A Great Loss Quotes & Sayings

By daily contrition, and habitual mortification of the flesh, man is day by day RENEWED, bearing heavenly fruits and celestial graces, of an inexplicable sweetness. Contrariwise, the pleasure of the world bringeth heaviness of heart, vexation of spirit, and a wounded conscience: yea, so great hence is the calamity of the soul, and so heavy the loss of the heavenly gift (a loss which necessarily flows from the pleasures of the flesh, and from worldly delights) that he who duly calls the same to mind, cannot be exceedingly fear and dread any of the fleshly and worldly joys, which serve but to divert him from those that are spiritual and heavenly, and to quench in him the most sweet grace of devotion that brings the soul into the kingdom of God. — Johann Arndt

The zest for life of those unusual men and women who make a great zealous success of living is due more often in good part to the craftiness and pertinacity with which they manage to overlook the misery of others. You can watch them watch life beat the stuffing out of the faces of their friends and acquaintances, although they themselves seem to outwit the dense delays of social custom, the tedious tick-tock of bureaucratic obfuscation, accepting loss and age and change and disappointment without suffering punctures in their stomach lining. — Edward Hoagland

Science and technology have been embarrassed by two world wars, many smaller ones, and the spread of weapons that could destroy humanity. As a result, there is some loss of confidence in the great achievements of technology. — Thomas Keating

There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness. — Eldridge Cleaver

To survive one tragedy was to learn you cannot survive them all, and this knowledge was both a freedom and a great loss. — Chris Womersley

Trust me, I've seen a lot of fighters come in hot and they disappear faster than they came in after a loss or two. This is the UFC and the best fighters in the world are here. If you fight the great fighters you're bound to lose. — Clay Guida

I believe deeply that God does his best work in our lives during times of great heartbreak and loss, and I believe that much of that rich work is done by the hands of people who love us, who dive into the wreckage with us and show us who God is, over and over and over. There are years when the Christmas spirit is hard to come by, and it's in those seasons when I'm so thankful for Advent. Consider it a less flashy but still very beautiful way of being present to this season. Give up for a while your false and failing attempts at merriment, and thank God for thin places, and for Advent, for a season that understands longing and loneliness and long nights. Let yourself fall open to Advent, to anticipation, to the belief that what is empty will be filled, what is broken will be repaired, and what is lost can always be found, no matter how many times it's been lost. — Shauna Niequist

I don't feel part of the world. No one needs me or wants me or even likes me very much. I don't like myself. The world will keep turning without me. I'll be no great loss. I'm just a temporary misuse of a minute amount of carbon. — Barbara Elsborg

It's worth pointing out that [Herman Melville] worked in [the New York Custom House] as a deputy customs inspector between 1866 and 1885. Nineteen years, and he never got a raise - four dollars a day, six days a week. He was by then a washed-up writer, forgotten and poor. I used to find this subject heartbreaking, a waste: the greatest living American author was forced to spend his days writing tariff reports instead of novels. But now, knowing what I know about the sleaze of the New York Custom House, and the honorable if bitter decency with which Melville did his job, I have come to regard literature's loss as the republic's gain. Great writers are a dime a dozen in New York. But an honest customs inspector in the Gilded Age? Unheard of. — Sarah Vowell

In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins. — Antoni Tapies

He had never seen such eyes before, not even in the faces of soldiers unmanned in the midst of great carnage. Eyes like black mirrors, at once shallow and bottomless. He had the feeling that if he pressed his finger to one of those eyes, it would shatter and fall inward through a black cavern of grief and loss that could never be filled. — Greg Iles

The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must-never for sport. — Robert A. Heinlein

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honey-moon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which make the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common. — George Eliot

It's kind of funny to me listening to people who claim to have these great records of winning a hundred and some odd straight felony cases without a loss and that kind of stuff that you hear of all the time. I'm here to tell you, if you let me pick out which hundred cases I get to try, I'll win a hundred of them in a row, too. Case selection is everything in creating records like that. My philosophy was, I tried them all. If I made a determination that the evidence was sufficient to justify the prosecution, then I would try the case, and certainly whenever you do that, you're going to lose a certain percentage of them. — Mark Baker

