Until We All Come Home Quotes

…there is no other logical explanation for how things ultimately worked out except by God's hand. ~ Kim De Blecourt

I have never left you. And I never told you you couldn't go outside. Take your children and go outside and play and shop. Resume your life. What are you afraid of? ~ Kim De Blecourt

You are stranded in a culture where you can't trust many, you don't fully understand the language, and you can't read the signs - and at the same time you try not to let on that you can't do those things. ~ Kim De Blecourt

The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling. Stacks of books stood neatly arranged on every horizontal surface - tables, windowsills, even the top of an unplugged television. Since Sophie had been forbidden to explore the library at home, her only real experience with books had come at school and from the few children's books that lay on the bottom shelf of a cabinet in the nursery. She sensed immediately that this was something altogether different. It was a library, yes, but she knew these books had been read. They weren't arranged in long lines of matching bindings like the ones in Bayfield House, and almost every volume had slips of paper protruding from the top. she wondered if Uncle Bertram had marked all the best bits.

"Shall we have a story?" said her uncle, when he had hung up their coats.

"Yes, please," said Sophie.

"What would you like?" he asked.

"You pick."

And so he did. They settled onto the couch, Bertram with a cup of tea and Sophie with a mug of cocoa. He began to read and Sophie's world was transformed - this was not like the insubstantial children's stories her mother read to her at bedtime. This was ever so much more.

"The Wind in the Willows," read Uncle Bertram. "Chapter One, The River Bank. The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home." Sophie closed her eyes and fell into the story. ~ Charlie Lovett

But his love is greater than all our hate and he will not rest until Judas has turned to him, until Satan has turned to him, until dark has turned to him; until we can all, all of us without exception, freely return his look of love with love in our own eyes and hearts. And then, healed, whole, complete but not finished, we swill know the joy of being co-creators with the one to whom we call.
Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

With all cameras on me, Chip released the blindfold and said, "Ta-da!"
I wasn't sure what I was looking at. A shipwreck, maybe? On the back of a semi?
"What is that?" I said.
"I got this for you, Jo!" Chip replied.
"That better not be for me," I said. It was the ugliest, rundown-looking, two-story shack of a boat I'd ever seen. "What the heck are we going to do with a houseboat?"
"That's our new home!" Chip said, beaming with pride at his purchase.
"What? You are crazy. We are not living on a houseboat."
It quickly dawned on me that this wasn't a joke and Chip wasn't even close to kidding. I wasn't mishearing him. He was dead serious about making that boat our home for the next six months.
I just about lost it. "How can we live on the water, Chip? Three of our kids don't even know how to swim! Did you think this through?!"
Then he fessed up and told me how much money he'd spent on it. As it all sank in, I realized I'd never been so mad at him--ever--and that's saying something.
"Come on. At least come look at it. I know this can work," he pleaded.
As soon as we walked a little closer, we could see the holes. Holes. In the boat.
We pulled ourselves up onto the flatbed and went inside to find the interior covered in mold. Someone had taken the AC unit out on top and left a gaping hole in the roof, so for years it had rained straight into the boat. We tried turning the engine over, and of course it didn't start. That's ~ Joanna Gaines

Now, my dear little girl, you have come to an age when the inward life develops and when some people (and on the whole those who have most of a destiny) find that all is not a bed of roses. Among other things there will be waves of terrible sadness, which last sometimes for days; irritation, insensibility, etc., etc., which taken together form a melancholy. Now, painful as it is, this is sent to us for an enlightenment. It always passes off, and we learn about life from it, and we ought to learn a great many good things if we react on it right. (For instance, you learn how good a thing your home is, and your country, and your brothers, and you may learn to be more considerate of other people, who, you now learn, may have their inner weaknesses and sufferings, too.) Many persons take a kind of sickly delight in hugging it; and some sentimental ones may even be proud of it, as showing a fine sorrowful kind of sensibility. Such persons make a regular habit of the luxury of woe. That is the worst possible reaction on it. It is usually a sort of disease, when we get it strong, arising from the organism having generated some poison in the blood; and we mustn't submit to it an hour longer than we can help, but jump at every chance to attend to anything cheerful or comic or take part in anything active that will divert us from our mean, pining inward state of feeling. When it passes off, as I said, we know more than we did before. And we must try to make it last as short as time as p ~ William James

