A Retreat Quotes & Sayings

It's not enough to say you want to lose fifty, seventy, or a hundred and twenty pounds. Because once you hit those magic numbers, what happens then?
Where is the motivation to continue with this new lifestyle you've created for yourself? I think you'll find that you need to stand for something, or you risk collapsing like a house of cards. You need to give yourself a reason to fight fat and to keep on fighting. — Jane Olson

He seemed to hasten the retreat of departing light by his very presence; the setting sun dipped sharply, as though fleeing before our nigger; a black mist emanated from him; a subtle and dismal influence; a something cold and gloomy that floated out and settled on all the faces like a mourning veil. The circle broke up. The joy of laughter died on stiffened lips. — Joseph Conrad

We each have unique gifts that draw us toward the work for which those gifts are best suited. Although a healthy, well-rounded person will generally engage the world on multiple levels, being as she is an individual, a friend, a member of a family, a member of a community and a place, an inhabitant of a bioregion, a citizen of a nation, and a member of the tribe of all life on Earth, even a cosmic citizen, it is also true that we go through phases of relative inward and outward focus, action, and quiet, expression and retreat. — Charles Eisenstein

There is an illusion about America, a myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead and I don't believe that anybody in this country who has really thought about it or really almost anybody who has been brought up against it
and almost all of us have one way or another
this collision between one's image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish. — James Baldwin

Up there in my retreat, I feel the city calling to me. It winks at me with its myriad eyes, and I go out and get stiff as a board. I seek out companionship, and if I do not find friends, I make them. A wonderful, grand old Babylon. — A.J. Liebling

Sadism dominates the culture. It runs like an electric current through reality television and trash-talk programs, is at the core of pornography, and fuels the compliant, corporate collective. Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice and diminishing the individual to force him or her into an ostensibly harmonious collective. This hypermasculinity has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our lack of compassion for our homeless, our poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed, and the sick ... We accept the system handed to us and seek to find a comfortable place within it. We retreat into the narrow, confined ghettos created for us and shut our eyes to the deadly superstructure of the corporate state. — Chris Hedges

To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children's characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence. It looks to me very much like a significant section of the public, having given up on attempting to understand the reality they are actually living in, have instead reasoned that they might at least be able to comprehend the sprawling, meaningless, but at-least-still-finite 'universes' presented by DC or Marvel Comics. I would also observe that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times. — Alan Moore

The 4th Amendment and the personal rights it secures have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion. — Potter Stewart

This room had long served as a retreat from the disharmony and sadness of the first floor, and it was here I had fallen in love with these books and authors in a way that only lifelong readers know and understand. A good movie had never once affected me in the same life-changing way a good book could. Books had the power to alter my view of the world forever. A good movie could change my perceptions for a day. — Pat Conroy

Soon after we first got to know each other, I asked him a typical traveler's question: How did he deal with jet lag? He looked at me, surprised. "For me a flight is just a brief retreat in the sky," Matthieu said, as if amazed that the idea didn't strike everyone. "There's nothing I can do, so it's really quite liberating. There's nowhere else I can be. So I just sit and watch the clouds and the blue sky. Everything is still and everything is moving. It's beautiful." Clouds and blue sky, of course, are how Buddhists explain the nature of our mind: there may be clouds passing across it, but that doesn't mean a blue sky isn't always there behind the obscurations. All you need is the patience to sit still until the blue shows up again. His — Pico Iyer

Finding that she was determined to get to the bottom of what seemed to him a very trivial affair, extricated himself without hesitation or compunction by advising her to apply to Vincent for information, since he was the instigator of the quarrel. Before he could make good his retreat, however, he was incensed and appalled by a command to go immediately to Vincent's room, and to inform him that his mama desired to have speech with him before he went down to breakfast. Since it was the time-honoured practice of the brothers to sacrifice each other in such situations as now confronted Claud, it was not fear of Vincent's wrath at finding himself betrayed which prompted Claud to despatch Polyphant on the errand, but the knowledge that not even a messenger bearing gifts of great price would meet with anything but the rudest of receptions from Vincent at this hour of the morning. — Georgette Heyer