What of it? If I die, I die. It will be no great loss to the world, and I am thoroughly bored with life. I am like a man yawning at a ball; the only reason he does not go home to bed is that his carriage has not arrived yet. — Mikhail Lermontov

In a crisis, stocks of financial companies are great investments, because the tide is bound to turn. Massive losses on bad loans and soured investments are irrelevant to value; improving trends and future prospects are what matter, regardless of whether profits will have to be used to cover loan losses and equity shortfalls for years to come. — Seth Klarman

Daily routine is the great balm that keeps her spirits up and holds her life together, warding off the existential fright that can take you by ambush anytime you're dithering or at a loss, reminding you of the magnitude of the void you are sitting on. Keeping busy is the middle-class way - a practical way and a good way. — A.S.A Harrison

I'm asked all the time, 'Doesn't it feel great to finish the novel?' And the answer to that is, 'No.' It's sort of a loss to stop a 10-year project, which is an imaginary project in the sense that it's a work of my imagination. — Bob Shacochis

Fifteen years ago tomorrow I had open heart surgery, a quintuple bypass surgery. Thanks to all of my doctors. Because of them, in 15 years of life I've been able to experience, well, acid reflux, short-term memory loss, and erectile dysfunction. Thanks for all your work. It's great to be alive. — David Letterman

The most encouraging trend of our time is the widespread loss of faith in government. No longer do people look to the government as the great problem solver, economic planner, social unifier, or cultural czar. The government is more likely to be seen for what it is, a haven for grafters, liars, and would-be tyrants. Americans, like the Russians, no longer believe anything until it is officially denied. — Llewellyn Rockwell

would be stupid to confide your entire plan to one person. It's infinitely smarter to give little pieces of it to each person working with you. That way, if someone betrays you, the loss isn't too great." "Oh," says Uriah. Lynn picks up her fork and starts eating again. "I heard the Candor made ice cream," says Marlene, twisting her head around to see the lunch line. "You know, as a kind of 'it sucks we got attacked, but at least there are desserts' thing. — Veronica Roth

It was the first time that he'd cried in a very long time. All of his emotions poured out now, in a great rush of release: it was sadness tinged with bitterness, but mostly an intensely deep feeling of loss. — EXO Books

The loss of my sight was a great fillip. If I could go deaf and dumb I think I might pant on to be a hundred. — Samuel Beckett

People in so many countries look up to the United States as a model of democracy, but I doubt if that can continue. It leaves me with a great sense of loss. — Bianca Jagger

If sequestration takes place, that's going to be a great setback. We don't need to be having something like sequestration that's going to cause these job losses - over 170 million jobs that could be lost, — Maxine Waters

When we're recovering from a spiritual fumble, we must realize everyone does stupid stuff. No one is exempt. An occasional misstep doesn't brand us as stupid - it makes us real. God loves us regardless of our mishaps. After a fumble, do as any good football player would. Fight to recover what you lost, get back into the game, and let the Creator turn your loss into a gain. With Him, in spite of our fumbles we can rise to great heights. — Jake Byrne

Rob; you could have been someone I wanted to be with. But you're not; you never spoke to Niall, not really. You joked and you danced, but how often did you really talk? You never even told him you loved him until it was already too late. What was he to you? A friend? A lover? Or was he just some set piece in Rob Sardan's great story? Is that what everyone is to you? Can't we have our own story? — Joel Cornah

In the scheme of life, in emotion and loss, I responded the way I did. I lost. I shouldn't have responded that way. I've had some people tell me that I did a great thing - sticking up for myself - but to me, personally, with the way that I handled my emotions, I lost. But I learned. That will not happen again. — Mike Tyson

Here in the Great Lakes region, a fourth year in a row of declining water levels has caused millions of dollars in losses for shipping companies, marinas and other businesses and prompted further restrictions on future water withdrawals for expanding suburbs. "A lot of people just can't believe that we may be running out of water, living this close to the Great Lakes," said Sarah Nerenberg, a water engineer with the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, which conducted the study on shortages. — Timothy Egan

As it turns out, you can love someone too much. Then, when they leave, your heart goes missing. And no on can survive that great a loss. — Jodi Picoult

