Trying To Find It Quotes

Water: 35 liters, Carbon: 20 kg, Ammonia: 4 liters, Lime:1.5 kg, Phosphrus: 800 g, salt: 250g, saltpeter:100g, Sulfer: 80g, Fluorine: 7.5 g, iron: 5.6 g, Silicon: 3g, and 15 other elements in small quantities ... thats the total chemical makeup of the average adult body. Modern science knows all of this, but there has never been a single example of succesful human trasmutation. It's like there's some missing ingredient ... Scientists have been trying to find it for hundreds of years, pouring tons of money into research, and to this day they don't have a theory. For that matter, the elements found in a human being is all junk that you can buy in any market with a child's allowence. Humans are pretty cheaply made. ~ Hiromu Arakawa

Most of them ... most of us never figure it out. Bad dream, they think, or good one. Funny rash, never really goes away, but Doc says it's fine, nothing to worry about. Why dwell on it? But some people, they just can't let it go ... Some people drink themselves out of school trying to find it again, trolling through bars where the shadows are so greasy they leave trails on the walls, just to find a way in, a way through. Some people forget too that you're supposed to stop sleeping, you're supposed to have a life in the sun. ~ Catherynne M Valente

I'm still of the same mind. For many years I've been ashamed, mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn. As time went on, I merely learned that even those who were better than the rest could not keep themselves nowadays from killing or letting others kill, because such is the logic by which they live, and that we can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. Yes, I've been ashamed ever since I have realized that we all have the plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the mortal enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. ~ Albert Camus

To live the first five years of your life feeling that you are valuable is a wonderful thing and, if you don't have it, then you spend the rest of your life trying to find it. I think my mother realised this and tried to compensate for my father's extreme preoccupation with himself. ~ Rick Stein

There is a story about a prisoner at Alcatraz who spent his nights in solitary confinement dropping a button on the floor then trying to find it again in the dark. Each night, in this manner, he passed the hours until dawn. I do not have a button. In all other respects, my nights are the same. ~ Jenny Offill

Try, try, and try again. Never stop trying. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Happiness is like soap bubbles. It comes in small fragile doses, transparent and gentle, that you can't catch, or hold forever. You have to learn to recognize the moment, to embrace it and when the bubble pops and the moment is over, to choose whether to remember it or not.
The miserable people are the ones who think that happiness is a permanent state. They waste half of their lives trying to find it, and the other half being disappointed that they can't, while there are many little soap bubbles floating in the air around them, but they don't ever see them. ~ Limor Moyal

Sex doesn't interfere with your tennis; it's staying out all night trying to find it that affects your tennis. ~ Andre Agassi

I don't know what is the key to SUCCESS that's why i keep trying to find it. ~ Glenda Radores

If I hadn't had the experience of being famous, I would have searched for it my whole life. I would have just gone on and on trying to find it. ~ Matthew Perry

it was like trying to see a shadow in the dark. ~ Melissa Andrea

It's easy to equate longing with love. It's the same way it was with your mother. You worked to earn her love. You loved and were not appreciated. You learned that love was Work and Wanting and Giving and Longing. This is what you learned love was and you are still trying to find it by that old definition. But that is not what love is. ~ Kate McGahan

I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. This, and only this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible and even, sometimes, a little good. ~ Albert Camus

Maybe there's a heaven, like they say, a place where everything we've ever done is noted and recorded, weighed on big karma scales. Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing is just a giant experiment run by aliens who find out human hijinks amusing. Or maybe we're an abandoned project started by a deity who checked out a long time ago, but we're still hard-wired to believe, to try to make meaning out of the seemingly random. Maybe we're all part of the same unconscious stew, dreaming the same dreams, hoping the same hopes, needing the same connection, trying to find it, missing, trying again - each of us playing our parts in the other's plotlines, just one big ball of human yarn tangled up together. Maybe this is it. ~ Libba Bray

I grew up in a highly Hispanic neighborhood. It was very rare to find any race other than Mexicans. I feel very comfortable around Spanish speakers and people from Mexico and people who don't always feel comfortable living in the U.S. because they are in fear of being deported. ~ Emily Rios

When it comes to taking the initiative against drudgery, we have to take the first step as though there were no God. There is no point in waiting for God to help us--He will not. But once we arise, immediately we find He is there. ~ Oswald Chambers