The retreat of a minor piece to the back rank, where it cuts the lines of communication between the rooks, is permissable only in exceptional cases. — Alexander Alekhine

Pain was a peculiar thing. It made me feel strange; it made me retreat. I felt that my relationships to other people had changed in certain ways. I was carrying around a burden that only a few people knew about. It made me feel apart from most people, as if I could see them, but they were a long way away. People were going about their normal lives, and now I carried about with me all the time pain, as if pain were my child. We — Paulette Bates Alden

His mood is one of strenuous weariness; he does his duty as a good soldier, waiting for the sound of the trumpet which shall sound the retreat; he has not that cheerful confidence which led Socrates through a life no less noble, to a death which was to bring him into the company of gods he had worshipped and men whom he had revered. — Marcus Aurelius

At the same yoga retreat, we stood and faced each other in pairs, really looking at each other from a close distance. We were told to simply BE with the other person, maintaining eye contact, with no social gestures like laughing, smiling, or winking to put ourselves at ease.
Grown women and men cried. Really and truly sobbed.
When we were finished with the exercise, we talked about how it had felt. The thread echoed again and again: many people had never felt so *seen* by another person. Seen without walls, without judgment ... just seen, acknowledged, accepted. The experience was
for so many painfully rare. — Amanda Palmer

A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I had a girls' writing retreat at my condo and a bunch of other female writers came down. Me and two other writers got there before everyone and they pitched this idea to me. At first I wasn't sure what direction it was going in, but then once they kind of explained to me what they were thinking, we wrote it. — Jamie Lynn Spears

In the last generation, with public Christianity in headlong retreat, we have caught our first, distant view of a de-Christianized world , and it is not encouraging. — Paul Johnson

No one except your husband knows of the cautiousness at the heart of your life. Your adulthood has been a progressive retreat from curiosity and wonder, an endless series of delays and procrastinations. You wanted to be so much, once, but life kept on getting in the way ... You settled. Shunned creativity, flight, risk, never had the courage to give a dream, any dream, a go. — Nikki Gemmell

I don't know how many people there are with a million dollars who are inclined to give it to a writers' retreat. — Dana Stabenow

To retreat after a work well done is Heaven's Way. — Laozi

I want my girls to see their relationship with me as a place of refuge, a place they can retreat to for honesty, unconditional love, and support. I want to teach them and have them trust me, not fear me. I want to preserve the gentle souls that I see in them. -Liz. M. — Hilary Flower

Give me a scholar, therefore, who is able to think and to write, to look with an eye of discernment into things, and to do business himself, if called upon, who hath both civil and military knowledge; one, moreover, who has been in camps, and has seen armies in the field and out of it; knows the use of arms, and machines, and warlike engines of every kind; can tell what the front, and what the horn is, how the ranks are to be disposed, how the horse is to be directed, and from whence to advance or to retreat; one, in short, who does not stay at home and trust to the reports of others: but, above all, let him be of a noble and liberal mind; let him neither fear nor hope for anything; otherwise he will only resemble those unjust judges who determine from partiality or prejudice, and give sentence for hire: but, whatever the man is, as such let him be described. — Lucian Of Samosata

We as a people, as a state, and as a community, have too much promise, too much potential, and too much at stake to go any other way than forward. We are too strong in our hearts, too innovative in our minds, and too firm in our beliefs to retreat from our goals. — Bill Richardson

In abdicating responsibility throughout God's kingdom at large, Christians have created a cultural vacuum of labor, influence, and leadership which the ungodly have come in to fill. The fact of the matter is, someone is going to exercise rulership in the earth. If not the godly, then the ungodly. If the righteous retreat completely, they have no reason to be surprised when they wake up one day to find their inheritance usurped by those who do not know God. — Christian Overman