Other players and at least one great composer - Beethoven - had lived with deafness, but hearing loss wasn't where Hugh's woes ended. There was the vertigo, the trembling, the periodic loss of vision. There was nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, galloping pulse. Worst of all was the almost constant tinnitus. He had always thought deafness meant silence. This was not true, at least not in his case. Hugh Yates had a constantly braying burglar alarm in the middle of his head. — Stephen King

Mitt Romney has a history of being a great job creator. Secondly, he was a great governor. He went from billions of dollars in the hole when he became governor to billions of dollars in surplus when he left. And he went from the loss of tens of thousands jobs when he became governor to the creation of 40,000 new jobs when he left office. — John Kasich

The reason we feel disillusioned about our life and faith is not because Christianity isn't fulfilling, but because we've stopped thinking and acting like a Christian - someone who has sold all she has for the pearl of great value, someone who considers everything a loss compared to the greatness of knowing Jesus Christ. Without this opportunity to suffer we will, like Lance, "go crazy," becoming undisciplined robots who think that relief is found in leisure and irresponsibility when in fact it comes from being wholly devoted to God's kingdom. — Gary L. Thomas

I am someone who has a cold heart. If I am beside a great grief I throw barriers up so the loss cannot go too deep or too far. There is a wall instantly in place, and it will not fall. — Michael Ondaatje

She had seen that look before, on the faces of white women, strangers on the street, who would see her hand clasped in Curt's and instantly cloud their faces with that look. The look of people confronting a great tribal loss. It was not merely because Curt was white, it was the kind of white he was, the untamed golden hair and handsome face, the athlete's body, the sunny charm and the smell, around him, of money. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Because most people have great difficulty recognizing the humanity of another person if they can't recognize that person's gender, the gender-changing person can evoke in others a primordial fear of monstrosity, or loss of humanness. — Susan Stryker

And what about us?" Catcher asked.
Gabriel's eyebrows lifted. "You're part of the mystery-solving gang, aren't you?"
Catcher muttered something unflattering, and Mallory nudged him. "I presume you want us to stay here tonight?" she asked.
"It would make things easier," Gabe said.
"So we'll sleep on the couch," Catcher said, "like we're twelve-year-olds at a slumber party."
"In fairness," Ethan said, "we don't all have to sleep on the couch."
"In fairness," Catcher said, "you can kiss my ass."
"Ladies," Mallory said. "Let's put on our big-girl panties. Merit and Ethan are already sleeping in the bedroom, and there's no point in making them move. Catcher and I can take the couch. The shifters will feel better if we make this work, and it's no great loss to any of us. — Chloe Neill

Ignore any loss of nerve, ignore any loss of self-confidence, ignore any doubt or confusion. Move on believing in love, in peace, and harmony, and in great accomplishment. Remember joy isn't a stranger to you. You are winning and you are strong. Love. Love first, love always, love forever. — Anne Rice

There will be a great loss of learning before the moon's full cycle is completed. Fire and floods will be fomented by ignorant rulers; much time will go by before it is rectified. — Nostradamus

For some parents of children with horizontal identities, acceptance reaches its apogee when parents conclude that while they supposed they were pinioned by a great and catastrophic loss of hope, they were in fact falling in love with someone they didn't yet know enough to want. — Andrew Solomon

Grief brings us great pain, but the Other Side teaches us that this pain is not about the absence of love - it's about the continuation of that love. The brilliant cords of love that connect us to someone in this life endure into the afterlife. And when we feel unbearable pain at the loss of a loved one, it is like we are tugging on that cord of love. The pain is real because the cord is real. Our love doesn't end - it goes on. — Laura Lynne Jackson

Then, as a child does, she grew to accept the first great absence in her life, a weaning from the sure certainty that all children are born with - that it was no country where loss could come their way, that nothing would ever change in that place called home. — Kalyan Ray

A true great artist at heart never ceases to create, continuously amazes and keeps sharing his gift despite barriers, judgement, fears and dreaded myths. If you stopped being creative out of fear or loss of self-esteem or pride, you were never an artist first and foremost for you have ran away from your true calling. - Elizabeth's Quotes — Elizabeth E. Castillo