And your doubt may become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become critical. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perplexed and embarrassed perhaps, or perhaps rebellious. But don't give in, insist on arguments and act this way, watchful and consistent, every single time, and the day will arrive when from a destroyer it will become one of your best workers
perhaps the cleverest of all that are building at your life. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I shall never find a better document for a phenomenology of a being which is at once established in its roundness and developing in it. Rilke's tree propagates in green spheres a roundness that is a victory over accidents of form and the capricious events of mobility. Here becoming has countless forms, countless leaves, but being is subject to no dispersion: If I could ever succeed in grouping together all the images of being, all the multiple, changing images that, in spite of everything, illustrate permanence of being, Rilke's tree would open an important chapter in my album of concrete metaphysics. ~ Gaston Bachelard

If you are vigilant and make a stern effort to reject every thought when it rises, you will soon find that you are going deeper and deeper into your own inner self, where there is no need for your effort to reject the thoughts. ~ Ramana Maharshi

The fact was, it was safer to stay uninvolved. He was perfectly fine with emotions, so long as they belonged to other people. Oh, he tried relationships after Peg's death, for a while he really tried, but he couldn't bear to get closed ... [it was easier] to disconnect from that part of life and turn his back on love altogether.Easier to find what he needed in music. ~ Rachel Joyce

I remember one time I looked for the stone for almost an hour before I consented to ask the other half (of my mind) where I'd hidden it only to find out I hadn't hidden it at all. I'd merely been waiting to see how ling I'd look before giving up. Have you ever been annoyed and amused at yourself at the same time? It's an interesting feeling to say the least. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Note the three most important Cabinet positions. Rice said that it was better to find the weapons of mass destruction than to see a mushroom cloud. ~ Andrew Greeley

What would it be like if i thought i was pretty
what would it be like if i carried that knowledge around
like i do the knowledge that i am a writer
pretty like peonies pretty like satin pretty like the child i was
would i speak to you differently
would i be healthier less stressed
less worried
would i buy more shoes or fewer
would i be more or less afraid
of death would i find something else
to hate about myself
would i get this jealous
when your eyes aren't touching me
in this city of movie star beauties
would i be able to write such raw and seductive words
would you have fallen in love with me sooner
would i have frightened you away
before you had the chance? ~ Francesca Lia Block

The Charcoal Sky

Sometimes you go to the wrong place, but the right way comes and finds you. It might make you trip over it or speak to it. Or it might come to you when a day is stripped apart by night and ask you to take its hand and forget this wrong place, this illusion where you stand.

I think of this mess in my mind and the girl who walked through it to stand before me and let her voice come close.

I remember brick walls.

There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.

It calls your name, but you're gone.
You hear nothing. See nothing.
You've gone somewhere else. You've gone somewhere to find a different definition of yourself, and it's a place where nothing else can touch you. Nothing else can swing on your thoughts. It's only yourself, flat against the charcoal sky, for one moment.

Then flat on the earth again, where the world doesn't recognize you anymore. Your name is what it always was. You look and sound like you always did, yet you're not the same, and when a city wind begins to call you, it's voice doesn't only hit the edges.

It connects.

It blows into you rather than in spite of you.

Sometimes you feel like it's calling out for you. ~ Markus Zusak

It's my belief that all of the greatest tales ever told have been told in saloons. It was in such smoky, heathen-filled den of iniquity that I first heard the tale of the Bone Feud. As with all great tales, it was at its core one hundred percent true. In fact, much of it has long been a matter of historical record. But tales grow in the telling, and I therefore must apologize in advance for any inaccuracies, and beg your indulgence for any romanticized embellishments. I have decided to present the story here, just as it was told to me. I find it entirely too rich and too entertaining to alter, simply to curry favor with pedants and historians. ~ Wynne McLaughlin

What happens when you get to the end of the world? Sometimes you find a party. This party has been going on for a long time. There is music, lights, people drinking and dancing. Strange things happen at these parties. It is the end of the world, after all. ~ Kelly Link

I am on my road to meet my beloved, it shall pass through the storms, hustle & bustle. But it's in those silent moments, I feel His power… and a connection is established - me with the divine, me with myself. He is on a journey, from His abode to mine. And I know.. I won't really find Him. He is simply there, everywhere. ♥️ ~ Prajakta Mhadnak

I will tell you that I am a child of this century, a child of disbelief and doubt. I am that today and will remain so until the grave. How much terrible torture this thirst for faith has cost me and costs me even now, which is all the stronger in my soul the more arguments I can find against it. And yet, God sends me sometimes instants when I am completely calm; at those instants I love and feel loved by others, and it is at those instances that I have shaped for myself a Credo where everything is clear and sacred for me. This Credo is very simple, here it is: to believe that nothing is more beautiful, profound, sympathetic, reasonable, manly and more powerful than Christ. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure - if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out. ~ Ethel Barrymore