Men seek for seclusion in the wilderness, by the seashore, or in the mountains - a dream you have cherished only too fondly yourself. But such fancies are wholly unworthy of a philosopher, since at any moment you choose you can retire within yourself. Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul; above all, he who possesses resources in himself, which he need only contemplate to secure immediate ease of mind - the ease that is but another word for a well-ordered spirit. Avail yourself often, then, of this retirement, and so continually renew yourself. — Marcus Aurelius

The classic decision is always the same, whether to retreat or go on. There comes a time when it is easier to continue upward, when the summit, in fact, is the only way out. At such a moment one must still have strength. — James Salter

We may now have reached a point where this gap in our make-up has become unsustainable; partly because what in the past would have counted as material plenty has become the norm for the majority in much of the world; and partly because the slow retreat of religion that coincided with the spread of a capitalist economy has left a gaping hole in millions of people's lives. (Geoff Mulgan) — Dalai Lama XIV

The office, which had an outside entrance for ordinary visitors, was separated from the parlor by a sliding door; though Mr. Clutter occasionally shared the office with Gerald Van Vleet, a young man who assisted him with the management of the farm, it was fundamentally his retreat - an orderly sanctuary, paneled in walnut veneer, where, surrounded by weather barometers, rain charts, a pair of binoculars, he sat like a captain in his cabin, a navigator piloting River Valley's sometimes risky passage through the seasons. — Truman Capote

That in the face of smarter women it was best to beat a continuous retreat, to slash and burn one's own personal convictions before their sure-footed advance. — Gary Shteyngart

Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win - essential to success. — Napoleon Hill

Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure. — Agnes Repplier

Others may want to stand upon the 'politics of identity', or in other words the kind of identification with a particular tradition, or group, or national or ethnic identity that invites them to turn their back on outsiders who question the ways of the group. They will shrug off criticism: their values are 'incommensurable' with the values of outsiders. They are to be understood only by brothers and sisters within the circle. People like to retreat to within a thick, comfortable, traditional set of folkways, and not to worry too much about their structure, or their origins, or even the criticisms that they may deserve. Reflection opens the avenue to criticism, and the folkways may not like criticism. In this way, ideologies become closed circles, primed to feel outraged by the questioning mind. — Simon Blackburn

It's no coincidence that the word 'holiday' suggests a holy day, or that the longest book in the Torah concerns the Sabbath. If you wish to advance in any sphere, the best way is to take a retreat. — Pico Iyer

Instead, it was a Christianity engaged with modernity (and postmodernity) - grappling with its issues, sensitive to its questions and concerns, aware of its spiritual vacuum, in vital dialogue with its artistic and intellectual leaders. It was a "third-way" faith seeking to steer a course that would avoid defensive retreat and isolation on the one hand and capitulation and sellout on the other. — Brian D. McLaren

Men are easily threatened. And whenever a man is threatened, when he becomes uncomfortable in places within himself that he does not understand, he naturally retreats into an arena of comfort or competence, or he dominates someone or something in order to feel powerful. Men refuse to feel the paralyzing and humbling horror of uncertainty, a horror that could drive them to trust, a horror that could release in them the power to deeply give themselves in relationship. As a result, most men feel close to no one, especially not to God, and no one feels close to them. Something good in men is stopped and needs to get moving. When good movement stops, bad movement (retreat or domination) reliably develops. — Larry Crabb

As the tide of feminism that crested two decades ago recedes and the old advance-and-retreat games of courtship return, "Pride & Prejudice" speaks wistfully to the moment. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are tantalizing early prototypes for a Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy ideal of lovers as brainy, passionate sparring partners. That the world teems with fantasies of Mr. Darcy and his ilk there is no doubt. How many of his type are to be found outside the pages of a novel, however, is another matter. — Stephen Holden

You know," Taniel said, "we could have kept firing after they sounded the retreat. Would have wiped out thousands on the mountainside. The Kez did that to us in Fatrasta a few times."
Gavril snorted angrily. "War has to have some decorum. Otherwise it's back to the Bleakening for all of us, and Kresimir be damned. — Brian McClellan