Ye accepted Yang's proposal mainly out of gratitude. If he hadn't brought her into this safe haven in her most perilous moment, she would probably no longer be alive. Yang was a talented man, cultured and with good taste. She didn't find him unpleasant, but her heart was like ashes from which the flame of love could no longer be lit. As she pondered human nature, Ye was faced with an ultimate loss of purpose and sank into another spiritual crisis. She had once been an idealist who needed to give all her talent to a great goal, but now she realized that all that she had done was meaningless, and the future could not have any meaningful pursuits, either. As this mental state persisted, she gradually felt more and more alienated from the world. She didn't belong. The sense of wandering in the spiritual wilderness tormented her. After she made a home with Yang, her soul became homeless. One — Liu Cixin

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative. — Francis Bacon

The Time Line is great for getting things into perspective when you feel a bit lost and lacking direction or if you have a big change coming up such as moving to secondary school, your parents splitting up or having a new family arrangement. When you experience grief or loss, whether that is for a person or a part of your life such as leaving your Primary School, you can travel back along the time line, identify which skills you need from your old life, anchor them and bring them into the present as you move forward to Secondary School. Once you've done the Time Line a few times it will be in your head and you can conjure up the image and the steps without moving. This can be useful in situations when you can't actually move physically, in class for instance. — Judy Bartkowiak

He was a top man and a good professional. He was one of those who you know will never play a trick and you can ask him to do anything for you and he will. An unassuming man and a great loss to us all. — Geoffrey Boycott

Some people get along beautifully, for half a lifetime, perhaps, while everything goes smoothly. While they are accumulating property and gaining friends and reputation, their characters seem to be strong and well-balanced; but the moment there is friction anywhere, - the moment trouble comes, a failure in business, a panic, or a great crisis in which they lose their all, - they are overwhelmed. They despair, lose heart, courage, faith, hope, and power to try again, - everything. Their very manhood or womanhood is swallowed up by a mere material loss. — Orison Swett Marden

It's a weak faith that only serves God in times of blessing. The book of Job teaches us that true faith, genuine faith, great faith is revealed only when we serve and trust God in the hard times, the times of suffering, loss, and opposition. That's the kind of faith that makes the world sit up and take notice. — Ray Stedman

How we respond to tragedy is the hallmark of character. Suffering a great loss places us at a spiritual milepost. The wind of our souls can either sour and wither or rejoice and thrive. — Kilroy J. Oldster

But the truly ambitious teams find relief in honesty when they've lost, because it's the diagnostic tool that leads to a solution - here's what we did wrong and let's fix it, so we don't ever have to feel this way again. Great teams explain their failure; they don't excuse it. Then they pay a visit to Charles Atlas and get stronger. When you explain a loss aloud, it's no longer a tormenting mystery. I believed in that brand of honesty my whole career, and I knew at least one other coach who believed in it too. — Pat Summitt

She feels a great pang of loss, an unexpected welling of sorrow mixed with confusion. — Julianna Baggott

I'm a girl who enjoys a great meal with great friends, so I'm not really that concerned about weight loss. — Jill Scott

When faced with a loss, it is no use trying to recover what has gone. On the other hand, a great space has been opened up in your life - there it lies, empty, waiting to be filled with something new. At the moment of one's loss, contradictory as this might seem, one is being given a large slice of freedom. — Paulo Coelho

In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be ?replaced? by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten. — George Lucas

In 1962 the president of the American Historical Association, Carl Bridenbaugh, warned his colleagues that human existence was undergoing a "Great Mutation" - so sudden and so radical "that we are now suffering something like historical amnesia." He lamented the decline of reading; the distancing from nature (which he blamed in part on "ugly yellow Kodak boxes" and "the transistor radio everywhere"); and the loss of shared culture. — James Gleick

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.
Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. — William Wordsworth

College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity. — H.L. Mencken

So there are established sayings: Guidance to enlightenment seems nonsensical. Guidance to progress seems backwards. Guidance to equality seems to classify. Higher efficacy seems at a loss. Great purity seems like shame. Broad effectiveness seems insufficient. Constructive effectiveness seems casual. Basic reality seems changeable. A great expanse has no shores. A large container takes a long time to make. Important news is rarely heard. — Lao-Tzu

Most people are remarkably resilient. Even those who have been through war or great loss often find reservoirs of strength. But the legacy of trauma is a heavy burden to bear. — Christina Baker Kline

