A Secret Shared Quotes & Sayings

A pastor struggled for years with sexual addiction, eventually becoming so despondent that hospitalized himself. He joined an inpatient group and was mostly silent as others shared.
When he decided not to come one day, the leader found he had fallen back into his addiction the previous night. Against every fiber of his instinct, he came back to the group. He shared how much he despised himself and his hypocritical behavior.
When he saw that others wept for him, the weight of the secret that piled on the shame was broken. As Ortberg puts it, the man was able to taste the grace he taught about. — John Ortberg Jr.

For so many years, Lumikki had needed to find hiding places because she was afraid. Finding secret nooks and safe havens was a lifeline. These days, it wasn't so much about fear as a desire to find some room just for her in a place that was shared by everyone. — Salla Simukka

Here it isn't a matter of knowing what the other knows, for Abraham doesn't know anything. It isn't a matter of sharing his faith, for the latter must remain an initiative of absolute singularity. And moreover, we don't think or speak of Abraham from the point of view of a faith that is sure of itself, any more than did Kierkegaard...Our faith is not assured because a faith never can be, it must never be a certainty. We share with Abraham what cannot be shared, a secret we know nothing about, neither him nor us. To share a secret is not to know or to reveal the secret, it is to share we know not what: nothing that can be known, nothing that can be determined. — Jacques Derrida

When I was young and knew Virginia Woolf slightly, I learned something that startled me - that a person may be ultrasensitive and not warm. She was intensely curious and plied one with questions, teasing, charming questions that made the young person glow at being even for a moment the object of her attention. But I did feel at times as though I were "a specimen American young poet" to be absorbed and filed away in the novelist's store of vicarious experience. Then one had also the daring sense that anything could be said, the sense of freedom that was surely one of the keys to the Bloomsbury ethos, a shared secret amusement at human folly or pretensions. She was immensely kind to have seen me for at least one tea, as she did for some years whenever I was in England, but in all that time I never felt warmth, and this was startling. — May Sarton

He found that love is never to be defined, that it grows and changes with every year of life, that each person knows it as a different miracle ... Nothing can shame it. Nothing can make it more splendid than it already is. Shared, wantoned or hidden forever, it can fill a life. There is no understanding love, and there is no defeat so precious as trying. No aspect of life is more complex, and none so simple. A look, a word, and the heart is torn forever; a touch, and it is mended. Love is brave and cowardly. In the same person it is secret and garrulous. But above all, love establishes its own rules and no man can know its complete manifestation in the heart of another. — James A. Michener

How can I ever make you understand Cassie and me? I would have to take you there, walk you down every path of our secret shared geography. The truism says it's against all odds for a straight man and woman to be real friends, platonic friends; we rolled thirteen, threw down five aces and ran away giggling. She was the summertime cousin out of storybooks, the one you taught to swim at some midge-humming lake and pestered with tadpoles down her swimsuit, with whom you practiced first kisses on a heather hillside and laughed about it years later over a clandestine joint in your granny's cluttered attic. She painted my fingernails gold and dared me to leave them that way for work ... We climbed out her window and down the fire escape and lay on the roof of the extension below, drinking improvised cocktails and singing Tom Waits and watching the stars spin dizzily around us.
No. — Tana French

A secret always has a strengthening effect upon a newborn friendship, as does the shared impression that an external figure is to blame: — Eleanor Catton

He had never wanted to know anything about the part of her intimate life that he had not shared with her. Why should he take an interest now, still less take offense at it? Anyhow, he asked himself, what is an intimate secret? Is that where we hide what's most mysterious, most singular, most original about a human being? Are her intimate secrets what make Chantal the unique being he loves? No. What people keep secret is the most common, the most ordinary, the most prevalent thing, the same thing that everybody has: the body and its needs, its maladies, its manias-constipation for instance, or menstruation. We ashamedly conceal these intimate matters not because they are so personal but on the contrary, they are so lamentably impersonal. — Milan Kundera

I saw you
Wandering
Like a lily in a meadow
Afraid
Of your secret potential
I knew
Who you were
And
Who I was.
Your eyes
As green as the grass
We laid in,
Your hair
As orange as the butterflies
We created.
We shared secrets
Of powers
Of mysteries
Until we'd see each other
Soon
But we split and
You fell hard for a
Buck.
I was
Like a doe in the headlights
I loved you, but
I lost you this time
Forever
But not for
Always. — J.K. Rowling

Now, because he knows that his economic theories don't work, he's been spending these last few days calling me every name in the book. Lately he's called me a socialist for wanting to roll-back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class. I don't know what's next. By the end of the week he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. — Barack Obama