In our Ashrams of East and West, places of spiritual retreat, we begin with what we call "The Morning of the Open Heart," in which we tell our needs ... We give four or five hours to this catharsis. The reaction of one member, who listened to it for the first time, was: "Good gracious, have we all the disrupted people in the country here?" My reply was: "No, you have a cross section of the church life honestly revealed." In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to a appear better than we really are. — E. Stanley Jones

A stone can be used for building a house, blocking a road, or killing someone. The same is true for any idea. — Darrell Calkins

For several days, I slept. Whether this was a necessary part of physical recovery, or a stubborn retreat from waking reality, I do not know, but I woke only reluctantly to take a little food, falling at once back into a stupor of oblivion, as though the small, warm weight of broth in my stomach were an anchor that pulled me after it, down through the murky fathoms of sleep. — Diana Gabaldon

In a state of self-pity, one may retreat from the world in which one has been blessed to live. — Amor Towles

At the beginning of a campaign it is important to consider whether or not to move forward; but when one has taken the offensive it is necessary to maintain it to the last extremity. However skilfully effected a retreat may be, it always lessens the morale of an army, since in losing the chances of success, they are remitted to the enemy. A retreat, moreover, costs much more in men and materials than the bloodiest engagements, with this difference, also, that in a battle the enemy loses practically as much as you do; while in a retreat you lose and he does not. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Will we fight or will we retreat? That is the question that is posed to us. Some of my friends on the other side of the aisle often refer to Iraq as a distraction. — John Boehner

Two chimpanzees were observed maltreating a chicken: One would extend some food to the fowl, encouraging it to approach; whereupon the other would thrust at it with a piece of wire it had concealed behind its back. The chicken would retreat but soon allow itself to approach once again
and be beaten once again. Here is a fine combination of behavior sometimes thought to be uniquely human: cooperation, planning a future course of action, deception and cruelty. — Carl Sagan

It's the correct thing to say that a man needs no more than six feet of earth. But six feet is what a corpse needs, not a man. And they say, too, now, that if our intellectual classes are attracted to the land and yearn for a farm, it's a good thing. But these farms are just the same as six feet of earth. To retreat from town, from the struggle, from the bustle of life, to retreat and bury oneself in one's farm - it's not life, it's egoism, laziness, it's monasticism of a sort, but monasticism without good works. A man does not need six feet of earth or a farm, but the whole globe, all nature, where he can have room to display all the qualities and peculiarities of his free spirit. — Anton Chekhov

I would suggest that the prisons I incessantly create are not designed to lock me in, rather they are designed to lock the world out. And the oddity is that either way, I am a prisoner who has sentenced himself to a prison within which I do not belong. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted - Balder, Persephone - but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them. — E. M. Forster

The divine is a mystery, so the impulse to really discover, like a child, has to be the core response to anything. — Darrell Calkins

The Kissing Game goes like this, Shortcake. Press, retreat, tilt, breathe, repeat. Use your hands to angle just right. Loosen up until it's a slow, wet slide. Hear the drum of blood in your own ears? Survive on tiny puffs of air. Do not stop. Don't even think about it. Shudder a sigh, pull back, let your opponent catch you with lips or teeth and ease you back into something even deeper. Wetter. Feel your nerve endings crackle to life with each touch of tongue. Feel a new heaviness between your legs. The aim of the game is to do this for the rest of your life. Screw human civilization and all it entails. This elevator is home now. This is what we do now. Do not fucking stop. He — Sally Thorne

Did is a word of achievement,
Won't is a word of retreat,
Might is a word of bereavement,
Can't is a word of defeat,
Ought is a word of duty,
Try is a word each hour,
Will is a word of beauty,
Can is a word of power. — Ann Landers

Fight them everywhere. Don't give them a chance to breathe until they withdraw and retreat. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

I believe we have made a decision now that will permit us to create an economic order in the world that will promote more growth, more equality, better preservation of the environment, and a greater possibility of world peace, we are on the verge of a global economic expansion that is sparked by the fact that the United States at this critical moment decided that we would compete, not retreat. — William J. Clinton

After I've done the salesman bit, I like to be quiet and retreat, because that's whereI write from. I'm a sort of quiet little person. — Kate Bush

I always had a kind of strange relationship with New York City, with total love affair in the beginning then retreat during the kind of conservatives of politics and real estate and business came, and then I am again kind of fighting for the justice to the city, to open the city for the artists. — Mikhail Baryshnikov

Alexis de Tocqueville warned that as the economy and government of America got bigger, citizens could become smaller: less practiced in the forms of everyday power, more dependent on vast distant social machines, more isolated and atomized--and therefore more susceptible to despotism.