In a universe devoid of life, any life at all would be immensely meaningful. We ARE that meaning. "And what we see, "says the poet Mary Oliver, "is the world that cannot cherish us, but which we cherish." As though life itself is the great, universal, unrequited love of all time. But there is even more to this. Deep mystery. We are the universe aware of itself. We let the miracle get lost in distractions. On a planet so rich with living companions, much of humanity sentences itself to solitary confinement. Late at night, I used to lie in my boat listening to radio calls from ships to families ashore. There was only one conversation, and it boils down to, "I love you and I miss you: come home safe." Connections make us individuals. Ironic, isn't it? The more connected, the more unique our life becomes ... ~ Carl Safina

That's our cue," Dr. Chadwick noted, managing to approximate a cheerful smile, addressing the room at large. "Everyone please stand behind the yellow line until the doors open. No food, drink, flash photography, or video cameras are permitted. Once aboard the ride, please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times until we come to a full and complete stop. Otherwise, they're apt to end up in another universe somewhere without ya, and wouldn't that fry your noggin? ~ Stephanie Osborn

Like many of the kids I write about, I once was a runaway myself - and a few (but not all) of the other writers in the series also come from troubled backgrounds. That early experience influences my fiction, no doubt, but I don't think it's necessary to come from such a background in order to write a good Bordertown tale. To me, "running away to Bordertown" is as much a metaphorical act as an actual one. These tales aren't just for kids who have literally run away from home, but also for every kid, every person, who "runs away" from a difficult or constrictive past to build a different kind of life in some new place. Some of us "run away" to college . . . or we "run away" to a distant city or state . . . or we "run away" from a safe, secure career path to follow our passions or artistic muse. We "run away" from places we don't belong, or from families we have never fit into. We "run away" to find ourselves, or to find others like ourselves, or to find a place where we finally truly belong. And that kind of "running away from home" - the everyday, metaphorical kind - can be just as hard, lonely, and disorienting as crossing the Nevernever to Bordertown . . . particularly when you're in your teens, or early twenties, and your resources (both inner and outer) are still limited. I want to tell stories for young people who are making that journey, or contemplating making that journey. Stories in which friendship, community, and art is the "magic" that lights the way.

(s ~ Terri Windling

No gift unrecognized as coming from God is at its own best: therefore many things that God would gladly give us, things even that we need because we are, must wait until we ask for them, that we may know whence they come: when in all gifts we find Him, then in Him we shall find all things. ~ George MacDonald

We all want explanations for why we behave as we do and for the ways the world around us functions. Even when our feeble explanations have little to do with reality. We're storytelling creatures by nature, and we tell ourselves story after story until we come up with an explanation that we like and that sounds reasonable enough to believe. And when the story portrays us in a more glowing and positive light, so much the better. ~ Dan Ariely

We'd all turn our backs on privilege, but comfortably, the way you can when you still have access to it. No one wanted to call home asking for money, but we all knew that in a pinch our parents would come through for us. ~ David Sedaris

Students never think it can be the teacher's fault and so I thought I was stupid. I was frustrated and would come home and cry because I couldn't do it. Then we got a new teacher who made math accessible. That made all the difference and I learned that it's how you present it that makes it scary or friendly. ~ Danica McKellar

At around 6:00 a.m., April 30, 1987, we were awakened by a loud bull horn while inside our rented mobile home at an Ozark, Missouri trailer park.
"Glenn Miller, Jack Jackson, Douglas Sheets, Tony Wydra, this is a United States Marshal. You have three minutes to come out with your hands up, or we will commence firing."
The feds had flown in two SWAT teams; one from Kentucky, the other from Louisiana (40 in all, plus the Marshals and local authorities) to make the arrests.
We were surrounded.
I had a hang-over, couldn't find my pants, and had to pee, bad. ~ Frazier Glenn Miller

I have a secret feeling that we're all Hobbits. Deep down we all want to stay home and feel safe, but we all dream about someone knocking on the door and saying "Come on an adventure and let's have a fun ride. ~ Richard Armitage