I'd been around other weres and never tasted a single one before Lucas passed me on the street last night. It was more than a little disconcerning. Lucas had told me it was an indication of the soul-bond I shared with him, so why could I taste Desmond? Surely it wasn't possible to be soul-bonded to two people. And why did I suddenly want a margarita? — Sierra Dean

Such moments are too often lost, the private interludes between the tribal gatherings, the transit between destinations, when the city becomes an intimate landscape, a secret shared by two. This was once their neighborhood and she wants to reclaim it for a little while, to walk past the apartment where they spent so much of their lives, even if it makes her sad thinking of all that transpired there, and all that's lost. It makes her melancholy to imagine that she might never be here again, that these blocks, their former haunts, and their old building will outlast them; that the city is supremely indifferent to their transit through its arteries, and to their ultimate destination. For now, she wants just to be in between. She knows that later it won't be the party she will remember so much as this, the walk with her husband in the crisp autumn air, bathed in the yellow metropolitan light spilling from thousands of windows, this suspended moment of anticipation before arrival. — Jay McInerney

Reading private correspondence is in poor taste, Lord Ackerly."
"Unless it is terribly interesting," Eleanor says, "which Jessamin's letters are not. Mine, however, are lurid tales of my near-death experience and subsequent sequestering against my will in the home of the mysterious and brooding Lord Ackerly. I fear I may have given you a tragic past and a deadly secret or two."
"Are we staying in a decaying Gothic abbey?" I ask.
"Naturally. When I'm finished, there won't be a person in all the city who isn't writhing with jealousy over the heart-pounding drama of my life." She pauses, tapping her pen thoughtfully against her chin. "I don't suppose you have a cousin? I could very much use a romantic foil."
Finn shakes his head. "Sorry to disappoint."
"Alas. As long as I'm not the friend who meets a tragic end that brings you two together forever through shared grief." Her line meets dead silence, and a sly grin splits her face. "Oh wait, I nearly was. — Kiersten White

Zacharie did not learn of the sorrow his wife was living becasue she was careful to hide it. Tete kept that first love, the stromngest in her life, a secret. She mentioned it only rarely because she could not offer Zacharie a passion of the same intensity; the relationship they shared was genntle and free of urgency. — Isabel Allende

To anyone else, Xavier's use of the word angel would have sounded like nothing more than a lovesick teenager professing his admiration. Only the two of us knew differently and now we both shared a secret- that brought us closer than ever. It was as if we had just sealed the bond between us, closed the gap, and made it final. — Alexandra Adornetto

I watched relationships begin and end across those tables, children transferred between divorcees, the guilty relief of those parents who couldn't face cooking, and the secret pleasure of pensioners at a fried breakfast. All human life came through, and most of them shared a few words with me, trading jokes or comments over the mugs of steaming tea — Jojo Moyes

Nearly everyone has had a box of secret pain, shared with no one. Will [Hamilton] had concealed his well, laughed loud, exploited perverse virtues, and never let his jealousy go wandering [ ... ] He was always on the edge, trying to hold on to the rim of the family with what gifts he had - care, and reason, application. He kept the books, hired the attorneys, called the undertaker, and eventually paid the bills. The others didn't even know they needed him. — John Steinbeck

Begin at the beginning. Know nothing. Tabula rasa. At the same time, part of me wanted to distinguish myself. To let her sense the bond we shared straightaway. Maybe subtly hint at some of my secret intelligence. A secret handshake. A nod. I now completely understood how criminal masterminds could so easily get caught before the big reveal - the temptation to boast about the execution was huge. — Olivia Sudjic

Raven had been shunned and abandoned throughout his life. Friends often came and went without a word or worse, they toyed with his emotions and shared his secrets with those he chose to distrust. His loneliness was inevitable and his secrets were damaging enough. Through all of his largely brief but emotionally involved friendships and infatuations, the depression and the darkness of his past, there had been one place to which he could go for solitude - either in thought or in person - and he never shared the knowledge of its existence or its secrets with anyone. That place dwelled within him even all of these years since the summer when he was nine and all that could ever have gone wrong, did. — Amanda M. Lyons

Letters freeze time for us, eternalizing shared experiences so we can go back and draw strength from them. Letters are like deposits in a secret bank that can be withdrawn when they are needed. And as we look back in love, we appreciate anew the thought and time that was taken to express those feelings. — Lois Wyse

Wishbone

Half-eaten chicken
lying on white serving plate
quartered potatoes
chunks of carrots
celery too
we tell stories
and laugh about the day
your little finger is locked around the wishbone
so is mine
I pretend to make a wish
close my eyes
mumbling my lips
that's the way I faked out the nuns
pretending to say the rosary
so they would leave me alone
your face is so determined
you win the wrestling match
lifting your piece of chicken bone above your head
in victory
I know better than to ask
what did you wish for
secret desires of the heart are not to be shared
or
they won't come true
everyone knows that
you clean the dishes
I turn on the TV
lying on the couch
listening to you make music
with running water
and closing cupboard doors. — Robert Hobkirk