He warned that if the "habits of the heart" fed by civic clubs and active self-government evaporated, citizens would regress to pure egoism. They would stop thinking about things greater than their immediate circle. Public life would disappear. And that would only accelerate their own disempowerment.

This is painfully close to a description of the United States since Trump and Europe since Brexit. And the only way to reverse this vicious cycle of retreat and atrophy is to reverse it: to find a sense of purpose that is greater than the self, and to exercise power with others and for others in democratic life. — Eric Liu

The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can "be ourselves." Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks.

The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised. — Matthew Desmond

Love does not stand still, as everyone knows; it is always adding to its own shape whether by advance or retreat. Wounds can be absorbed, but only like elements embodied in a story; they are always there, part of the meaning. — Barry Unsworth

Right before I decided to come out, I went on a spiritual retreat called 'Changing the Inner Dialogue of Your Subconscious Mind.' I'd never been to anything like it before, and all my friends were taking bets on how long I'd last with no TV, no radio, no phone. But for me that was the beginning of paying attention to all the little things. — Ellen DeGeneres

The US was forced to withdraw troops from Iraq after an extremely costly decade-long military occupation, leaving in place a regime more closely allied to Iran, the US' regional adversary. The Iraq war depleted the economy, deprived American corporations of oil wealth, greatly enlarged Washington's budget and trade deficits, and reduced the living standards of US citizens. The Afghanistan war had a similar outcome, with high external costs, military retreat, fragile clients, domestic disaffection, and no short or medium term transfers of wealth (imperial pillage) to the US Treasury or private corporations. The Libyan war led to the total destruction of a modern, oil-rich economy in North Africa, the total dissolution of state and civil society, and the emergence of armed tribal, fundamentalist militias opposed to US and EU client regimes in North and sub-Sahara Africa and beyond. Instead — James F. Petras

Would they retreat or move forward? Could they do this thing they were on the verge of doing? Did they have it in them to make a wrong decision just because it felt right? — Emily Giffin

They passed the point where they'd made their previous retreat, but this time felt no urgency or fear. For some reason the dubious energy field was gone. — Marcha A. Fox

With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning. — Guy Debord

Coming to Haramara is like coming home. My body returns to the earth, my mind mesmerized by the rhythms of the ocean and my spirit flies in this magical place. Yoga is a way of life and Haramara Retreat is where we can re-educate ourselves to live in balance. — Rodney Yee

If hemp could supply the energy needs of the United States, its value would be inestimable. Now that the drug czar is in final retreat, America has an opportunity to, once and for all, say farewell to the Exxon Valdez, Saddam Hussein and a prohibitively expensive brinkmanship in the desert sands of Saudi Arabia. — Hugh Downs

For an individual as well as a society, there is a gulf between merely living and living worthily. To fight in a battle and live in glory is one mode. To beat a retreat, to surrender and to live the life of a captive is also a mode of survival. — B.R. Ambedkar

When Aaron came home from the tryout, why didn't he take up the coach's challenge to return, to try harder? When Julia discovered that she wasn't as smart as she thought, why did she collapse? The answer in both cases is that these kids are fragile. It doesn't take much for them to give up and retreat, as Aaron did, or to fall apart, as Julia did. Fragility has become a characteristic of American children and teenagers to an extent unknown 25 years ago. That — Leonard Sax

Men cannot be men - much less good or heroic men - unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors — Jack Donovan