You always recognize great champions ... how they come back from a loss. — Georges St-Pierre

Did you get it back?"
"Of coarse, the very next day. And even if I hadn't-because there have been things I've been asked to give up for good ... Well, over the years here I've learned that sometimes a great loss is also a great gain." Under the slowly swirling freckles, Doc's face looked infinitely sad. Somehow I didn't find that reassuring. — Polly Shulman

It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always been the success of a single victor. Coalition successes bear by the very nature of their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of the loss of what has already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions. — Adolf Hitler

She had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering. — William Goldman

Sitting here, literally amongst the dead, reckoning up gains and losses, casting accounts, I have come to see gains that cannot be reckoned in terms of wealth, and losses that are more damaging than loss of a crop... I look at the River and I see the lifeblood of Egypt that has existed before we lived and that will exist after we die... Life and death, Renisenb, are not of such great account. — Agatha Christie

Haven't you realized that pleasure, which is indeed certainly the one and only reason for the two sexes to come together, is nevertheless not enough to establish a relationship between them? And that though this pleasure is preceded by desire which draws people together, it is however followed by aversion which pushes them apart? It's a law of nature which only love can change. Can we feel love whenever we want? Yet love is always needed, which would be a dreadfully tiresome thing if it hadn't fortunately been realized that it's enough for just one of the partners to feel it, thereby halving the problem, and without even incurring any great loss; in fact, one party is happy to love, the other to please, which is actually a bit less exciting but which can be combined with the pleasure of deceiving and that evens things out, so everyone's happy. — Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

In our modern religion there is a reticence in speaking of our personal relationship to Jesus which often causes great loss. We forget that the majority of men are guided more by emotions than by intellect: the heart is the great power by which they are meant to be influenced and molded. — Andrew Murray

It's a great shame, she thinks, that the heart cannot feel joy without also feeling pain, that it cannot know love without also knowing loss. — Menna Van Praag

We human beings don't realize how great God is. He has given us an extraordinary brain and a sensitive loving heart. He has blessed us with two lips to talk and express our feelings, two eyes which see a world of colours and beauty, two feet which walk on the road of life, two hands to work for us, and two ears to hear the words of love. As I found with my ear, no one knows how much power they have in their each and every organ until they lose one. — Malala Yousafzai

He looks up and the loss in his Noise is so great it feels like I'm standing on the edge of an abyss, that I'm about to fall down into him, into blackness so empty and lonely there'd never be a way out.
"Todd," I say again, a catch in my voice. "On the ledge, under the waterfall, do you remember what you said to me? Do you remember what you said to save me?"
He's shaking his head slowly. "I've done terrible things, Viola. Terrible things-"
"We all fall, you said." I'm gripping his hand now. "We all fall but that's not what matters. What matters is picking yourself up again. — Patrick Ness

And here's the shock
when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of common sense and cross into unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, you do not experience great joy and huge energy.
You are unhappy. Things get worse.
It is a time of mourning. Loss. Fear. We bullet ourselves through with questions. And then we feel shot and wounded.
And then all the cowards come out and say, 'See, I told you so.'
In fact, they told you nothing. — Jeanette Winterson

She played a great deal better than either of the Miss Musgroves; but having no voice, no knowledge of the harp, and no fond parents to sit by and fancy themselves delighted, her performance was little thought of, only out of civility, or to refresh the others, as she was well aware. She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to herself; but this was no new sensation: excepting one short period of her life, she had never, since the age of fourteen, never since the loss of her dear mother, know the happiness of being listened to, or encouraged by any just appreciation or real taste. In music she had been always used to feel alone in the world; and Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove's fond partiality for their own daughters' performance, and total indifference to any other person's, gave her much more pleasure for their sakes, than mortification for her own. — Jane Austen

It seemed to her the window was a great eye looking out over the city and the harbour and a strip of the gulf under ice. The new silence and emptiness was not entirely a loss; it was something of a relief. Aunt Gerda felt like a balloon, untied, soaring off its own way. But, she thought, it's a balloon that's bouncing against the ceiling and can't get free.
She understood that this was no way to live; human beings are not built to float. She needed an earthly anchor of meaning and care so she didn't get lost in the confusion. — Tove Jansson

