Anxious Mind Quotes & Sayings

Anytime you're feeling stressed, anxious, or depressed, ask yourself, "What story is my mind telling me now?" Then once you've identified it, defuse it. — Russ Harris

She loved the library and was anxious to worship the lady in charge. But the librarian had other things on her mind. She hated children anyhow. — Betty Smith

I realized clearly, perhaps for the first time, what strained and anxious lives dogs must lead, so emotionally involved in the world of men, whose affections they strive endlessly to secure, whose authority they are expected unquestioningly to obey, and whose mind they never can do more than imperfectly reach and comprehend. — J.R. Ackerley

Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought. It reacts to every thought as if it were a reality. It doesn't know it is just a thought. To the body, a worrisome, fearful thought means "I am in danger," and it responds accordingly, even though you may be lying in a warm and comfortable bed at night. The heart beats faster, muscles contract, breathing becomes rapid. There is a buildup of energy, but since the danger is only a mental fiction, the energy has no outlet. Part of it is fed back to the mind and generates even more anxious thought. The rest of the energy turns toxic and interferes with the harmonious functioning of the body. — Eckhart Tolle

Creff was visibly agitated by the stranger's appearance at our door. Memory calls to mind the anxious wringing of his hands, resembling two furless pink badgers wrestling for each other's throats ... — K.W. Jeter

She'd filled twelve notebooks and still she hadn't stopped. Indeed, the more she wrote, the louder the stories seemed to grow, swirling in her mind, pressing against her head, anxious for release. She didn't know whether they were any good and in truth she didn't care. They were hers, and writing made them real somehow. — Kate Morton

What wonders does not wine! It discloses secrets; ratifies and confirms our hopes; thrusts the coward forth to battle; eases the anxious mind of its burden; instructs in arts. Whom has not a cheerful glass made eloquent! Whom not quite free and easy from pinching poverty! — Horace

Hard, hard it is, this anxious autumn
To lift the heavy mind from its dark forebodings; — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Lestat: You're very anxious to be out of these rooms, aren't you? Why don't we simply get into bed together? I don't understand.
David: You're serious?
Lestat: Of course
David: You do realize, that this is an absolutely magnificent body, don't you? I mean you aren't insensible to the fact that you've been deposited in a ... a most impressive piece of young male flesh.
Lestat: I looked it over well before the switch, remember? Why is it you don't want to..
David: You've been with a woman, haven't you?
Lestat: I wish you hadn't read my mind. It's rude. Besides, what does that matter to you?
David: A woman you loved.
Lestat: I have always loved both men and women.
David: That's a slightly different use of the word 'love. — Anne Rice

I have a few things that I have written over the years that haven't been made, but I sort of feel like there was a good reason why they were not made. So I am not anxious to go back and fix them. I don't have something in the desk drawer that I think, "The time is right now. If I just do this, it'll be great." It is kind of out of sight and out of mind. I am thinking ahead rather than back. — Steven Zaillian

I didn't totally fit in. I kind of disintegrated around people and became what they wanted me to be. But paradoxically, I felt an intensity inside me all the time. I didn't know what it was, but it kept building, like water behind a dam. Later, when I was properly depressed and anxious, I saw the illness as an accumulation of all that thwarted intensity. A kind of breaking through. As though, if you find it hard enough to let your self be free, your self breaks in, flooding your mind in an attempt to drown all those failed half-versions of you. — Matt Haig

The holy prophets have not only refused to follow erroneous human trends, but have pointed out these errors. No wonder the response to the prophets has not always been one of indifference. So often the prophets have been rejected because they first rejected the wrong ways of their own society ...
Prophets have a way of jarring the carnal mind. Too often the holy prophets are wrongly perceived as harsh and as anxious to make a record in order to say, "I told you so." Those prophets I have known are the most loving of men. It is because of their love and integrity that they cannot modify the Lord's message merely to make people feel comfortable. They are too kind to be so cruel. I am so grateful that prophets do not crave popularity. — Spencer W. Kimball