Why are you crying?'
'How can I possibly look good to you? I'm pregnant! I'm really, really pregnant!'
'Of course you are. Why are you crying?'
'Because I'm going to Hawai'i!'
'Yes, you're going to Hawai'i. Come on now, pull yourself together.'
I kept crying.
Darren looked frantic. He stepped back and fumbled for his roguish smirk. 'So, is this a hormone thing?'
'No, it's not a hormone thing! I'm old, Darren! I'm old and pregnant, and I'm going to Hawai'i. Can you understand how that makes me feel?'
He could not.
How could I possibly expect my husband to understand all the bizarre things that happen to a woman in spirit and flesh when a friendly alien takes over her body? He still couldn't figure out why Laurie and I wanted to fly all the way to Hawai'i just to spend a week lounging around the pool, comparing underarm flab, when we could stay home and have the same conversation over the phone for a lot less money. ~ Robin Jones Gunn

And Ross again knew himself to be happy-in a new and less ephemeral way than before. He was filled with a queer sense of enlightnment. It seemed to him that all his life had moved to this pinpoint of time down the scattered threads of twenty years; from his old childhood running thoughtless and barefoot in the sun on Hendrawna sands, from Demelza's birth in the squarlor of a mining cottage, from the plains of Virginia and the trampled fairgrounds of Redruth, from the complex impulses which had governed Elizabeth's choice of Francis and from the simple philosophies of Demelza's own faith, all had been animated to a common end-and that end a moment of enlightenment and understanding and completion. Someone--a Latin poet--had defined eternity as no more than this: to hold and possess the whole fullness of life in one moment, here and now, past and present and to come. He thought: if we could only stop here. Not when we get home, not leaving Trenwith, but here, here reaching the top of the hill out of Sawle, dusk wiping out the edges of the land and Demelza walking and humming at my side. ~ Winston Graham

What we have seen in financial markets should bring home to us all that the central organising principle of this 21st century is interdependence. For the century just past, interdependence may have been one option among many. For the century that is to come, there is no longer an alternative. ~ Kevin Rudd

Love is about control and loss of control. In love, we give ourselves up to each other. We lose control or, rather, we cede control to another, trusting in a way we would never otherwise trust, letting the other person hold the deepest part of our being in their hands, with the capacity to hurt it mortally. This cession of control is a deeply terrifying thing, which is why we crave it and are drawn to it like moths to the flame, and why we have to trust it unconditionally. In love, so many hazardous uncertainties in life are resolved: the constant negotiation with other souls, the fear and distrust that lie behind almost every interaction, the petty loneliness that we learned to live with as soon as we grew apart from our mother's breast. We lose all this in the arms of another. We come home at last to a primal security, made manifest by each other's nakedness ...
And with that loss of control comes mutual power, the power to calm, the power to redeem, and the power to hurt. ~ Andrew Sullivan

I drive too fast;
I love too much;
I wish to die every day I live and I live like my wish was to come true.
Ghandi, Ensler, Chanel, and others… What have they got on you but the ability to put into words what you feel. Somewhere deep inside you feel, we all feel, that instinct for carpe diem. It is just that most don't know it until the moment they are about to die...
Carpe diem amici mei, carpe diem iam. ~ B. Farkas

Arin nearly got his throat cut.
"The god of life preserve you," Cheat gasped. He staggered back, his knife glinting in the shadows of his small bedroom. "What the hell are you doing here? Breaking into my home like a thief in the night. Climbing through the window. You're lucky I saw your face in time."
"There's something I have to tell you."
"Start with why you couldn't come by the auction house at a decent hour. I thought you had a free pass. What about the girl's seal ring?"
"Unavailable."
Cheat squinted up at Arin, tapping the flat of the short blade against his thigh. In the dim light of a streetlamp, a slow grin spread across his face. "Had a falling-out with your lady, did you? A lovers' quarrel?"
Arin felt his face go dark and tight.
"Easy, lad. Just tell me: are the rumors true?"
"No."
"All right." Cheat held up his hands as if in surrender, the knife held loosely. "If you say they're not, they're not."
"Cheat. I broke curfew, scaled the general's wall, and stole through a guarded city to speak with you. Don't you think we have more important things to discuss than Valorian gossip? ~ Marie Rutkoski