The secret to success: find something you love to do so much, you can't wait for the sun to rise to do it all over again. ~ Chris Gardner

Karma Repair Kit Items 1-4. 1.Get enough food to eat, and eat it. 2.Find a place to sleep where it is quiet, and sleep there. 3.Reduce intellectual and emotional noise until you arrive at the silence of yourself, and listen to it. 4. ~ Richard Brautigan

What an extraordinary creature," Win heard Dr. Harrow murmur nearby. She followed his gaze to the lady of the house, Mrs. Annabelle Hunt, who was greeting guests.
Although Win had never met Mrs. Hunt, she recognized her from descriptions she had heard. Mrs. Hunt was said to be one of the greatest beauties of England, with her beautifully turned figure and heavily lashed blue eyes, and hair that gleamed with rich shades of honey and gold. But it was her luminous, lively expressiveness that made her truly engaging.
"That's her husband, standing next to her," Poppy murmured. "He's intimidating, but very nice."
"I beg to differ," Leo said.
"You don't think he's intimidating?" Win asked.
"I don't think he's nice. Whenever I happen to be in the same room as his wife, he looks at me as if he'd like to dismember me."
"Well," Poppy said prosaically, "one can't fault his judgment." She leaned toward Win and said, "Mr. Hunt is besotted with his wife. Their marriage is a love match, you see."
"How unfashionable," Dr. Harrow commented with a grin.
"He even dances with her," Beatrix told Win, "which husbands and wives are never supposed to do. But considering Mr. Hunt's fortune, people find reasons to excuse him for such behavior."
"See how small her waist is," Poppy murmured to Win. "And that's after three children- two of them very large boys. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Office holders are a self-selected group; you don't get elected if you don't put your name on the ballot. There are many people who would do a great job, but who would never think to run. Find them. Badger them. Get them elected. They might not thank you for it, but a lot of other people will. ~ John Sununu

This plague ... This curse ... I have an idea where it came from. I don't think it's from any spell or virus or nuclear rays. I think it's from a deeper place. I think we brought it here. I think we crushed ourselves down over the centuries. Buried ourselves under greed and hate and whatever other sins we could find until our souls finally hit the rock bottom of the universe. And then they scraped a hole through it, into some ... dark place. We released it. We poked through the seabed and the oil erupted, painted us black, pulled our inner sickness out for everyone to see. Now here we are in this dry corpse of a world, rotting on our feet till there's nothing left but bones and the buzz of flies. ~ Isaac Marion

Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good. ~ Gabriel Byrne

When you get into politics, you find that all your worst nightmares about it turn out to be true, and the people who are attracted to large concentrations of power are precisely the ones who should be kept as far away from it as possible. ~ Ken Livingstone

In any case, the church should seek music that does not leave its congregation cold-music that enhances its praises, preaching, and prayer; music that really edifies the people. That music should be contemporary at least in the sense of being meaningful to modern people, in the sense of not leaving most of them cold. It should leave them with the sense that the Word of God has been made more vivid, more memorable, not less, by the music...But I do believe that most congregations will find worship more intelligible if they sing and hear some music of our own time. ~ John M. Frame

To every one of us there must come a time when the whole universe will be found to have been a dream, when we find the soul is infinitely better than its surroundings. It is only a question of time, and time is nothing in the infinite. ~ Sai Baba

What the nation's built on is discussion, contradiction and growth, and at the moment you can't discuss anything. If you do start to discuss it, you get criticized. If people hate us, you have to find out why and try to solve that problem. ~ Donald Sutherland

Aquatic animals suffer from the disadvantage that they cannot scream when in pain, so we find it hard to gauge the degree of their agony. If fish could scream, angling purely for sport would be outlawed without delay. ~ Desmond Morris

Tacticians attempt to limit the options of opponents while increasing their own. Increasing one's options is the result of deeper understanding of the limits and enablers at hand. The boundaries of the battle or campaign limit the span of choices available only to the novice. To the master tactician, the more the boundaries appear to limit choice, the more options become available. The rules become enabling. To be sure, perceived limits and restraints are the source of surprise. When one side believes a thing cannot or will not be done, it is vulnerable to a master tactician who finds a way to do so. Knowledge of the opponent's perceptions of the boundaries of war increases the options available. When one can find no means to overcome the boundaries of battle, the conflict is lost. Military genius is conferred upon the tactician who can limit the opponent's options. Victory or defeat comes when one side perceives that the only option left is surrender, the renouncement of the capacity to choose for oneself and the transference of it to the other. This outcome occurs only because structure and context create the corners into which the opponent can be backed. ~ Everett C. Dolman