The tragic sense of life is ironically not tragic at all, at least in the Big Picture. Living in such deep time, connected to past and future, prepares us for necessary suffering, keeps us from despair about our own failure and loss, and ironically offers us a way through it all. We are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us. The tragic sense of life is not unbelief, pessimism, fatalism, or cynicism. — Richard Rohr

Whoever wrote Shakespeare is a working class hero be he an aristocrat or a peasant. Shakespeare is a great leveler. We're presented with kings, queens, emperors and giants who feel the same things as everyone else: jealousy, love, anger, bitterness, grief, loss. — Rhys Ifans

Hemorrhoids can bleed, typically after a bowel movement, producing blood-streaked stool or toilet paper, .. The blood may turn water in the toilet bowl red. However, the amount of blood is usually small, and hemorrhoids rarely lead to severe blood loss or anemia. — Alfred The Great

Every great loss demands that we choose life again. We need to grieve in order to do this. The pain we have not grieved over will always stand between us and life. When we don't grieve, a part of us becomes caught in the past like Lot's wife who, because she looked back, was turned into a pillar of salt. — Rachel Naomi Remen

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life.

Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared. — Stephen Lee

The potential for loss of soul
to one degree or another
is the affliction of a society that as a collective has lost its sense of the holy, of a culture that values everything else above the spiritual. We live in such a spiritually impoverished culture
and in such a time. Loss of soul, to one degree or another, is a constant teasing possibility. We are invited at every corner to hedge on the truth, indulge outselves, act as if our words and actions have no ultimate consequence, make an absolute of the material world, and treat the spiritual world as if it were some kind of frothy, angelic fantasy. In such a world the soul struggles for survival; in such a world a man can lose his own soul and have the whole culture support him, and in such a world, conversely, the light of a single, great soul that lives in integrity can truly illumine the world. — Daphne Rose Kingma

The cars of the migrant people crawled out of the side roads onto the great cross-country highway, and they took the migrant way to the West ... And because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a mysterious new place, ... a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream. — John Steinbeck

Comradeship is part of war. Like alcohol, it is one of the great comforters and helpers for people who have to live under unbearable, inhuman conditions. It makes the intolerable tolerable. It helps us cope with filth, calamity, and death. It anaesthetizes us. It comforts us for the loss of all the amenities of civilisation. Indeed, its loss is one of its preconditions. It receives its justification from bitter necessities and terrible sacrifices. If it is separated from these, if it is exercised only for pleasure and intoxication, for its own sake, it becomes a vice. It makes no difference that it brings a certain happiness. It corrupts and depraves men like no alcohol or opium. It makes them unfit for normal, responsible civilian life. Indeed, it is at bottom, an instrument of decivilisation. The general promiscuous comradeship to which the Nazis have seduced the Germans has debased this nation as nothing else could. — Sebastian Haffner

Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living, and that in turn taught me how to train and to win more purposefully. It taught me that pain has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things-whether health or a car or an old sense of self-has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain and loss are great enhancers. — Lance Armstrong

Your survival is imperative. With your death would come great loss. The supernatural world would be unable to recover itself for a millennium. — Amanda Carlson

Probably the only thing that isn't great is the time when I know I'm very close to finishing the actual writing of the story and I'm overcome by this sense of loss. I think it's because I know I won't be "talking" to the main character anymore, it's sort of like what you feel when you know a friend is moving away and you probably won't be seeing her again. — Christopher Paul Curtis

[Concerning the Word preached:] Do we prize it in our judgments? Do we receive in into our hearts? Do we fear the loss of the Word preached more than the loss of peace and trade? Is it the removal of the ark that troubles us? Again, do we attend to the Word with reverential devotion? When the judge is giving the charge on the bench, all attend. When the Word is preached, the great God is giving us his charge. Do we listen to it as to a matter of life and death? This is a good sign that we love the Word. — Thomas Watson

I believe Christianity is at its core a gospel of life. I believe great breakthrough and healing are available. I believe we can prevent the thief from ransacking our lives if we will do as our Shepherd says. And when we can't seem to find the healing or the breakthrough, when the thief does manage to pillage, I believe ours is a gospel of resurrection. Whatever loss may come, that is not the end of the story. Jesus came that we might have life. — John Eldredge

