet Earth. ~ Slavoj Zizek

Unalloyed Joy of Life has become a trademark; starting from the day, when the world economy has come to a standstill. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

[E]very journey is played out between standstill and flight. ~ Claudio Magris

Closing The Cycle

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Thi ~ Paulo Coelho

What the carburetor, sparkplug and self-starter are to an automobile, initiative, private enterprise and executive ability are to industry as a whole, including the wage earner, wage payer, wage spender and wage saver, i.e., the investor. If the sparkplug and self-starter get out of commission, the car will come to a standstill. ~ William J.H. Boetcker

At last the cold crept up my spine; at last it filled me from foot to head; at last I grew so chill and desolate that all thought and pain and awareness came to a standstill. I wasn't miserable anymore: I wasn't anything at all. I was a nothing
a random configuration of molecules. If my heart still beat I didn't know it. I was aware of one thing only; next to the gaping fact called Death, all I knew was nothing, all I did meant nothing, all I felt conveyed nothing. This was no passing thought. It was a gnawing, palpable emptiness more real than the cold. ~ David James Duncan

At present there are such goings-on that everything is at a standstill. ~ Boyle Roche

We fought, Wilkie Collins and I. We fought bitterly and with all our might, to a standstill, over a period of about three weeks, on trains and aeroplanes and by hotel swimming pools. Sometimes – usually late at night, in bed – he could put me out cold with a single paragraph; every time I got through twenty or thirty pages, it felt to me as though I'd socked him good, but it took a lot out of me, and I had to retire to my corner to wipe the blood and sweat off my reading glasses. Only in the last fifty-odd pages, after I'd landed several of these blows, did old Wilkie show any signs buckling under the assault. ~ Nick Hornby

The parts of life that hurt and make us sick and tired, those are the places to start digging. Dig also in those places where you've been taken to the limit as well as those that lie motionless and at a standstill. The land of the soul is an open field for digging, and any sign of disturbing activity or suspicious inactivity is a big clue about where to start. ~ Karol Jackowski

How, dear sir, did you cross the flood?"
"By not halting, friend, and by not straining I crossed the flood."
"But how is it, dear sir, that by not halting and by not straining you crossed the flood?"
"When I came to a standstill, friend, then I sank; but when I struggled, then I got swept away. It is in this way, friend, that by not halting and by not straining I crossed the flood. ~ Gautama Buddha

Ahhh, God's balls! The Horrible Halt!" Adoulla pronounced the Dhamsawaati term for the complete standstill of traffic with a familiar disgust. ~ Saladin Ahmed

Shipping first time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite. The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt. Entire engineering organizations can be brought to a standstill under the debt load of an unconsolidated implementation, object-oriented or otherwise. ~ Ward Cunningham

If, on thinking this, I look up to see if reality can quench my thirst, I see inexpressive facades, inexpressive faces, inexpressive gestures. Stones, bodies, ideas - all dead. All movements are one great standstill. Nothing means anything to me, not because it's unfamiliar but because I don't know what it is. The world has slipped away. And in the bottom of my soul - as the only reality of this moment - there's an intense and invisible grief, a sadness like the sound of someone crying in a dark room. ~ Fernando Pessoa

When he utilizes combined energy, his fighting men become as it were like unto rolling logs or stones. For it is the nature of a log or stone to remain motionless on level ground, and to move when on a slope; if four-cornered, to come to a standstill, but if round-shaped to go rolling down. ~ Sun Tzu

Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Zero kelvin is the lowest possible temperature. At absolute zero, all motion comes to a standstill. It is obvious that a lower temperature is not feasible because there is no velocity smaller than zero and no energy content less than nothing. ~ Wolfgang Ketterle

But every time my thoughts reached this point, every time, my desire to speak would vanish. And so we remained precisely as we were, making no waves, at a standstill. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

You ask yourself what happens," Miller said. "Ask yourself what Naomi'd do." Holden barked out a laugh. "Is that how you make your decisions?" Miller let his eyes close. Juliette Mao was there, sitting on the couch at her old apartment on Ceres. Fighting the crew of the stealth ship to a standstill. Burst open by the alien virus on the floor of her shower stall. "Something like it," Miller said. ~ James S.A. Corey