Fat bed, lick the black cat in my mouth
each morning. Unfasten all the bones

that make a head, and let me rest: unknown
among the oboe-throated geese gone south

to drop their down and sleep beside the out-
bound tides. Now there's no nighttime I can own

that isn't anxious as a phone
about to ring. Give me some doubt

on loan; give me a way to get away
from what I know. I pace until the sun

is in my window. I lie down. I'm a coal:
I smolder to a bloodshot glow. Each day

I die down in my bed of snow, undone
by my red mind and what it woke. — Malachi Black

The pattern of your breathing affects the pattern of your performance. When you are under stress, deep breathing helps bring your mind and body back into the present.Over the years I have handed out thousands of little stickers to athletes that read 'Breathe and Focus.' A baseball player will place the bright orange circle on the shoulder of his uniform or underneath the bill of his cap, or on the barrel of his bat. A hockey player might affix it to his stick. Firefighters I have worked with place the stickers on their self-contained breathing apparatus. The stickers serve as a reminder. Whenever they feel themselves growing anxious, breathe in energy. Breathe out negativity. Breathe in relaxation. Breathe out stress. — Gary Mack

If you are that patient, your mind is more settled, and what you do will be more perfect. If you are unsettled and anxious to get the result, you are already disturbed; nothing done with that disturbed mind will have quality. So, it is not only how long you practice, but with what patience, what earnestness and what quality also. — Swami Satchidananda

First, contrary to popular belief, Buddhists can actually be very anxious people. That's often why they become Buddhists in the first place. Buddhism was made for the anxious like Christianity was made for the downtrodden or AA for the addicted. Its entire purpose is to foster equanimity, to tame excesses of thought and emotion. The Buddhists have a great term for these excesses. They refer to them as the condition of "monkey mind." A person in the throes of monkey mind suffers from a consciousness whose constituent parts will not stop bouncing from skull-side to skull-side, which keep flipping and jumping and flinging feces at the walls and swinging from loose neurons like howlers from vines. Buddhist practices are designed explicitly to collar these monkeys of the mind and bring them down to earth - to pacify them. Is it any wonder that Buddhism has had such tremendous success in the bastions of American nervousness, on the West Coast and in the New York metro area? — Daniel Smith

People everywhere, including the United States, are still prone to accept stereotypes, eager to believe what we want to believe (for example, on global warming) and anxious to await while others take the lead
seeking in vain to avoid both responsibility and risk. When trouble arises among faraway people, we remain tempted to hide behind the principle of national sovereignty, to "mind our own business" when it is convenient, and to think of democracy as a suit to be worn in fine weather but left in the closet when clouds threaten. — Madeleine K. Albright

Fairy tales are loved by the child not because the imagery he finds in them conforms to what goes on within him, but because
despite all the angry, anxious thoughts in his mind to which the fairy tale gives body and specific content
these stories always result in a happy outcome, which the child cannot imagine on his own. — Bruno Bettelheim

When you do things in a selfish way, let alone a destructive way, then you are bound by that karma. Your state of mind will go down. You will find yourself becoming depressed, nervous, anxious and upset. — Frederick Lenz

For his lunch break, Alex decided to sit outside for a smoke. There was no break room to speak of, just a backdoor that led to a neglected parking lot and an old payphone. There was an upturned crate by the door used to hold the door open or to sit on if one so desired. But Alex couldn't sit down, even though he had been standing for the past four hours, his anxious mind kept his feet moving.
He paced back and forth, smoking his cigarette with the speed of an anxious drug addict. The cool but faint breeze pushed the smoke away from him and dissipated it into nothing. He still felt angry about the run-in with Gonzalez. It had consistently poked at him like a curious sadist with a pointed stick ever since he walked away from the door slammed in his face. — J.C. Joranco

Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,
While the white foam rises high,
And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring,
And fasten the clothes to dry;
Then out in the free fresh air they swing,
Under the sunny sky.