We all carry our sins with us. But the Lord wants to hear us say to him, "Forgive me, help me to walk, change my heart!" And the Lord can change your heart. In the Church, the God we encounter is not a merciless judge but is like the Father in the Gospel parable. You may be like the son who left home, who sank to the depths, farthest from the Gospel. When you have the strength to say, "I want to come home," you will find the door open. God will come to meet you because he is always waiting for you - God is always waiting for you. God embraces you, kisses you, and celebrates. That is how the Lord is, that is how the tenderness of our heavenly Father is. The Lord wants us to belong to a Church that knows how to open her arms and welcome everyone, that is not a house for the few, but a house for everyone, where all can be renewed, transformed, sanctified by his love - the strongest and the weakest, sinners, the indifferent, those who feel discouraged or lost. ~ Pope Francis

We're going to investigate," Fireheart meowed. "We can't decide how to get rid of these dogs until we know exactly what we have to face. We're not going to attack them, not yet-have you got that, Cloudtail?"
Cloudtail's blue eyes burned into his, and he did not reply.
"I won't take you, Cloudtail, unless you promise to do as you're told without question."
"Oh, all right." The tip of Cloudtail's tail flicked irritably. "I want every last dog turned into crowfood, but I'll do it you're way, Fireheart."
"Good." Fireheart's gaze swept over the rest of the patrol. "Any questions?"
"What if we come across Tigerstar?" asked Sandstorm.
"A cat from another Clan on our territory?" Fireheart bared his teeth. "Yes, you can attack him.
Cloudtil let out a growl of satisfaction. ~ Erin Hunter

The effect of the weather on the inhabitants of Provence is immediate and obvious. They expect every day to be sunny, and their disposition suffers when it isn't. Rain they take as a personal affront, shaking their heads and commiserating with each other in the cafes, looking with profound suspicion at the sky as though a plague of locusts is about to descend, and picking their way with distaste through the puddles on the pavement. If anything worse than a rainy day should come along, such as this sub-zero snap, the result is startling: most the population disappears... But what did everyone else do? The earth was frozen, the vines were clipped and dormant, it was too cold to hunt. Had they all gone on holiday?...It was a puzzle, until we realized how many of the local people had their birthdays in September or October, and then a possible but unverifiable answer suggested itself: they were busy indoors making babies. There is a season for everything in Provence, and the first two months of the year must be devoted to procreation. We have never dared to ask. ~ Peter Mayle

Few of us have chosen our clubs, they have simply been presented to us; and so as they slip from Second Division to the Third, or sell their best players, or buy players who you know can't play, or bash the ball the seven hundreth time towards a nine foot centre-forward, we simply curse, go home, worry for a fortnight and then come back to suffer all over again. ~ Nick Hornby

The people are living seperately together," he said. "So there is responsibility. I cry, you cry. You cry, I cry. We all come running, and the one that stays quiet, the one that stays home, must explain. Is he in league with the criminals? Is he a coward? And what would he expect when he cries? This is simple. This is normal. This is community. ~ Philip Gourevitch

The core of understanding lies in the individual mind, and until that is touched everything is uncertain and superficial. Truth cannot be perceived until we come to fully understand our potential and ourselves. After all, knowledge in the martial arts ultimately means self-knowledge. ~ Bruce Lee

The earth community, the Life Community, is not the property of any one religion or group or part of the world; it is the Commons that embraces us all, our planetary home. And it needs us as never before. It calls to us to become, not heroes but community builders, builders of home, gatherers and embracers, bearers of hospitality, keepers of the shared space that nurtures us all. It calls us not to go forth and come back laden with honors but to honor where we are, who we are, and from that place to reach out to connect to and honor each other in the community of life. ~ David Spangler

I came home to find three rocks on my desk and a card with a penguin on the front. Seeing it was from Greg, I did a little happy dance as I bounced into my room, reading his inscription.