If you say, 'You've made it,' then you kind of come to a standstill, and I don't think any actor wants to do that. ~ Jenna Ushkowitz

Never try to leap from a standstill. ~ Mason Cooley

But afterwards in the pub, they had dreamed about the big stories and talked for hours of how they would never be satisfied with the conventional or the shallow but instead would always dig deep. They were young and ambitious and wanted it all, all at once. There were times when Levin missed that, not the salary, or the working hours, or even the easy life in the bars and the women, but the dreams - he missed the power in them. He sometimes longed for that throbbing urge to change society and journalism and to write so that the world would come to a standstill and the mighty powers bow down. Even a hotshot like himself wondered: Where did the dreams go? ~ David Lagercrantz

He knew now the one thing of importance; and that one thing was at first there, in the drawing room, and then began moving across and came to a standstill at the door. Without turning round he felt the eyes fixed on him, and the smile, and he could not help turning round. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.
If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Whenever calamity howlers shake their heads and impress upon you that this, that, and the next dire catastrophe is to befall this nation or the nations of the world-such as, for example, that exhaustion of the world's oil supply will bring all transportation and machinery to a standstill through lack of lubrication, or that exhaustion of the earth's stores of coal will make life unlivable in these cold climates-just smile and reply that the worst troubles of all are those that never happen [and] that you prefer not to cross shaky bridges until you come to them ... ~ B.C. Forbes

By that time it was already clear that the next prime minster was going to be Golda Meir, a woman whom I frankly detested - a mutual sentiment, I might add. I knew her as an opinionated, obstinate person, primitive in her outlook, rigid in her attitudes, with a genius for reaching and exploiting the deepest fears and prejudices of the Jewish masses. I was certain that with her as prime minister, all peace efforts would come to a total standstill. ~ Uri Avnery

It is of the utmost importance to us to be kept humble. Consciousness of self-importance is a hateful delusion, but one into which we fall as naturally as weeds grow on a dunghill. We cannot be used of the Lord but that we also dream of personal greatness, we think ourselves almost indispensible to the church, pillars of the cause, and foundations of the temple of God. We are nothings and nobodies, but that we do not think so is very evident, for as soon as we are put on the shelf we begin anxiously to enquire, 'How will the work go on without me?' As well might the fly on the coach wheel enquire, 'How will the mails be carried without me?' Far better men have been laid in the grave without having brought the Lord's work to a standstill, and shall we fume and fret because for a little season we must lie upon the bed of languishing? God sometimes weakens our strength in a way at the precise juncture when our presence seems most needed to teach us that we are not necessary to God's work, and that when we are most useful, He can easily do without us. If this be the practical lesson, the rough schooling may be easily endured for assuredly it is beyond all things desirable that self should be kept low and the Lord alone be magnified. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

We must do jobs we detest because we are part of an organized society, and if everyone did what they wanted to do, the world would come to a standstill. ~ Paulo Coelho

We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world and the spiritual agents are from the very headquarters of evil. Therefore, we must wear the "whole armour of God," that we may be able to resist evil in its day of power, and that even when we have fought to a standstill, we may still stand our ground. ~ Corrie Ten Boom

Why political intellectuals, do you incline towards the proletariat? In commiseration for what? I realize that a proletarian would hate you, you have no hatred because you are bourgeois, privileged, smooth-skinned types, but also because you dare not say that the only important thing there is to say, that one can enjoy swallowing the shit of capital, its materials, its metal bars, its polystyrene, its books, its sausage pâtés, swallowing tonnes of it till you burst – and because instead of saying this, which is also what happens in the desires of those who work with their hands, arses and heads, ah, you become a leader of men, what a leader of pimps, you lean forward and divulge: ah, but that's alienation, it isn't pretty, hang on, we'll save you from it, we will work to liberate you from this wicked affection for servitude, we will give you dignity. And in this way you situate yourselves on the most despicable side, the moralistic side where you desire that our capitalized's desire be totally ignored, brought to a standstill, you are like priests with sinners, our servile intensities frighten you, you have to tell yourselves: how they must suffer to endure that! And of course we suffer, we the capitalized, but this does not mean that we do not enjoy, nor that what you think you can offer us as a remedy – for what? – does not disgust us, even more. We abhor therapeutics and its vaseline, we prefer to burst under the quantitative excesses that you judge the most stupid. And do ~ Jean Francois Lyotard