I wish we could wash from our hearts and our souls
The stains of the week away,
And let water and air by their magic make
Ourselves as pure as they;
Then on the earth there would be indeed
A glorious washing-day!

Along the path of a useful life
Will heart's-ease ever bloom;
The busy mind has no time to think
Of sorrow, or care, or gloom;
And anxious thoughts may be swept away
As we busily wield a broom.

I am glad a task to me is given
To labor at day by day;
For it brings me health, and strength, and hope,
And I cheerfully learn to say-
"Head, you may think; Heart, you may feel;
But Hand, you shall work always! — Louisa May Alcott

Whatever things injure your eye you are anxious to remove; but things which affect your mind you defer. — Horace

The Lord is my peace. I shall not live in anxiety. He puts me under His wing of comfort and calms my spirit within me. He takes all my anxieties on Himself and helps me to focus on Him. Yes, though I walk through a time of grave uncertainties and fierce anxieties, I will not fret - for You are my peace. Your Word and Your presence calm me now. You hold my uncertainties in the palm of Your hand. You soothe my anxious mind - You smooth my wrinkled brow. Surely serenity and trust in You shall fill me all the days of my life. And I shall keep my mind stayed on You forever. — Linda Dillow

We will martyr ourselves, suffering under the weight of a non-reciprocal relationship until some part of us bursts in protest. Suddenly, we lose our mind, and allowing ourselves to heap all manner of nastiness, name calling, patronizing, death threats on the "deserving" jerk who has it coming after all we do for him/her! As the final insult rings across the room and we regain consciousness, we are horrified by what has come out of our mouth. After all, we LOVE these people, and we quickly move into anxious terror that this time we have gone too far . . . this time we crossed the line and they will leave us. So, we hunker back down and the martyrdom begins again. It's a terrible cycle. — Mary Crocker Cook

If enslaved to the desire for wealth, let this go. If enslaved by grievance, turn the cheek. If your significance is in being mother or father or wife or husband or child or in having any of these - indeed, if you cling even to your own life - these too let go. Have instead a new mind set upon the kingdom. Do not be anxious, but rather repent - see beyond your old mind, you see? Only have eyes to see what is true beyond what you think. Trust the Father. Then you will master this world with pleasure rather than be mastered by it. Then you will find the power to command any storm. — Ted Dekker

Distract yourself, that's what Margaret always told him. When you start getting anxious, give your mind something else to think about. He had become an expert at distracting himself. He had distracted himself so much, he found himself drowning in distractions, and all the little details in the world seemed to join up together in his head and make a whole new problem to worry about. — Joanna Cannon

Even when emotions seem to overtake life, such as when we are depressed or anxious or angry, it is important to remember that those emotions still give us important information. Rather than judging our emotions, practice acceptance of them and open your mind to their messages. Rejecting emotions or trying to push them away usually intensifies them. If the message is not heard, it needs to get louder. As an example, invalidation by others tends to intensify emotions, and self-invalidation has the same effect. — Lane Pederson

When feeling lonely or anxious, most of us have the habit of looking for distractions, which often leads to some form of unwholesome consumption
whether eating a snack in the absence of hunger, mindlessly surfing the Internet, going on a drive, or reading. Conscious breathing is a good way to nourish body and mind with mindfulness. — Thich Nhat Hanh

But at home, that same day he'd jumped into the fountain, he'd gotten so anxious, pacing around the living room listening to his parents try to calm him, that he suddenly just lost it completely and slapped his face. He immediately started crying, confused and guilty, looking up at his parents like he had no idea how it happened. And, really, that's the way it always was with the hitting. It would happen so fast, his body shaking to release the tension that built up from all the thoughts swirling through his mind and all the air he was having trouble breathing and all the loud beating of his own heart ringing in his ears. It had to get out and that was the path it chose. Slap. Instant relief. — John Corey Whaley

