Sustaining Quotes

Records are very powerful promotional tools to go out and be able to play on the road, but you do have to think about it as a way of sustaining itself at some point. ~ Lyle Lovett

The single-minded focus on scoring political points over solving problems, escalating over the last several decades, has reached a level of such intensity and bitterness that the government seems incapable of taking and sustaining public decisions responsive to the existential challenges facing the country. ~ Thomas E. Mann

Falling in love was simple; one had only to yield. Digesting another person, however, and sustaining love, was bloody work, and not a soft job. ~ Hanif Kureishi

Another friend of mine used to maintain that airplanes stayed up in the air only because people believed - against reason - that they could fly: without that collective delusion sustaining them, they would instantly plummet to earth. ~ Margaret Atwood

Parents must bring light and truth into their homes by one family prayer, one scripture study session, one family home evening, one book read aloud, one song, and one family meal at a time. They know that the influence of righteous, conscientious, persistent, daily parenting is among the most powerful and sustaining forces for good in the world. The health of any society, the happiness of its people, their prosperity, and their peace all find common roots in the teaching of children in the home. ~ L. Tom Perry

In the sympathy of Christ we find a sustaining power. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

When I say the grace of wildness, what I mean is its autonomy, its self-possession, the fact that it has nothing to do with us. The grace is in the separation, the distance, the sense of a self-sustaining way of life. ~ Verlyn Klinkenborg

All that each person is, and experiences, and shall never experience, in body and mind, all these things are differing expressions of himself and of one root, and are identical: and not one of these things nor one of these persons is ever quite to be duplicated, nor replaced, nor has it ever quite had precedent: but each is a new and incommunicably tender life, wounded in every breath, and almost as hardly killed as easily wounded: sustaining, for a while, without defense, the enormous assaults of the universe:

So that how it can be that a stone, a plant, a star, can take on the burden of being; and how it is that a child can take on the burden of breathing; and how through so long a continuation of cumulation of the burden of each moment one on another, does any creature beat to exist, and not break utterly to fragments of nothing: these are matters too dreadful and fortitudes too gigantic to meditate long and not forever to worship: ~ James Agee

You are right in your consciousness that we are all echoes and reverberations of the same, and you are noble when your interest and pity as to everything that surrounds you appears to have a sustaining and harmonizing power. Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too much in these sympathies and tendernesses - remember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own. Don't melt too much into the universe, but be as solid and dense and fixed as you can.

Sorrow comes in great waves - no one can know that better than you - but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.

My dear Grace, you are passing through a darkness in which I myself in my ignorance see nothing but that you have been made wretchedly ill by it; but it is only a darkness, it is not an end, or the end. Don't think, don't feel, any more than you can help, don't conclude or decide - don't do anything but wait. Everything will pass, and serenity and accepted mysteries and disillusionments, and the tenderness of a few good people, and new opportunities and ever so much of life, in a word, will remain. You will do all sorts of things yet, and I will help you. The only thing is not to melt ~ Henry James

Diplomacy matters. Burden-sharing matters. Follow-through matters. And yes, sustaining the peace is harder, more complex and often costlier than winning the war itself. No matter the surge of momentary machismo
as gratifying as it may be for some
it's short-sighted and wrong to simply go it alone. ~ Dick Gephardt

I was curious as to why a million Americans weren't lining the beaches in boats and with buckets to preserve the life sustaining resource that is the Gulf of Mexico. Personally, as a surfer, I was most sorry for my fellow watermen. Seeing beaches closed due to contamination just broke my heart. If that ever happened in San Diego I'm afraid I might be forced to move. ~ Jason Mraz

From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us
mostly from the earth. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him fro ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often for ever. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

Having done a lot of theater, I'm used to sustaining characters over long periods of time. ~ Andy Serkis

The eye contact is strong and he's biting his lip when he's chatting to me, so I know he's feeling me. But then I check his accounts: minus four hundred pounds in his current, six grand in debt on his credit card. Queenie, I just bid him a good day and let him pass -

I stopped hacking at the thick string holding the weave in place. "But this could have been 'the one', Kyazike. What if you fell in love? You could have financially guided hi - "