The reason I withdrew from formal, regular, scheduled community was that I failed to experience the two things my doctoral thesis revealed men absolutely must experience to remain in community. First, men need confidentiality. They have to believe that what they disclose will remain in that room and never be shared with anyone - not a spouse, not a cousin in a far country, no one. Second, men need to experience mutuality. Men need to know that if they bring you in on whatever battles they have kept secret, you won't "leave them hanging," or pridefully conceal the truth about yourself. They need you to quickly match their personal disclosure. — James MacDonald

If someone tells you a secret that doesn't belong to them, be sure that secret has been shared more than once. — Gabbo De La Parra

She came by ... I couldn't help but look ... only to look and she smiled back!Wheeew, she blown me away,to realize i made her my goal from the hands of the man he have at present ... A family of her own i never want to destroy laid on the line ... a story was made, a secret was solemnly shared by two ... Oh i loved her and she loved me too ... most of the time she got scared, i got scared too..for fighting aginst the odds and she stayed back ... i stood up to break ... flew just to fall ... only to realize a love i have no control of and no one can ... i am not to bid goodbye ... I can't ... only to keep a love unrequited like mine. — Bob Villarosa

Even if the carriage lamps are repaired," Lord Ravenswood said, "it's not safe for you to leave tonight. And a few hours won't make much difference to your investigation."
"I told him that," said Tristian, "but my fool of a brother is obsessed with avoiding Miss Vernon's questions, and he thinks he can only manage that by staying ahead of our party."
"Ah," the viscount said.
Jane dug her fingers into her palms. After their intimacies last night, she'd thought they might have some chance together, but he only shared his body with her. Everything else he kept secret.
You're the one hiding here in the corner, her conscience said.
Yes, because it was her only way around the tight-lipped devil. — Sabrina Jeffries

The progress of the sciences toward theories of fundamental unity, cosmic symmetry (as in the unified field theory) - how do such theories differ, in the end, from that unity which Plato called "unspeakable" and "indiscribable," the holistic knowledge shared by so many peoples of the earth, Christians included, before the advent of the industrial revolution made new barbarians of the peoples of the West? In the United States, before spiritualist foolishness at the end of the last century confused mysticism with "the occult" and tarnished both, William James wrote a master work of metaphysics; Emerson spoke of "the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal One . . ."; Melville referred to "that profound silence, that only voice of God"; Walt Whitman celebrated the most ancient secret, that no God could be found "more divine than yourself. — Peter Matthiessen

He remembers an afternoon not long after his wife's arrest when he caught himself avoiding puddles of rainwater on the streets. When he realised what he was doing it struck him as ridiculous and even reprehensible that he was still prey to such petty concerns. He began deliberately splashing through all the biggest puddles, as if to show some higher power how little he cared about anything anymore. His daughter copied him. Skipping and dancing as if she and the rain shared a secret complicity. — Glenn Haybittle

You have shared your secret. I think you will find it to be an unburdening in many other ways. You have very considerable natural advantages. You have nothing to fear from life. A day will come when these recent unhappy years may seem no more than that cloud-stain over there upon Chesil Bank. You shall stand in sunlight - and smile at your own past sorrows. — John Fowles

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers ...
How did it go?
How did it go? — Shel Silverstein

A secret shared is a secret no more. — Ken Follett

You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people. — W. H. Auden

She hadn't expected to be sorry, and at first she wasn't. The act itself was neither disappointing nor magical; it was what it was: a new closeness. A shared secret. — Laini Taylor

Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon under its shade.
For such is life. We grow rich as we plant through the early years, but then come the years when time undoes our work and cuts down our trees. One by one our comrades deprive us of their shade, and within our mourning we always feel now the secret grief of growing old.
If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me. You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you forever by ordeals endured together. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Perhaps all great loves are that, a secret that can't be shared. — Joe Haldeman

You don't look very happy."
Tally tried to smile. David had shared his biggest secret with her; she should tell him hers. But she wasn't brave enough to say the words. "It's been a long night. That's all."
He smiled back. "Don't worry, it won't last forever. — Scott Westerfeld

All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season. But we didn't. We shared this sour secret, a secret that began the spring Nadia Turner got knocked up by the pastor's son and went to the abortion clinic downtown to take care of it. — Brit Bennett

She said she never wanted to have secrets from me nor from herself, which is why she wanted to write down everything that otherwise would be hard to talk about. As I said, later I understood that someone who flees into honesty like that fears something, fears that her life will fill with something that can no longer be shared, a genuine secret, indescribable, unutterable. — Sandor Marai