Fred and George exchanged looks.
"You don't mind if we don't kiss you, do you, Ron?" said Fred in a falsely anxious voice.
"We could curtsy, if you like," said George.
"Oh, shut up," said Ron, scowling at them. — J.K. Rowling

There were times I felt so anxious, almost like I was crawling out of my skin - that if I didn't do something physical to match the way I felt inside, I would explode. I cut myself to take my mind off that. I just didn't care what happened. I had no fear. — Demi Lovato

To the secular arm, therefore, be delivered any and every book which, catering for the youngsters, throttles the life of the old folktales with coils of explanatory notes, and heaps on their maimed corpses the dead weight of biographical appendices. Nevertheless, that which delighted our childhood may instruct our manhood; and notes, appendices, and all the gear of didactic exposition, have their place elsewhere in helping the student, anxious to reach the seed of fact which is covered by the pulp of fiction. For, to effect this is to make approach to man's thoughts and conceptions of himself and his surroundings, to his way of looking at things and to explanation of his conduct both in work and play. Hence the folk-tale and the game are alike pressed into the service of study of the human mind. Turn where we may, the pastimes of children are seen to mimic the serious pursuits of men. — Edward Clodd

It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. you feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. — Yann Martel

People are more likely to fall intensely in love when they are anxious and their self-esteem is lowest.... Feeling inadequate, unhappy, and empty are virtual prerequisites for falling and staying desperately in love; at least temporarily, the ecstasy of desire seems to cure everything that ails you. There is a connection between aversive states of mind -- loneliness, shame, even grief and horror -- and a propensity to feel overwhelming passion; this is one reason why romances blossom in times of war or natural disasters, as well as during the private disasters of our everyday lives. — Jeanne Safer

Singin' In the Rain might get you through an anxious week or two, but it won't get you through an anxious life. For that you need either a brain transplant (the only procedure of its kind, it has been said, in which it is better to be a donor than a recipient), a fully stocked bomb shelter, or a thorough adjustment of your perspective on existential risk and reward. — Daniel Smith

Ever been in a spelling bee as a kid? That snowy second after the announcement of the word as you sift your brain to see if you can spell it? It was like that, the blank panic. — Gillian Flynn

A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility. — Hermann Hesse

The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable. — Seneca.

Novels are excluded from "serious reading," so that the man who, bent on self-improvement, has been deciding to devote ninety minutes three times a week to a complete study of the works of Charles Dickens will be well advised to alter his plans. The reason is not that novels are not serious-some of the great literature of the world is in the form of prose fiction-the reason is that bad novels out not to be read, and that good novels never demand any appreciable mental application on the part of the reader. A good novel rushes you forward like a skiff down a stream, and you arrive at the end, perhaps breathless, but unexhausted. The best novels involve the least strain. Now in the cultivation of the mind one of the most important factors is precisely the feeling of strain, of difficulty, of a task which one part of you is anxious to achieve and another part of you is anxious to shirk; and that feeling cannot be got in facing a novel. — Arnold Bennett

You know full well that it was past time for you to come out in the open. And by admitting the truth, there are no more secrets, for either of us." She smiled. "That means we're able to discontinue playing the parts we've been playing for far too long and begin living our lives as they were meant to be lived - you as an author, and me as . . . well, I haven't figured that out exactly yet, but I have a few ideas in mind." Bram smiled. "I have to hope that I figure in somewhere with those few ideas, but . . ." He nodded to the shoreline. "We're almost to Ravenwood, so now is hardly the time to discuss such matters." Knowing he was right but finding herself unable to keep from smiling at the idea of having Bram Haverstein as part of her future plans - although what part he would play in her life it was certainly too soon to tell - Lucetta set her sights on the shore, anxious to see Ravenwood from the vantage point of the Hudson. "Do — Jen Turano