"Financially guides who? Excuse me, Queenie, I cannot be with someone in that much debt. I have a lifestyle that needs sustaining. My Mr. Right cannot have minus money. ~ Candice Carty-Williams

My mother's love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters. ~ Michelle Obama

I think anyone can fall in love, if you're open and you're willing, but the real test is sustaining it after all the excitement has worn off. ~ Simon Van Booy

I think if you have lost a great happiness and try to recall it, you are only asking for sorrow, but if you do not try to dwell on the happiness, sometimes you find it dwelling in your heart and body, silent but sustaining. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

In long-term relationships ... we are called upon to navigate that delicate balance between separateness and connectedness ... we confront the challenge of sustaining both
without losing either. ~ Harriet Lerner

People don't realize we have these built-in seven-league boots. The body can go anywhere. It is physically capable of sustaining almost any kind of abuse, or any dream. ~ Patti Smith

In the event of an oxygen shortage on airplanes, mothers of young children are always reminded to put on their own oxygen mask first, to better assist the children with theirs. The same tactic is necessary on terra firma. There's no way of sustaining our children if we don't first rescue ourselves. I don't call that selfish behavior. I call it love. ~ Joyce Maynard

I let his voice be my comfort. It bore no trace of pain or self-pity, carrying only good humor and softness and just the tiniest hint of jazz. I lived on it as if it were oxygen. It was sustaining, and it was always enough. ~ Michelle Obama

The very qualities that had led to Johnson's political and legislative success were precisely those that now operated to destroy him: his inward insistence that the world adapt itself to his goals; his faith in the nation's limitless capacity; his tendency to evaluate all human activity in terms of its political significance; his insistence on translating every disruptive situation into one where bargaining was possible; his reliance on personal touch; his ability to speak to each of his constituent groups on its own terms. All these gifts, instead of sustaining him, now conspired to destroy him. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

My God, that scene in Monster Inc. where the monsters realise that their entire world is founded on hurting children -look at that for a change! Two galumphing cartoon characters making a shattering realisation about their world and their role in sustaining it. A truly epic moment. It's stunning. ~ Russell T. Davies

We'll do our business in the East Room. It's my favorite at this time of day. If you and I didn't know God is a profitable and self-sustaining construct of the worlds' churches, the morning light would be almost enough to make us believers again. ~ Stephen King

If you want to know what cram is, I can only say that I don't know the recipe; but it is biscuitish, keeps good indefinitely, is supposed to be sustaining, and is certainly not entertaining, being in fact very uninteresting except as a chewing exercise. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The uncommon abilities and fortune of Severus have induced an elegant historian to compare him with the first and greatest of the Caesars. The parallel is, at least, imperfect. Where shall we find, in the character of Severus, the commanding superiority of the soul, the generous clemency, and the various genius, which could reconcile and unite the love of pleasure, the thirst of knowledge, and the fire of ambition? ⁴⁴

⁴⁴ Though it is not, most assuredly, the intention of Lucan to exalt the character of Caesar, yet the idea he gives of that hero, in the tenth book of the Pharsalia, where he describes him, at the same time making love to Cleopatra, sustaining a siege against the power of Egypt, and conversing with the sages of the country, is, in reality, the noblest panegyric. ~ Edward Gibbon

A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that anybody else believes, and he has a very lively sustaining faith in he doesn't quite know what. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

The opportunity to orbit the Earth, witnessing multiple sunrises and sunsets every day, looking back to our small blue life-sustaining jewel from a distance, gives me the greatest sense of anticipation. ~ Sarah Brightman

Old religious factions are volcanoes burned out; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoriae of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine and the sustaining corn. ~ Edmund Burke

Only if we grant power to something can it have power over us. It becomes a serving and sustaining potency when we again are able to place it into the realm where it belongs, instead of submitting to it. ~ Jean Gebser

My Fairy Godmother is my heart sustaining me. ~ Nikita Gill

All around the world, God is giving and sustaining life to the praise of his grace. His mercy is new every morning, and it's always morning somewhere. ~ Gloria Furman

I've been very blessed as far as my faith sustaining me because it's not like I haven't been challenged and I haven't been tested and disappointed. But my faith does really bind me and keep me. ~ Kim Fields