One of the most interesting histories of what comes of rejecting science we may see in Islam, which in the beginning received, accepted, and even developed the classical legacy. For some five or six rich centuries there is an impressive Islamic record of scientific thought, experiment, and research, particularly in medicine. But then, alas! the authority of the general community, the Sunna, the consensus - which Mohammed the Prophet had declared would always be right - cracked down. The Word of God in the Koran was the only source and vehicle of truth. Scientific thought led to 'loss of belief in the origin of the world and in the Creator.' And so it was that, just when the light of Greek learning was beginning to be carried from Islam to Europe - from circa 1100 onward - Islamic science and medicine came to a standstill and went dead ... ~ Joseph Campbell

It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive. It has come to a standstill; nothing withers, and fall is not ready to begin. There are no stars yet, just darkness. ~ Tove Jansson

It is certain that the labors of these early workers in the field of natural knowledge were brought to a standstill by the decay and disruption of the Roman Empire, the consequent disorganisation of society, and the diversion of men's thoughts from sublunary matters to the problems of the supernatural world suggested by Christian dogma in the Middle Ages. And, notwithstanding sporadic attempts to recall men to the investigation of nature, here and there, it was not until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that physical science made a new start, founding itself, at first, altogether upon that which had been done by the Greeks. Indeed, it must be admitted that the men of the Renaissance, though standing on the shoulders of the old philosophers, were a long time before they saw as much as their forerunners had done. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

As he heard a brief click, Ralf thought about what had happened in that moment which had already passed. For just one hundredth of a second, the shutter had opened and photons had flooded into the dark box. They did not move in lines but everywhere at once, so that some might have travelled from Ralf's face to the end of the beach and back. They went so quickly that, from the perspective of light, the rest of the universe remained at a standstill.

For Ralf and Elsa, time was slipping by irrecoverably, but for that single hundredth of a second, the celluloid recorded its bombardment, like the sooty negatives of objects and people, scorched onto the façades of buildings in bombings. The celluloid had ceased to interact with the world, a carpaccio of time, a leaf of the past brought into the present, where Ralf and Elsa stood together, still. ~ Alex Christofi

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you're empty you're at standstill and balance. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Genevieve announces in her pinched voice for all to hear, "I stuck a fork in your butt, but you're so fat didn't feel a thing!!"
As everyone turns to look at me, the world- even the air itself- jerks to a standstill.
My heart stops. And waits. For anything. Rescue. Reinforcements. The end of the world, with any luck...
I get down on one knee in the sand and pretend to tie my shoes, so I don't have to look at the others
looking at me
looking at them
looking at me.
We ate with spoons this morning.
But I can't help but wonder, I'll wonder for the longest time, if Genevieve really did what she said. ~ Fanny Britt

I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet. What I had lived on no longer existed, and there was nothing left.

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider reasonable. If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires I should not have know what to ask. If in moments of intoxication I felt something which, though not a wish, was a habit left by former wishes, in sober moments I knew this to be a delusion and that there was really nothing to wish for. I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guessed of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless. I had as it were lived, lived, and walked, walked, till I had come to a precipice and saw clearly that there was nothing ahead of me but destruction. It was impossible to stop, impossible to go back, and impossible to close my eyes or avoid seeing that there was nothing ahead but suffering and real death--complete annihilation. ~ Leo Tolstoy

You know how men are. When they don't feel good, the world comes to a standstill. ~ Clare Vanderpool

Wherever Europeans or the descendants of European emigrants live, we see Socialism at work to-day; and in Asia it is the banner round which the antagonists of European civilization gather. If the intellectual dominance of Socialism remains unshaken, then in a short time the whole co-operative system of culture which Europe has built up during thousands of years will be shattered. For a socialist order of society is unrealizable. All efforts to realize Socialism lead only to the destruction of society. Factories, mines, and railways will come to a standstill, towns will be deserted. The population of the industrial territories will die out or migrate elsewhere. The farmer will return to the self-sufficiency of the closed, domestic economy. Without private ownership in the means of production there is, in the long run, no production other than a hand-to-mouth production for one's own needs. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