Much of modern preaching is anaemic, with the life-blood of God's nature absent from the message. Evangelists centre their message upon the man. Man has sinned and missed a great blessing. If man wants to retrieve his immense loss he must act thus and so. But the Gospel of Christ is very different. It begins with God and His glory. It tells men that they have offended a holy God, who will by no means pass by sin. It reminds sinners that the only hope of salvation is to be found in the grace and power of this same God. Christ's Gospel sends men to beg pardon of the Holy One. — Walter Chantry

Going through life has its struggles, but not sharing the trials in a way that engages great communication, is a loss of the physical realities through our everyday senses. — Daniel B. Royer

Those who will never be fooled can never be delighted, because without self-forgetfulness there can be no delight, and this is a great and grievous loss. — Alan Jacobs

God has a reason for not giving us the quick fix: He wants us to be conformed to His image and He uses trials to help us grow. Weight loss is one of those trials. It's not fun, but God can do great things in our lives if we persevere and keep going to Him for help. — Barb Raveling

In the mid-fifties, a revolution occurred and a new word entered the vocabulary of commercial art. Concept ... But the change was not entirely good. Our gain was also a loss ... There was great value in something well observed and carefully delineated. If the head and heart were often absent, there was something to be said for the presence of a hand. — R. O. Blechman

A word of consolation
may sweetly touch the ear.
Now and then a quiet song
will clear the mind of fear.
A simple act of kindness
can ease a load of care.
Stories told in memory
diminish all despair.
A whispered prayer of comfort
draws angel arms around.
Counting blessings, great and small,
helps gratitude abound.
These acts, all sympathetic,
will kindly play their part.
But seldom do they dry the tears
shed mutely in the heart. — Richelle E. Goodrich

A dark shadow rose from the depth of the watercourse. Forced to crawl out of the oceans rolling waves, it struggled against the pull of the undertow. Rising, it moved further up the white sandy beach away from the cold water. The creature collapsed onto the cool sand as the crescent moon above shone on his sleek gray skin revealing two immense leather-like wings protruding from his back. Exhaustion clouded his mind.
The darkness of night was soothing, refreshing. Somehow he knew it would bring him strength and sustenance. The creature watched as a great rolling storm cloud sunk into the salty water before him and he tried to remember why he had come. — Alaina Stanford

When along the pavement,
Palpitating flames of life,
People flicker around me,
I forget my bereavement,
The gap in the great constellation,
The place where a star used to be — D.H. Lawrence

This "manna from heaven" was being squandered because of the laziness and stupidity of the savages who refused to work as harvesters of latex and obliged the planters to go to the tribes and take them by force. Which meant a great loss of time and money for the enterprises. "Well, — Mario Vargas-Llosa

I remember the big gaping hole left by my dad's absence in the months following the accident. He'd been the one who went to my parent-teacher conferences, the one who taught me mnemonics to memorize the Great Lakes and the Earth's atmospheres. Whenever I did something silly, my dad always made me feel better by telling me a story from the firehouse about someone who had done something even sillier. Sometimes you don't realize all the things a person does for you until they aren't there to do them anymore. — Paula Stokes

He was still so very young. Faeries - true faeries, not their changeling throwaways - live forever, and when you have an eternity of adulthood ahead of you, you linger over childhood. You tend it and keep it close to your heart, because once it ends, it's over. Quentin was barely fifteen. He'd never seen the Great Hunt that came down every twenty-one years, or been present for the crowning of a King or Queen of Cats, or announced his maturity before the throne of High King Aethlin. He was a child, and he should have had decades left to play; a century of games and joy and edging cautiously toward adulthood.
But he didn't. I could see his childhood dying in his eyes as he looked at me, silently begging me to answer for him. — Seanan McGuire

Fortunately, I have forgotten most of the things that have happened to me. Fortunately, the mind has a limited capacity for remembering. It would be horrible if I remembered the details of a hundred and eighty thousand years - the details of four thousand lifetimes that I have lived since the first great atomic war. — Fredric Brown

Great tragedies have great consequences. They ripple through the fabric of this world and the next. When the loss is too great for either world to bear, Everlost absorbs the shock, like a cushion between the two. — Neal Shusterman

College football would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss of humanity. — H.L. Mencken