But we are not separate from our children. Loving them is like loving ourselves. And getting better for them is a noble and sustaining reason. ~ Jodi Aman

Too many of us move through our lives with our true selves buried below layers of repressed emotion. With so much energy channeled toward sustaining the repression, there is little left over for the deeper questions. The consequences of our evasion are profound. Our stockpiles toxify into a cache of weapons that turn inward against the self: quick fix, long suffering. As Rumi said, "Most people guard against the fire, and so end up in it." This is the power of then. If we don't deal with our stuff, it deals with us. ~ Jeff Brown

The sustaining taste of victory can never be replaced by the cold metal of a trophy. ~ M.T. Bass

Wherever God may keep you at any time, from there itself must you undertake the pilgrimage to God-realization. In all forms, in action and non-action is He, the One Himself. While attending to your work with your hands, keep yourself bound to Him by sustaining japa, the constant remembrance of Him in your heart and mind. In God's empire, it is forgetfulness of Him that is detrimental. The way to Peace lies in the remembrance of Him and of Him alone. ~ Anandamayi Ma

If the church were the goal, then sustaining that church would logically be the priority of the highest order. But if the Kingdom of God was the goal, then the Kingdom-building instrument would gladly self-sacrifice for the eternal prize. ~ Jeff Christopherson

The adventure of the sun is the greatest natural drama by which we live ... ~ Henry Beston

We need to highlight the role women play in perpetuating and sustaining patriarchal culture so that we will recognize patriarchy as a system women and men support equally, even if men receive more rewards from that system. Dismantling and changing patriarchal culture is work that men and women must do together. ~ Bell Hooks

I try not to think about the drums themselves. If I do, I'll end up hitting myself in the head with a drumstick, or sustaining some weird injury. ~ Greg Saunier

Well, I've had more than one odd moment, I have, But I have never felt those impulses you have. Soon enough you get your fill of woods and things, I don't really envy birds their wings. How different are the pleasures of the intellect, 1130 Sustaining one from page to page, from book to book, And warming winter nights with dear employment And with the consciousness your life's so lucky. And goodness, when you spread out an old parchment, Heaven's fetched straight down into your study. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Careful practical work is the best expression of our freedom and safeguard of our sanity. In a healthy society, such work is the means most consistently available for people to practice holiness of life, to imitate God's enabling and sustaining care for the world. ~ Ellen F. Davis

We lump together all things that are beyond the capacity of all of us collectively to understand-and one name we give to all those things together is God. Therefore, God is the creative force, the sustaining power, that which motivates toward constant change, the overall intelligence which governs the universe by physical and spiritual law, truth, love, goodness, kindness, beauty, the ever-present, all-pervading essence or spirit, which binds everything in the universe together and gives to everything in the universe.. ~ Peace Pilgrim

I believe that as women, we must commit ourselves to sustaining the progress made by our foremothers who fought so hard for women's equality and liberation. ~ Carre Otis

A wasted opportunity wasn't just a missed chance, but was a wound to your future. Miss too many opportunities, thus sustaining too many wounds, and you wouldn't have a future at all. ~ Dean Koontz

I learned that we may meet a true love and that our lives may be transformed by such an encounter even when it does not lead to sexual pleasure, committed bonding, or even sustained contact. The myth of true love-that fairy-tale vision of two souls who meet, join, and live happily ever thereafter-is the stuff of childhood fantasy. Yet many of us, female and male, carry these fantasies into adulthood and are unable to cope with the reality of what it means to either have an intense life-altering connection that will not lead to an ongoing relationship or to be in a relationship. True love does not always lead to happily ever after, and even when it does sustaining love still takes work. ~ Bell Hooks

We are told: "We should not protect those who are unable to defend themselves with their own human resources." But against the overwhelming forces of totalitarianism, when all of this power is thrown against a country - no country can defend itself with its own resources. For instance, Japan doesn't have a standing army.