Most secrets are secrets of the mouth. Gossip shared and small scandals whispered. These secrets long to be let loose upon the world. A secret of the mouth is like a stone in your boot. At first you're barely aware of it. Then it grows irritating, then intolerable. Secrets of the mouth grow larger the longer you keep them, swelling until they press against your lips. They fight to be let free. Secrets of the heart are different. They are private and painful, and we want nothing more than to hide them from the world. They do not swell and press against the mouth. They live in the heart, and the longer they are kept, the heavier they become. — Patrick Rothfuss

Ministry, then, is not about "using" relationships to get individuals to accept a "third thing," whether that be conservative politics, moral behaviors or even the gospel message. Rather, ministry is about connection, one to another, about sharing in suffering and joy, about persons meeting persons with no pretense or secret motives. It is about shared life, confessing Christ not outside the relationship but within it. This, I learned, was living the gospel.
I — Andrew Root

Even more secretively, Lincoln took up his pen around this same time to write a deeply felt manifesto of principle that he shared with absolutely no one, certainly not sculptor Thomas Jones, in whose presence he likely composed it. Secret or not, it bracingly confirms Lincoln's steadfast determination to preserve - and ultimately, extend - not only the permanence of the Union, but also its guarantee of liberty. He had thought much about these questions in recent days, pondering concepts that went well beyond the planks of the Republican platform he so often cited. The result was an appeal not just to reason but also to emotion, a heartfelt justification for resisting any compromise that reneged on the original promise of American freedom. — Harold Holzer

I can answer that only by hearsay, returned the Guide, for pain is a secret which he has shared with your race and not with mine; and you would find it as hard to explain suffering to me as I would find it to reveal to you the secrets of the Mountain people. But those who know best say this, that any liberal man would choose the pain of this desire, even for ever, rather than the peace of feeling it no longer; and that though the best thing is to have, the next best is to want, and the worst of all is not to want. — C.S. Lewis

Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?" Mrs. Bennet clenched both her fists. "Yes, or I will never see her again!" she sobbed. "An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth." Mr. Bennet tsk-tsked. "From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do." Lizzy shared a warm smile with her dad. She double-tapped her chest, he double-tapped his, and they did their super secret Favorite Daughter-Daddy handshake. Mrs. Bennet, at the sight of it, broke into sobs anew, and Mr. Collins quietly disappeared down the road, muttering that he would be spending the remainder of his visit at Lucas Lodge, if anybody gave a shit. Which emphatically they did not. — J.K. Really

I thought I was the center of the world and that my parents had nothing to do with me, and I regret that. I wish I had been a little kinder to my family and been friends with them and let them into my life and shared with them the things I was doing rather than feel like I needed to do my life in secret. — Jason Mraz

In the past, the poverty they shared had a certain sweetness about it. When the end of the day came and they would eat their dinner in silence with the oil lamp between them, there was a secret joy in such simplicity, such retrenchment. — Albert Camus

The shared secret of our second lives hangs between us, not like a weight, but like a lifeline. — Victoria Schwab

A camera winks at me from high in the bleachers like we're sharing a secret. Fans in the home section of the Fair Grove High gym smile in envy as I hurry toward the bench, wishing some winking camera had ever, in their entire lives, shared a secret with them. — Holly Schindler

Zelda was very beautiful and was tanned a lovely gold colour and her hair was a beautiful dark gold and she was very friendly. Her hawk's eyes were clear and calm. I knew everything was all right and was going to turn out well in the end when she leaned forward and said to me, telling me her great secret, 'Ernest, don't you think Al Jolson is greater than Jesus?'
Nobody thought anything of it at the time. It was only Zelda's secret that she shared with me, as a hawk might share something with a man. But hawks do not share. Scott did not write anything any more that was good until after he knew that she was insane. — Ernest Hemingway,

What is a secret? It is much more than knowledge shared with only a few, or perhaps only one another. It is power. It is a bond. It is a sign of deep trust, or the darkest threat possible.
There is power in the keeping of a secret, and power in the revelation of a secret. Sometimes it takes a very wise man to discern which is the path to greater power.
All men desirous of power should become collectors of secrets. There is no secret too small to be valuable. All men value their own secrets far above those of others. A scullery maid may be willing to betray a prince before allowing the name of her secret lover to be told. — Robin Hobb

It's no secret - if you know me, have ever met me or have shared a meal with me - that I'm a passionate environmentalist. — Sophia Bush

Andres and I stood there. Why is she so angry? he asked. I told him about the pearls, even though I knew it was something more. Catalina was mad that I was me and she was herself. She was mad that Andres was standing here talking to me; that he'd said my name as though it were a secret we shared. There was nothing I could do about Catalina. I thought my grandmother might have been right in what she once told me. You think you know somebody, but what do you know? Only what they want to show you. Remember, it's what's inside that matters. — Alice Hoffman