The U.S. Constitution is the basic framework for the greatest democracy on Earth. Some of my colleagues find it easy to amend it. I don't. ~ Byron Dorgan

I was not confident enough to tell him what I myself barely knew, which is that being true to yourself, even if it makes everyone hate you, even if it makes people want to kill you, is the most radical form of liberty, and when you make contact with something as electric and terrifying as the unadorned truth of yourself, it burns away so many other smaller forms of bondage you weren't even aware of, so you find yourself irradiated and unencumbered. ~ Rufi Thorpe

Rarely has a man been more comfortable with his own greatness. He spent much of his leisure time penning long and flattering portraits of himself, declaring that there had never 'been a greater botanist or zoologist', and that his system of classification was 'the greatest achievement in the realm of science'. Modestly, he suggested that his gravestone should bear the inscription Princeps Botanicorum, 'Prince of Botanists'. It was never wise to question his generous self-assessments. Those who did so were apt to find they had weeds named after them. ~ Bill Bryson

Fernanda, on the other hand, looked for it in vain along the paths of her everyday itinerary without knowing that the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Never like anybody you can't trust, Cruz said. You might think you're a smart boy, you can like somebody and still keep your eyes open. But there's something about liking that dismays your attention, I don't know what it is. You allow yourself to like somebody you don't trust, and one night soon enough, you'll wake up to find an ax cleaved in the back of your skull, and you'll have your own foolish liking to thank for it. ~ Takashi Matsuoka

The best way to find out if something needs to be in the picture is to leave it out. ~ Tom Hoffmann

So successful has the ideological-political-cultural purge been executed that it is hard indeed to find vigorous liberals, and no energetic, coherent and cogent leftists at all can find expression in our controlled media and educational systems. Forget about wholesale culture- or civilization-critics like Marxists. Universities have to be purged of any "radicalism" that can see through to the roots of issues and pathologies, for the same reasons that workers have to have nascent unions aborted among them and contrarian newspapers and media have to be starved of advertising. ~ Kenny Smith

Witnessing Panama's overnight transition from banana republic to middle-class retirement haven is like watching the Univision version of Extreme Makeover: it feels so tacky but you can't change channels because you just have to find out what happens next. ~ Andrew Evans

Ministry with volunteer youth workers is not primarily about volunteers bringing refreshment to students, nor about youth pastors bringing refreshment to volunteers. It is about creating a space wherein people can find refreshment from Christ. It's about creating an upper room - holy ground where disciples can encounter Christ and be washed and refreshed by him. ~ Duffy Robbins

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself. ~ William Martin

Sir always had a thing for calves. They were soft and smooth, like all skin on a woman. But the calf flesh was backed by muscle, so there was a firmness you wouldn't find at the hips, say, or in the small of the back. But it wasn't boney like the front of the leg. No, the calf was pretty much the closest thing to the perfection of breast tissue you could touch on a woman without getting your hand slapped away. ~ Joshua Edward Smith

And what have you laymen made of hell? A kind of penal servitude for eternity, on the lines of your convict prisons on earth, to which you condemn in advance all the wretched felons your police have hunted from the beginning - enemies of society, as you call them. You're kind enough to include the blasphemers and the profane. What proud or reasonable man could stomach such a notion of God's justice? And when you find that notion inconvenient it's easy enough for you to put it on one side. Hell is not to love any more, Madame. Not to love any more! ~ Georges Bernanos

You must take the world as you find it, with a struggle to be something more honest than those around you. Phineas, as he preached himself this sermon, declared to himself that they who attempted more than this flew too high in the clouds to be of service to men an women upon the earth ~ Anthony Trollope

Well, do you suppose I made up my mind then that what I had seen was something sickening? Not a bit of it. 'If it was done with such assurance and everyone thought it was necessary, then they must have known something I didn't,' was what I thought, and I tried to find out what it was. But I couldn't, no matter how hard I exerted myself. And since I couldn't, I couldn't join the army as I'd planned to, and not only did I not join the army, I couldn't find a place for myself anywhere in society, and ended up being no good for anything, as you can see.
'Oh yes, we know all about how you're no good for anything,' said one of us, 'But tell us: how many men would be no good for anything if it weren't for the likes of you? ~ Leo Tolstoy