There are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer's block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling you talent run down your leg and into your sock. — Anne Lamott

Pooh hasn't much Brain, but he never comes to any harm. He does silly things and they turn out right. There's Owl. Owl hasn't exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things. He would know the Right Thing to Do when Surrounded by Water. There's Rabbit. He hasn't Learnt in Books, but he can always Think of a Clever Plan. There's Kanga. She isn't Clever, Kanga isn't, but she would be so anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking about it. And then there's Eeyore. And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow that he wouldn't mind about this. — A.A. Milne

For example, the sound of the telephone can make us irritated and anxious. That is the sound of the telephone which comes as a result of past actions and afflictions. If, however, we practice and acknowledge the sound of the telephone as a bell of mindfulness, then when the telephone rings we shall know how to bring our mind back to our breathing, smile, and make our mind and body peaceful. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious to my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important — Iris Murdoch

He was not utterly unskilled in handling his own lack of training, and he refused to be rashly drawn into a controversy about those matters from which there would be no exit nor easy way of retreat. This was an additional ground for my pleasure. For the controlled modesty of a mind that admits limitations is more beautiful than the things I was anxious to know about. — Augustine Of Hippo

Dear God, In You lies the answer to every question And the solution to every problem. I place my anxious mind In Your care And pray for the calm through which I can receive Your answers. And so it is. Amen. — Marianne Williamson

What does drunkenness not accomplish? It unlocks secrets, confirms our hopes, urges the indolent into battle, lifts the burden from anxious minds, teaches new arts. — Horace

Typically, when you have a depressed individual, they feel hopeless. They feel miserable. Their mind is racing, their heart is pounding. They feel anxious. They feel exhausted yet they can't sleep. — Dale Archer

Any beautiful mind, full of ideas, would always express itself in the most natural, simple and straightforward way, anxious to communicate its thoughts to others (if this is at all possible) and thus relieve the solitude that he must experience in a world such as this: but conversely, intellectual poverty, confusion and wrong-headedness, clothe themselves in the most laboured expressions and obscure turns of phrase in order to conceal petty, trivial, bland or trite thoughts in difficult and pompous expressions. — Arthur Schopenhauer

I gained everything. Or at least I'll think so," he growled, suddenly impatient, anxious, "when you give me a bloody answer to my bloody question. How many times are you going to make me ask you? Will you marry me, Gabrielle O'Callaghan? Yes or yes? And in case you're still managing to miss the point, the correct answer is 'yes.' And, by the way, anytime you'd like to tell me you love me, I wouldn't mind hearing it. — Karen Marie Moning

LULL
(November, 1939)

The winds of hatred blow
Cold, cold across the flesh
And chill the anxious heart;
Intricate phobias grow
From each malignant wish
To spoil collective life.
Now each man stands apart.

We watch opinion drift,
Think of our separate skins.
On well-upholstered bums
The generals cough and shift
Playing with painted pins.
The arbitrators wait;
The newsmen suck their thumbs.
The mind is quick to turn
Away from simple faith
To the cant and fury of
Fools who will never learn;
Reason embraces death,
While out of frightened eyes
Still stares the wish to love. — Theodore Roethke

If you are mindful of death, it will not come as a surprise-you will not be anxious. You will feel that death is merely like changing clothes. Consequently, at that point you will be able to maintain your calmness of mind. — Dalai Lama

What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? — G.K. Chesterton

This is why therapists go to such lengths to urge their anxious patients away from intellectualization: The first step toward peace is disarmament. — Daniel Smith

An anxious mind cannot exist in a relaxed body." Body and mind are inextricably related in anxiety. — Edmund J. Bourne

It is not so much adverse events that make you anxious as it is your thoughts about those events. Your mind engages in efforts to take control of a situation, to bring about the result you desire. Your thoughts close in on the problem like ravenous wolves. Determined to make things go your way, you forget that I am in charge of your life. — Sarah Young

