Urban Living Quotes

It's hopeless, trying to recruit a stranger to help me find someone who's a stranger to him. But then again, we are all strangers to ourselves, caught up in the monotony of daily life, stuck in our routines, never really stopping to think about what will happen to us if we fall off track. ~ Shannon Mullen

He hands her his pack, which he's emptied. "You mean me?" Justineau demands. "You think I'm not pulling my weight?" It would feel good to have a stand-up argument with Parks right then, but he doesn't seem keen to play. "No, I didn't mean you. I meant in general." "People in general? You were being philosophical?" "I was being a grumpy bastard. It's what I wear to the office most days. I guess you probably noticed that." She hesitates, wrong-footed. She didn't think Parks was capable of self-deprecation. But then she didn't think he was capable of changing his mind. "Any more rules of engagement?" she asks him, still hurting in some obscure way, still not mollified. "How to survive when shopping? Top tips for modern urban living?" Parks gives the question more consideration than she was expecting. "Use up the last of that e-blocker," he suggests. "And don't die. ~ M.R. Carey

In addition to this there is the pluralization of the world in which we live through the division between public and private spheres, and also the plurality of institutions within the public sphere. Each of them forms a world in itself, so that individuals have to move to and fro between different worlds. The integration of this plurality of aspects of the world, which used to be achieved by religion, no longer takes place in the public world of secular culture but has to be achieved by the individual. The basis of this is meant to be the private sphere of life, the world of the family. But in many cases this cannot stand up to the burdens imposed by modern life. The growth of urban living has contributed to an increase of pluralization in the private sphere also, making the task of integration increasingly difficult. ~ Wolfhart Pannenberg

The auto industry must acknowledge that a rational transportation policy should seek a balance between individual convenience, the efficient use of limited resources, and urban-living values that protect spaciousness, natural beauty, and human-scale mobility. ~ Stewart Udall

Urban living has certainly hardened them. The neglect and the poverty, it steals so much from children, forcing them to snatch whatever's offered them--and how they grab at the things put upon them by strangers, the unnatural comforts and abhorrent cruelties. ~ Lisa O'Donnell

That's my little piece of heaven. Go ahead."
Ciro followed Remo through the open door to a small enclosed garden. Terra-cotta pots positioned along the top of the stone wall spilled over with red geraniums and orange impatiens. An elm tree with a wide trunk and deep roots filled the center of the garden. Its green leaves and thick branches reached past the roof of Remo's building, creating a canopy over the garden. There was a small white marble birdbath, gray with soot, flanked by two deep wicker armchairs.
Remo fished a cigarette out of his pocket, offering another to Ciro as both men took a seat. "This is where I come to think."
"Va bene," Ciro said as he looked up into the tree. He remembered the thousands of trees that blanketed the Alps; here on Mulberry Street, one tree with peeling gray bark and holes in its leaves was cause for celebration. ~ Adriana Trigiani

The heady scent of him filled her nostrils, that particular blend of salt and sea and musk that was his alone. Just the smell of him made the blood rush to her core; the feel of his strong arms, the sweet taste of his mouth made her whole body pulse with need and longing.
Marcus made a groaning noise deep in his throat and started to pull away.
"Don't you dare," she breathed in his ear. "If you stop kissing me, I'll... I'll bite you. ~ Deborah Blake

I was fuzzy on the details, but I knew the basic outline. I knew how I wanted to be, it was simply a question of being who I wanted to be.
I thought I had had it all figured out before. I'd had the plan perfectly clear in my head. I wasn't going to cross into thirty without the triple crown in hand: serious boyfriend, career, and great friends..
It was time to accept that maybe, just maybe, I didn't have to have it all figured out by the time I turned thirty. Maybe I could just work on me, and see what else fell into place.
I was pretty sure that was otherwise known as living. ~ Megan Crane

Whatever the goal, small, daily investments can bring big results. ~ Michael Hyatt

Surfing is all about living in the moment. When you walk out on the Sydney Cricket Ground to play cricket you're intensely aware of the history of the sport; you're playing on this historic ground surrounded by pictures of the legends. With surfing, you just dive into the water and paddle out and catch waves. ~ Nick Carroll

I was never one of those student who thought it was great to see their teaches outside of school, in their normal clothes, living their normal life like a normal person. I actually preferred to keep them as they were: smartly dressed and in charge, maybe even as role models. What I definitely did not want to do was see them getting smashed in Derby town center, smiling at women, and then getting pissy when the women didn't smile back, reminding me that none of the adults in my life really know what they're doing and that I too will never really figure anything out. ~ James Acaster

He was living in a modern world all right, but didn't always feel like he belonged here, in the first years of this new and daunting century. He thought most people felt as jittery and out of place as he did, and that all the optimistic new Edwardians you heard about were only in the papers. Looking round him at the passing people, from their faces and the way they dressed you wouldn't know the Queen was dead eight years, but then when everyone was poor they tended to look much the same from one reign or one era to another. Poverty was timeless and you could depend upon it. It was never out of fashion. ~ Alan Moore

Some ghosts haunt you for life. The best you can do is make room on the couch and get used to living with them. ~ Jay Bell

Basically, I'm living the life of an actress in L.A. And I've recently had some pretty good fortune. ~ Olivia Munn