I was thinking about how all of us sometimes think our plans, our destinies, have come to an end or a standstill, but they don't; our destinies keep going. It's just that we can't, like, see it, because we can't see the big picture to know it. ~ Sarah Holman

The undercarraige kissed the snowy earth. Shadowy snow scenes, with frosted trees that shivered, flashed past the side windows. Powedery snow floated on the air. They glided to a standstill. The bird had landed ~ Suzy Davies

It is said that life is too short, and that's quite true, unless you are lonely. Loneliness can bring time to its knees; an absolute and utter standstill. ~ Jonathan Hull

Books are carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. They are engines of change, windows of the world, lighthouses erected in the sea of time. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Year after year goes by, and nothing gets better. All we do is argue and debate and procrastinate. Any decent idea is amended to ineffectuality by the time it's gone half-way through the various committees it's obliged to pass through. The few people qualified to know what's what are talked to a standstill by ignorant people all around them. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

She looks like a symbol of something. A certain time, a certain place. A certain state of mind. She's like a spirit that's sprung up from a happy chance encounter. An eternal, naive innocence, never to be marred, floats around her like spores in spring. Time had come to a standstill in this photograph. 1969 - a scene from long before I was born. ~ Haruki Murakami

Scepticism, as we know, can never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill ~ George Eliot

There's a girl calm people don't know about. It's a girl teen standstill. A motionless peace. It doesn't come from anywhere but inside us, and it only lasts for a few years. It's born from being a not woman yet. It's free flowing and invisible. It's the eye of the violent storm you call my teenage daughter. In this place we are undisturbed by all the moronic things you think about us. Our voices like rain falling. We are serene. Smooth. With more perfect hair and skin than you will ever again know. Daughters of Eve. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Oh, that was a terrible time for me, I can tell you. I kept the blinds drawn down over both my windows. When I peeped out, I saw the sun shining as if nothing had happened. I could not understand it. I saw people going along the street, laughing and talking about indifferent things. I could not understand it. It seemed to me that the whole of existence must be at a standstill
as if under an eclipse. ~ Henrik Ibsen

The best defence of the country is the fear of the fighter. If we are strong in fighters we should probably never be attacked in force. If we are moderately strong we shall probably be attacked and the attacks will gradually be bought to a standstill ... If we are weak in fighter strength, the attacks will not be bought to a standstill and the productive capacity of the country will be virtually destroyed. ~ Hugh Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding

The spring in Boston is like being in love: bad days slip in among the good ones, and the whole world is at a standstill, then the sun shines, the tears dry up, and we forget that yesterday was stormy. ~ Louise Closser Hale

It is a dangerous thing for the perfecting of our minds to gain applause by works that do not call forth the whole of our energies; for in that case one generally comes to a standstill. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

Public convenience or dignity means nothing; police prerogatives assume the status of divine law. Submissiveness is demanded. If a police officer kills a civilian, it is a regrettable circumstance: the officer was possibly over-zealous. If a civilian kills a police officer all hell breaks loose. The police foam at the mouth. All other business comes to a standstill until the perpetrator of this most dastardly act is found out. Inevitably, when apprehended, he is beaten or otherwise tortured for his intolerable presumption ... The police complain that they cannot function efficiently, that criminals escape them. Better a hundred unchecked criminals than the despotism of one unbridled police force. ~ Jack Vance

The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. ~ Haruki Murakami

She looked at him, looked up into those eyes like a winter storm. She looked up into a face that should have been ordinary, and Jane felt her whole body come to a standstill. Her heart ceased to beat. Her lungs seized up in her chest. Even her hair felt like a heavy burden. There was nothing but him and his foolish not-even-compliments. ~ Courtney Milan

Poverty can turn a person into a flaming torch for change and revolution, without which mankind would come to a standstill. ~ Jean Sasson

When I got to the library I came to a standstill, - ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really "out there" cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately - imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live? Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear: to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent. One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stranglehold of emotionalism that anchors it to hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be to opt out of existence as we consciously know it. ~ Thomas Ligotti