If you are anxious, you can't learn. It's like dropping seeds on concrete. With a quiet mind, people take things in. — Herbert Benson

Go in all simplicity; do not be anxious to win a quiet mind, and it will be all the quieter. Do not examine so closely into the progress of your soul. Do not crave too much to be perfect, but let your spiritual life beformed by your duties, and by the actions which are called forth by circumstances. — Saint Francis De Sales

As we are concerned with what others think of us, so we are anxious to know all about them; and from this arise the crude and subtle forms of snobbishness and the worship of authority. Thus we become more and more externalized and inwardly empty. The more externalized we are, the more sensations and distractions there must be, and this gives rise to a mind that is never quiet, that is not capable of deep search and discovery. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

All of a sudden I became aware of a little star in one of those patches and I began looking at it intently. That was because the little star gave me an idea: I made up my mind to kill myself that night. I had made up my mind to kill myself already two months before and, poor as I am, I bought myself an excellent revolver and loaded it the same day. But two months had elapsed and it was still lying in the drawer. I was so utterly indifferent to everything that I was anxious to wait for the moment when I would not be so indifferent and then kill myself. Why
I don't know. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Anybody who does not know how to manage his own body, his own mind, his own emotion and his energies, if he is managing outside situations, he is only managing them by accident, not by intent the way he wants it. When you manage situations by accident, you exist as an accident. When you exist as an accident, you are a potential calamity. When you exist as a potential calamity, being anxious all the time becomes a natural part of life. — Jaggi Vasudev

Perhaps this very evening, if it rises in my heart; perhaps never. It's a fear that sometimes I can't abide to think about, and sometimes I don't like to think on anything else. Well, I was fretting about this fear, and Alice comes in for something, and finds me crying. I would not tell her no more than I would you, Mary; so she says, 'Well, dear, you must mind this, when you're going to fret and be low about anything - An anxious mind is never a holy mind.' O Mary, I have so often checked my grumbling sin'* she said that." *Sin — Elizabeth Gaskell

Keep in mind that the tendency to be judgmental - toward yourself or another person - is a good barometer of how anxious or stressed out you are. Judging others is simply the flip side of judging yourself. — Harriet Lerner

Quincy only talked to her when he was horny and wanted some, but other than that their conversations were very scarce. He had a lot on his mind and was extremely anxious to get back to the hood. — Nako

Why are you so anxious to destroy in the name of a vulgar, commonplace sense of truth, this reality which comes to birth attracted and formed by the magic of the stage itself, which has indeed more right to live here than you, since it is much truer than you
if you don't mind my saying so? — Luigi Pirandello

How many times have I gone back to the border of memory and peered into the darkness beyond? But it is not only memories that hover on the border. There are all sorts of phantasmagoria that inhabit that realm. The nightmares of a lonely child. Fairy tales appropriated by a mind hungry for a story. The fantasies of an imaginative little girl anxious to explain to herself the inexplicable. Whatever story I may have discovered on the frontier of forgetting, I do not pretend to myself that is the truth. — Diane Setterfield

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable. — Jeff Wheeler

Keeping the mind open to new ideas, not being too anxious about success, putting 100% effort and meditation is the formula for entrepreneurs. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

He glanced back at his ship, and a sigh escaped his lips, his heart fraught with the appreciation and melancholy that understanding his own situation must evince. His place as Captain of such a crew was as evanescent as the rest of life, and while they were all collected together now, being of the same character, the same mind, having the same predilections and ambitions, there was no saying when it might be over. He might be called away on urgent business, or his crew might grow anxious for a more settled life, Rannig might wish to return home, or the Director of the Marridon Academy might finally rot, calling Bartleby back to Marridon for the promotion he so richly deserved. He exhaled, reveling in the pining sigh of impermanence which living in such uncertainty must produce. — Michelle Franklin