Always prepare ourselves for more difficult times. Always accept what we're unable to change. Always manage our expectations. Always persevere. Always learn to love our fate and what happens to us. Always protect our inner self, retreat into ourselves. Always submit to a greater, larger cause. Always remind ourselves of our own mortality. — Ryan Holiday

A retreat will teach you again and again that you are neither indispensable nor self-sufficient. — Karen Lord

The nocturnal glory of being great without being
anything! The sombre majesty of splendours no one
knows ... And I suddenly experience the sublime feeling
of a monk in the wilderness or of a hermit in his retreat,
acquainted with the substance of Christ in the sands and
in the caves of withdrawal from the world. — Fernando Pessoa

The host thus forming a single united body, is it impossible either for the brave to advance alone, or for the cowardly to retreat alone — Sun Tzu

You are protected. But if you don't take risks, God will retreat and become only a subject of philosophical speculation ... — Paulo Coelho

A born Texan has instilled in his system a mind-set of no retreat or no surrender. I wish everyone the world over had the dominating spirit that motivates Texans. — Bill W. Clayton

Everything you say; every thought you entertain; and everything you do has a direction, which serves as an advance or a retreat in respect to your pursuit of excellence. Everything, regardless of size or intent, has bottom-line consequences; therefore, everything counts - this is the golden rule of excellence. — Gary Ryan

Always questioning your motivations is a healthy thing, but fearing your capacity for doing the wrong thing so that you retreat from many aspects of life is a terrible error in itself. — Dean Koontz

Don't go any farther, Miss Marina," warned Stanley, a half-grin on his face. " 'Tempt ye not the dragon's wrath when his claws are yet to retreat.' Dragon claws ya just can't mess with. — Kenzie Kovacs-Szabo

To forge an untouchable, invulnerable identity is actually a sign of retreat from this world; of weakness, a sign of fear rather than strength, and betrays a strange misunderstandin g of an abiding, foundational and necessary reality: that untouched, we disappear. — David Whyte

The charge took less than forty seconds but Kassad discovered that this was ample time for his mouth to go absolutely dry, his breathing to begin to have problems, and for his testicles to retreat completely into his body. If the rest of Kassad could have found a comparable hiding place, he would have seriously considered crawling into it. — Dan Simmons

These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead. The British regulars who made the retreat from Mons, beginning August 24, 1914. — A.E. Housman

The caliph Moauiyat asked Omr Ben Al-Aas the secret of his great political
skills: 'I never get involved in something without having first worked out my retreat; then again, I have never gone into a situation and immediately wanted to run straight out again,' came the answer. — Paulo Coelho

In a physical contest on the field of battle it is allowable to use tactics and strategy, to retreat as well as advance, to have recourse to a ruse as well as open attack; but in matters of principle there can be no tactics, there is one straight forward course to follow and that course must be found and followed without swerving to the end. — Terence MacSwiney

He who advances without seeking fame,
Who retreats without escaping blame,
He whose one aim is to protect his people and serve his lord,
The man is a jewel of the Realm — Sun Tzu

In this context, fear of toxicity strikes me as an old anxiety with a new name. Where the word filth once suggested, with its moralist air, the evils of the flesh, the word toxic now condemns the chemical evils of our industrial world. This is not to say that concerns over environmental pollution are not justified - like filth theory, toxicity theory is anchored in legitimate dangers - but that the way we think about toxicity bears some resemblance to the way we once thought about filth. Both theories allow their subscribers to maintain a sense of control over their own health by pursuing personal purity. For the filth theorist, this meant a retreat into the home, where heavy curtains and shutters might seal out the smell of the poor and their problems. Our version of this shuttering is now achieved through the purchase of purified water, air purifiers, and food produced with the promise of purity. — Eula Biss

The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat into anxious introspection when, as Emerson might have said, there is a vast world outside to explore? Why spend so much time working on oneself when there is so much real work to be done? — Barbara Ehrenreich