We are told: "We should not protect those who do not have a full democracy." This is the most remarkable argument of all. This is the leitmotif I hear in your newspapers and in the speeches of some of your political leaders. Who in the world, when on the front line of defense against totalitarianism, has ever been able to sustain a full democracy? You, the united democracies of the world, were not able to sustain it. America, England, France, Canada, Australia together did not sustain it. At the first threat of Hitlerism, you stretched out your hands to Stalin. You call that sustaining democracy? Hardly. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

By the way, leafing through my dictionary I am struck by the poverty of language when it comes to naming or describing badness. Evil, wickedness, mischief, these words imply an agency, the conscious or at least active doing of wrong. They do not signify the bad in its inert, neutral, self-sustaining state. Then there are the adjectives: dreadful, heinous, execrable, vile, and so on. They are not so much as descriptive as judgmental. They carry a weight of censure mingled with fear. Is this not a queer state of affairs? It makes me wonder. I ask myself if perhaps the thing itself - badness - does not exist at all, if these strangely vague and imprecise words are only a kind of ruse, a kind of elaborate cover for the fact that nothing is there. Or perhaps words are an attempt to make it be there? Or, again, perhaps there is something, but the words invented it. Such considerations make me feel dizzy, as if a hole had opened briefly in the world. ~ John Banville

There's no such thing as "sustaining" leadership; it must be reinvented again and again. ~ Gary Hamel

What is certain is that he [the baby] has too much attention from the one person who is entirely at his disposal. The intimacy between mother and child is not sustaining and healthy. The child learns to exploit his mother's accessibility, badgering her with questions and demands which are not of any real consequence to him, embarrassing her in public, blackmailing her into buying sweets and carrying him. ~ Germaine Greer

...this is the first time in the history of humankind where we are trying to experience sexuality in the long term, not because we want 14 children, for which we need to have even more because many of them won't make it, and not because it is exclusively a woman's marital duty. This is the first time that we want sex over time about pleasure and connection that is rooted in desire.

So what sustains desire, and why is it so difficult? And at the heart of sustaining desire in a committed relationship, I think is the reconciliation of two fundamental human needs...

So reconciling our need for security and our need for adventure into one relationship, or what we today like to call a passionate marriage, used to be a contradiction in terms. Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide:

Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one.
Give me comfort, give me edge.
Give me novelty, give me familiarity.
Give me predictability, give me surprise.
And we ~ Esther Perel

All creation has come to existence because of God and continues existing because of God. Were God's sustaining power suddenly removed from creation, it would immediately vanish into nothingness. This includes the soul, which - precisely because it is a creature and not the Creator - cannot subsist without God's sustaining power. It is not that we live because we have a soul, but rather that we have a soul and we live thanks to God's sustaining grace. ~ Justo L. Gonzalez

The hunt isn't sustaining me. It's flowing blood that I really crave. The sweet taste of red succulent liquid mixing with the salt of my beloved as it drips and dances on his flesh. To know that someone will ache for me as much as I hunger for him and eternally satiate each other. I want someone to satisfy my hunger forever. ~ Ellen Schreiber

If a man has a tent made of linen of which the apertures have all been stopped up, and be it twelve bracchia across (over twenty-five feet) and twelve in depth, he will be able to throw himself down from any height without sustaining injury. [His concept of the parachute.] ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

It was a single poppy seed ... she rolled it between her fingers and raised her eyes past the straining sails, to the star-filled vault above. On any other night she would have scanned the sky for the planet she had always thought to be the arbiter of her fate - but tonight her eyes dropped instead to the tiny sphere she was holding between her thumb and forefinger. She looked at the seed as if she had never seen one before, and suddenly she knew that it was not the planet above that governed her life: it was this minuscule orb - at once bountiful and all-devouring, merciful and destructive, sustaining and vengeful. This was her Shani, her Saturn. ~ Amitav Ghosh

To be joyous of heart is to hold an optimistic outlook, to see adversity as opportunity, to see failure as the starting point of success, to view our stubbed toes as the release of acupuncture points, to wake with a feeling of gratitude, and to sleep with a sustaining, unfaltering trust in the Universe of which we are a part. The person with a joyous heart is a treasure to be with, a wellspring of inspiration, and a fit companion. When we are joyous of heart, we hear a resonance in the songs of the birds, see resonance in the opening of a flower, and feel it in the pressure of a friend's hand. ~ Wu Wei

I do not knowingly kill any living thing - including insects or rodents - and I thank my food for sustaining me. ~ Joan Jett