Michael Moore and I actually have a lot in common. We both appreciate living in a country where there's free expression. But Michael, if you ever show up at my front door with a camera, I'll kill you. I mean it. ~ Clint Eastwood

That's the new picture of the good life that I want to paint - living the way that God created us to live. That's what the good life is. ~ Trip Lee

Ask the first man you meet what he means by defending freedom, and he'll tell you privately he means defending the standard of living. ~ Martin Niemoller

Death will destroy my body, but my creatures will keep on living ever after, in the years to come. ~ Enzo Ferrari

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

If you separate from ... everything you have done in the past, everything that disturbs you about the future ... and apply yourself to living the life that you are living-that is to say, the present-you can live all the time that remains to you until your death in calm, benevolence, and serenity. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The sun shines, snow falls, mountains rise and valleys sink, night deepens and pales into day, but it is only very seldom that we attend to such things ... When we are grasping the inexpressible meaning of these things, this is life, this is living. To do this twenty-four hours a day is the Way of Haiku. It is having life more abundantly. ~ R.H. Blyth

You live. And you throw yourself into everything and try not to think of the bruises. ~ Jojo Moyes

Make the best of what you have today.
Today is the day.
The best is here: now, it is always be at the present moment. ~ Angelica Hopes

Vain the ambition of kings Who seek by trophies and dead things To leave a living name behind, And weave but nets to catch the wind. ~ John Webster

And we also recognize this dance-like spirit, this ethos of grace: societal conduct, the control not only of written and established conventions, the virtuous mastery of forms of play where persons come close to each other without meeting and where they establish distance without damaging each other through indifference; amiability and not insistence is the atmosphere of this ethos of grace - its ethical law is the game and its observation, not seriousness. Forced distance between persons becomes ennobled into reserve. The offensive indifference, coldness, and rudeness of living past each other is made ineffective through the forms of politeness, respectfulness, and attentiveness. Reserve counteracts a too great intimacy. ~ Helmuth Plessner

We have one crystal clear reason apart from the blessed happiness of this way of life. It is this: prayer is the core of our day. Take prayer out, and the day would collapse, would be pithless, a straw blown in the wind. But how can you pray
really pray, I mean
with one against who you have a grudge or whom you have been discussing critically with another? Try it. You will find it cannot be done. ~ Amy Carmichael

He will miss this quiet full of noise: the nighthawks, the way the woods breathe, the things moving unsuspected through the dark. But he will take with him the canisters full of blasted images and have the pleasure of living them again. They are not nothing, the memories. ~ Lauren Groff

I hereby break all contracts I made unconsciously & consciously before I knew the depth of my own Spirit; the silent ones, the ones I inherited, passed down & accepted as my own from generation to generation.

I hereby severe all ties with that which holds me down & back, unable to see the glimmer of what I know to be true, whether by my own creation or by expectations tied like weights around my ankles by others lost in the sea of their own confused hearts.

I hereby reclaim my right to choose how my story unfolds, armed with creativity, a heart made of gold & reverent humility.

I hereby fully accept all of this living & what-is-yet-to-come with brash integrity & loving determination.

I hereby swear to use my superpowers for the love of all beings & I return anything that no longer serves my Higher & Lower Self (& the ones Caught-in-Between) with gratitude & consciousness.

I do this all with love, from the great source of it found in my very own beating heart. ~ Bryonie Wise

Salim is upset. The fax that was waiting for him when he woke this morning was curt, and alternately chiding, stern, and disappointed: Salim was letting them down - his sister, Fuad, Fuad's business partners, the Sultanate of Oman, the whole Arab world. Unless he was able to get the orders, Fuad would no longer consider it his obligation to employ Salim. They depended upon him. His hotel was too expensive. What was Salim doing with their money, living like a sultan in America? Salim read the fax in his room (which has always been too hot and stifling, so last night he opened a window, and was now too cold) and sat there for a time, his face frozen into an expression of complete misery. ~ Anonymous

Lifting our cup means sharing our life so we can celebrate it. When we truly believe we are called to lay down our lives for our friends, we must dare to take the risk to let others know what we are living. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Progressives did not like the antiquated thinking that saw the Constitution as a barrier to government expansion. The "living Constitution" was born. That benign-sounding phrase (coined later) was conjured up to justify changing the Constitution, without formal amendment, from a limit on power to a blank check. What was impermissible to the federal government by an earlier interpretation became permissible once the Constitution was construed as a evolving document. But by that philosophy, the Constitution is no limit on government power at all. A constitutional government that defines its own powers is a contradiction in terms. ~ Sheldon Richman

All known living bodies are sharply divided into two special kingdoms, based upon the essential differences which distinguish animals from plants, and in spite of what has been said, I am convinced that these two kingdoms do not really merge into one another at any point. ~ Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

The ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business of life,
chiefly because they do not know, but partly because they do not mean, any better. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I'm such an odd mix of things. My grandfather was Indian: I've got more family living in India than I do in the U.K. My old man was East London. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My great-grandfather was Irish. ~ Sebastian Coe

Femininity itself has become a brand, a narrow and shrinking formula of commoditised identity which can be sold back to women who have become alienated from their own power as living, loving, labouring beings. ~ Laurie Penny