Dearest Fiona,

I'm missing you dreadfully. It's been an age, I don't think you'll recognize me when next we meet. I've put on ten stone and lost all my hair. And an eye. I hope you fancy a fat bald man with an eye patch.

Come out with me on Friday. Finals will finally be over and it'll be time to celebrate. I'll pick you up at four. We'll do a first date do-over, eat at Manganiello's again, plus a new, improved surprise.

Also, FYI: Gentoo penguins mate for life. Whereas Adélie penguins prostitute themselves for rocks.

I'd like to be your Gentoo penguin.

-Greg

P.S. Unless you're open to a rock arrangement. If so, please find my first down payment enclosed. ~ Penny Reid

In 1919, 1920, 1921, the entire Jewish press was assaulting the Romanian state, unleashing disorder everywhere, urging violence against the regime, the form of government, the church, Romanian order, the national idea, patriotism.

Now, as if by a miracle, the same press, controlled by the same men, changed into a defender of the state's order, of laws; declares itself against violence. While we become: 'the country's enemies', 'extremists of the Right', 'in the pay and service of Romania's enemies', etc. And in the end we will hear also this: that we are financed by the Jews. ...

We have endured outrage after outrage, ridicule after ridicule, slap after slap, until we have come to see ourselves in this frightening situation: Jews are considered to be defenders of Romanianism, sheltered from any unpleasantness, leading a life of peace and plenty, while we are considered enemies of our nation, with our liberty and life endangered, and we are hunted down like rabid dogs by all the Romanian authorities.

I witnessed with my own eyes these times and lived through them, and I was saddened to the depths of my soul. It is dreadful to fight for years on end for your fatherland, your heart as pure as tears, while enduring misery and hunger, then find yourself suddenly declared an enemy of your country, persecuted by your own kind, told that you fight because you are in the pay of foreigners, and see the entire Jewry master your land, assuming the role of ~ Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

I feel really lucky to come home to a place that is so beautiful. sometimes it's sad to leave and go out on the road, missing everything that happens here - but honestly, it's nice to miss the things that you love once in a while. so you never forget to appreciate it. hopefully, i can say this without sounding like a preacher but ... remember to enjoy EVERYTHING. the things that feel good, the things that hurt, rejection, acceptance.. it's all going to make you better. stronger. and more like yourself. every once in a while i get a reminder of how much i'm okay with just being me. i know that sounds ridiculous. cause i'm in this band. we're lucky. we got successful. but who i am is still this nerdy, silly, flamethrower of a person. and it took me 20 years to see that and get it and love it. ~ Hayley Williams

I fight for the men I've held in my arms, dying on foreign soil. I fight for their wives and children, who's names I heard whispered in their last breaths. I fight for we few who did come home, only to find our country full of strangers wearing familiar faces. I fight for my people impoverished to pay the debts of an Empire too weak to rule them, yet brands them criminals for wanting to rule themselves! I fight so that all the fighting I've already done hasn't been for nothing. I fight... because I must." ―Ulfric Stormcloak ~ Skyrim

Years may go by, and the wheel in the river Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day, Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever Long after all of the boys are away. Home for the Indies and home from the ocean, Heroes and soldiers we all will come home; Still we shall find the old mill wheel in motion, Turning and churning that river to foam. You with the bean that I gave when we quarrelled, I with your marble of Saturday last, Honoured and old and all gaily apparelled, Here we shall meet and remember the past. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

It's hillbilly urine; we had better get home before they come to eat us. Kevin said pointing towards home proving if there was ever any doubt that he had no acting ability at all. (The Children of Ankh series) ~ Kim Cormack

We all emerge into this material soup, mix about with the meat and potatoes of life, and then slip away, back to the primordial germination whence we came. Nascence is a strange business: we forget what we were doing only to come forth and continually forget what we were doing perpetually over the course of a lifetime, until it is time to quit this plane through some unseen and ethereal vomitorium, and presumably forget that we had forgotten all over again. ~ Michelle Franklin

It all begins and ends in the same place, doesn't it? Conor and me in Ballyutogue. We all come home eventually. ~ Leon Uris

The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief sedentary hiatus, we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way. ~ Carl Sagan