In the midst of the awfulness, a touch comes and you know it is the right hand of Jesus Christ. The right hand not of restraint nor of correction nor of chastisement, but the right hand of the Everlasting Father. Whenever His hand is laid upon you, it is ineffable peace and comfort, the sense that "underneath are the everlasting arms," full of sustaining and comfort and strength.
My Utmost for His Highest: Classic Edition ~ Oswald Chambers

If you have not clung to a broken piece of your old ship in the dark night of the soul, your faith may not have the sustaining power to carry you through to the end of the journey. ~ Rufus Jones

Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this mighty life-sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature. ~ Nikola Tesla

For me, the most interesting thing is longevity and sustaining a career, because that's what's truly difficult. ~ John Cho

No one wants their life thrown into chaos. That is why a lot of people keep that threat under control, and are somehow capable of sustaining a house or a structure that is already rotten. They are the engineers of the superseded ~ Paulo Coelho

I think buildings should imitate ecological systems. Ecological systems in nature before we had human beings interfere with them exist in a state of stasis - they are self-supporting, self-sustaining. ~ Ken Yeang

As painful as life can be at times for people all over the world there is some component of existence, or nonexistence perhaps, operating to implement a balance and give us an opportunity to turn the horrors we've forced upon each other into something more conducive to sustaining at least minimal degrees of sanity and love. ~ Aberjhani

Are we not witnessing a situation where children are conciously rejecting their parents' value despite love and devotion given to them? The present situation has arisen because parents have failed to transmit a sustaining faith to their children. The basic reason for this failure is that the parents themselves lacked faith. Without faith, their love was an image not a reality, a statement of words not an expression of feelings ~ Alexander Lowen

It's all about the relationships; forming them and sustaining them, growing and building a back and forth that will be useful to both parties. Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of the practice so often seen today: a person decides that a particular God or Goddess is suitable for a one off ritual or occasion, calls them up, expects them to grant boons and favours and help out in whatever situation is being worked for, and then is never heard from again. If a complete stranger walked into your house and asked for a favour, however politely - would you be inclined to help? Possibly you would, and sometimes the Powers do too, if there is sufficient offering or perhaps bribery involved. They are not above being bought off. However, most people would be far more inclined to help out when a friend asks a favour, and this follows through with the Gods, in my experience. A give and take relationship is the most effective and respectful way I have found of working with them. ~ Lora O'Brien

Sustaining grace promises not the absence of struggle but the presence of God. ~ Max Lucado

In addition to being a life-sustaining and sanity-maintaining way of managing inner states, cutting is a primitive yet powerful form of communication for people unable to adequately verbalize their feelings. Self-mutilation provides concrete expression for the pain they feel inside - a language written on the body, through blood, wounds, and scars. ~ Marilee Strong

I don't know why we live - the gift of life comes to us from I don't know what source or for what purpose; but I believe we can go on living for the reason that (always of course up to a certain point) life is the most valuable thing we know anything about and it is therefore presumptively a great mistake to surrender it while there is any yet left in the cup. In other words consciousness is an illimitable power, and though at times it may seem to be all consciousness of misery, yet in the way it propagates itself from wave to wave, so that we never cease to feel, though at moments we appear to, try to, pray to, there is something that holds one in one's place, makes it a standpoint in the universe which it is probably good not to forsake. You are right in your consciousness that we are all echoes and reverberations of the same, and you are noble when your interest and pity as to everything that surrounds you, appears to have a sustaining and harmonizing power. Only don't, I beseech you, generalize too much in these sympathies and tendernesses - remember that every life is a special problem which is not yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own. Don't melt too much into the universe, but be as solid and dense and fixed as you can. We all live together, and those of us who love and know, live so most. We help each other - even unconsciously, each in our own effort, we lighten the effort of others, we contribute to the sum of success, make ~ Henry James

Job's was a temperament that swung easily from one extreme to the other and now misery was lost in a joy that seemed lifting him off his feet. At this moment personal wretchedness seemed to him a small thing in comparison with the vast shining outer world that was always there, sustaining and holding him even when he did not remember or notice it, small even in comparison with his own world that he held within himself. The two, echoing and calling to each other, reflected some mystery that was greater than either. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

With nature's help, humankind can set into creation all that is necessary and life sustaining. ~ Hildegard Of Bingen