Had Martha Foley returned William [James Sidis]'s passion as Margaret [Engemann] did Norbert [Wiener]'s, perhaps the two prodigies would have had more in common in the long run. ... In the life of a prodigy, perhaps more than in the average life, a marriage or a requited love is the greatest single factor that can heal the old childhood wounds. William and Norbert's response to their childhood and teenage rejections and humiliations was to retreat into the painless world of ideas, where successes and satisfactions abounded. A successful love affair could be the key to reentry into the world of feeling, bridging the gap between the cerebral and the emotional lives. — Amy Wallace

The difficult thing about practice isn't learning to sit for an hour, or sit for a weekend, or go on a three-month retreat, as hard as those things are. The difficult thing is to pay attention to what is happening right here and now. — Larry Rosenberg

Millions of Americans would still despair in the eight long years of the Depression that lay ahead and many of their individual dreams would be dashed on the rocks of economic hardship. But collectively, the country was in a new place, with a new confidence that the federal government would actively try to solve problems rather than fiddle or cater to the rich. Hope was no longer for Pollyannas; the cynics about the American system were in retreat. — Jonathan Alter

MC's they retreat cause they know I can beat 'em,
And eat 'em in a battle and the ref won't cheat 'em.
I'm the best takin' out all rookies,
So forget Oreos ... eat Cool J cookies. — LL Cool J

I was lost a long time, without knowing it. Without the Faith, one is free, and that is a pleasant feeling at first. There are no questions of conscience, no constraints, except the constraints of custom, convention and the law, and these are flexible enough for most purposes. It is only later that terror comes. One is free - but free in chaos, in an unexplained and unexplainable world. One is free in a desert, from which there is no retreat but inward, toward the hollow core of oneself. There is nothing to build on but the small rock of one's own pride, and this is a nothing, based on nothing ... I think, therefore I am. But what am I? An accident of disorder, going no place. — Morris L. West

It occurs to me that artists go forward by going backward, something which I have nothing against intrinsically when it is a reproduced retreat - as is the case with the better artists. — Soren Kierkegaard

Is your home a retreat from responsibility, or a place of movement and growth? — Henry Cloud

There is weather and there is climate.
If it rains outside, or if you stab a classmate's shoulder with a compass needle, over and over, until his white cotton school shirt looks like blotting paper; that is weather.
But if you live in a place where is is often likely to rain, or your perception falters and dislocates so that you retreat, suspicious and afraid of those closest to you, that is climate. — Nathan Filer

I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world? — Emil Cioran

A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind. — Chris Hedges

Yet early on in the marriage I found myself
despite all my self-promises
drifting into the role of wife: focusing on the renovations of the apartment, doing silly little domestic things instead of writing, using the wife role as cop-out from my work, my work which had always involved me in so much controversy and which some part of me longed to retreat from ... Even when I was forty-seven, full of my own power, my own identity, something in me wanted to escape from the fray and dwindle into a wife. It seemed to comfy, so safe. — Erica Jong

What good is all our busy religion if God isn't in it? What good is it if we've lost majesty, reverence, worship-an awareness of the divine? What good is it if we've lost a sense of the Presence and the ability to retreat within our own hearts and meet God in the garden? — Aiden Wilson Tozer

All my work, really, is based on my brothers and sisters. I had so many adventures with them and a big part of the work is to recreate those. It's easy for me to be around a lot of people, because I can retreat. I can watch everything. — Ryan McGinley

FROM A WILD NIGHT'S BRIDE by Victoria Vane:
His gaze glued to the bed, Ned made a mechanical backward retreat to the center of the room where he had a clearer prospect of its crowning glory. His vision rose to the top of the headboard, to the heraldic shield seated betwixt the carved figures of a lion and a unicorn. His gaze slid with dread to the engraved scroll beneath. Dieu Et Mon Driot. God and my right, the motto of the king. His chest seized. The room began to spin. He looked to Phoebe, aware that the blood was draining from his face, and that his voice emerged as a strangled sound. "May the same God save me ... for I'm going to be hung, drawn, and quartered for spending last night rutting in the King of England's bed!" coming April 27, 2012 from Breathless Press — Emery Lee

Jesus was a hiker. The wilderness was His retreat. — Toni Sorenson