Even if the creative brilliance sparks only once, it needs to be accelerated and developed so it has self-sustaining strategies to continue adding value to both the initiator and those it serves. ~ Archibald Marwizi

God is too great to be glorified only through the lives of His victorious children. He is glorified by our suffering and even by our sin. His sustaining strength is glorified when we walk through the furnace of affliction. ~ Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

We talk of literature as if it were a mere matter of rule and measurement, a series of processes long since brought to mechanical perfection: but it would be less incorrect to say that it all lies in the future; tried by the outdoor standard, there is as yet no literature, but only glimpses and guideboards; no writer has yet succeeded in sustaining, through more than some single occasional sentence, that fresh and perfect charm. If by the training of a lifetime one could succeed in producing one continuous page of perfect cadence, it would be a life well spent, and such a literary artist would fall short of Nature's standard in quantity only, not in quality. ~ Brenda Wineapple

The first thing that struck me was how the single women of my acquaintance were exceptionally alert to the people around them, generous in their attention, ready to engage in conversation or share a joke. Having nobody to go home to at night had always seemed a sad and lonesome fate; now I saw that being forced to leave the house for human contact encourages a person to live more fully in the world. In the best instances, the result was an intricate lacework of friendships varying in intensity and closeness that could be, it seemed, just as sustaining as a nuclear family, and possibly more appealing. ~ Kate Bolick

I hope for all of us that the future brings us towards evolving our consciousness. To delving deeper into our true power. To exploring more the key to sustaining our planet and our art for the better of all living things. ~ Rain Phoenix

Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases. ~ Jared Diamond

Light, The Hymn

Hail to the sun.
Hail to the stars.
Hail to the cosmos.
Hail to light!

In light we are made.
In light we are born.
In light we are raised.
In light we are enthroned.

In our minds it is wisdom.
In our hearts it is faith.
In our souls it is love.
In our lives it is God.

My mind honors light.
My heart esteems light.
My soul extols light.
How awesome light is.
How majestic light is.
How wonderful light is.

Feeding plants.
Nourishing animals.
Sustaining nature.
Serving people.
Supporting all.

Light illuminates the world.
Light illuminates the stars.
Light illuminates the universe.
Hail to the sun.
Hail to the stars.
Hail to the cosmos.
Hail to light!
Hail to God! ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Perhaps I should explain to him that it has been my particular way of frustrating time's attrition, postponing death and sustaining the illusion that one can always erase everything and make a fresh start. ~ Nathacha Appanah

The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are inattention to detail, a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut. ~ Dean Koontz

If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining splendour of beauty of with which I was in love would one day flood back into my heart, there to ignite a flame that would torture me without end, how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes. ~ Michelangelo

The practices and disciplines of building and sustaining community could fill volumes (and has). From mystics to anthropologists, we learn how critical the quality of a community is to the health and well-being of people. Yet, community remains one of the most elusive goals to so many of the Christians and churches in our individualistic Western societies. When we encounter true community, we are not encountering mere healthy relationships of equality and moral uprightness, but we are witnessing, and being invited to participate in, the divine nature of God. ~ Jamie Arpin-Ricci

The evidence summarized in this matrix may be of some use to venture capital investors, as a general way to frame the riskiness of proposed investments. It suggests that start-ups which propose to commercialize a breakthrough technology that is essentially sustaining in character have a far lower likelihood of success than start-ups whose vision is to use proven technology to disrupt an established industry with something that is simpler, more reliable, and more convenient. ~ Clayton M Christensen

I hold that there is a mysterious connection between the fate of this country and that of Mexico; so much so that her independence and capability of sustaining herself are almost as essential to our prosperity and the maintenance of our institutions as they are to hers. ~ John C. Calhoun

Universal education is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity, to pave the way toward making many more nations self-sufficient and self-sustaining. ~ Desmond Tutu

Overall, because branding is about creating and sustaining trust it means delivering on promises. The best and most successful brands are completely coherent. Every aspect of what they do and what they are reinforces everything else. ~ Wally Olins

One of the most constant and sustaining truths of my life has been this: I love the library. ~ Deb Caletti

Israel is now sustaining a war for its own existence. A nation defending its citizens against terrorist bombings and a military and diplomatic onslaught by an array of Arab foes is practicing survival, not genocide. ~ Jack Schwartz

In the United States, there is a restaurant called The Outback Steakhouse, and I could survive in there for several weeks at least, sustaining myself on bloomin' onions and, I'm sure, their legitimate and very Australian cuisine. In the real Outback? I give myself about 14 minutes. ~ Steve Carell

Count on the strength of your own godly attributes, and you will grow lax in your duties for Christ. Knowing you are weak keeps you from wandering too far from Him. When you see that your own cupboard is bare and everything you need is in His, you will go often to Him for supplies. But a soul who thinks he can take care of himself will say, "I have plenty and to spare for a long time. Let the doubting soul pray; my faith is strong. Let the weak go to God for help; I can manage fine on my own." What a sad state of affairs, to suppose that we no longer need the moment-by-moment sustaining grace of God.
Not only does overestimating the strength of our own goodness make us shun God's help, but it also makes us foolhardy and venturesome. You who boast about your spirituality are likely to put yourselves in all kinds of dangerous situations, then brag that you can handle them. ~ William Gurnall

In a healthy economy, empowering, sustaining and efficiency innovations operate in balance. A healthy economy creates and sustains more jobs before squeezing out inefficiencies. ~ Clayton M Christensen

The usual sniggering examples of animal behaviour were brought in to explain cheating. Funny how the behaviour of shrews and gibbons is never used to explain table manners or road safety or gardening, only sex. Anyway, it was bad Darwinism. Taking the example of a monkey and applying it to yourself misses the point that animal behaviour is made for the benefit of the species, not as an excuse for the individual. Being incapable of sustaining a stable pair and supporting children is really not in the interests of our species. Neither is it really in the best interests of the philanderer. ~ A.A. Gill

Consistency and acceleration are both key to sustaining success. One-day-wonder persons who slouch back to mediocrity will soon be forgotten. ~ Archibald Marwizi

The goal is to identify what your counterparts actually need (monetarily, emotionally, or otherwise) and get them feeling safe enough to talk and talk and talk some more about what they want. The latter will help you discover the former. Wants are easy to talk about, representing the aspiration of getting our way, and sustaining any illusion of control we have as we begin to negotiate; needs imply survival, the very minimum required to make us act, and so make us vulnerable. But neither wants nor needs are where we start; it begins with listening, making it about the other people, validating their emotions, and creating enough trust and safety for a real conversation to begin. We ~ Chris Voss

I'm trying to take culture and put it onstage, demonstrate it is capable of sustaining you. There is no idea that can't be contained by life: Asian life, European life, certainly black life. My plays are about love, honor, duty, betrayal - things humans have written about since the beginning of time. ~ August Wilson

No one can threaten poetry. It's always been there, always will be. Humans need it to live: it has sustaining powers. How could we (anyone) get through adolescence without some form of song? Song is only a version of lyric poetry that is carried more by melody than by internal coherence and unity. but lyric and song - they are the same. ~ Gregory Orr

Coming of queer age in the 1990s, to love queers was to love damage. To love damage was a path to loving yourself. ...Queers do not come out of the minefield of homophobia without scars. We do not live through out families' rejection of us, our stunted life options, the violence we've faced, the ways in which we've violated ourselves for survival, our harmful coping mechanisms, our lifesaving delusions, the altered brain chemistry we have sustained as a result of this, the low income and survival states we've endured as a result of society's loathing, unharmed. Whatever of theses wounds I didn't experience firsthand, my lovers did, and so I say that, for a time, it was not possible to have queer love that was not ins some way damaged or defined by damage sustained, even as it desperately fought through that damage to access, hopefully, increasingly frequent moments of sustaining, lifesaving love, true love, and loyalty, and electric sex. ~ Michelle Tea

Metaphysically, his bowl filled and emptied at the same time. Violent and maniacal to push himself so far, he'd both created and destroyed his body's energy. In other words he had complete power, self-sustaining, self-sacrificing power at the origin of himself. ~ E.J. Koh

I think the better the show usually it means that you've got a lot of good people, because it's sustaining itself. If there's negative energy, things tend to break down ultimately. ~ Peter Jacobson