Before I Leave This World Quotes & Sayings

This world is simply not ready for me. But I didn't came here to show myself to the world. I came here with a mission and I will leave it before anyone knows who I am. — Robin Sacredfire

What America is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our nation (the Islamic world) has been tasting this humiliation and degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked and no one hears and no one heeds. Millions of innocent children are being killed as I speak. They are being killed in Iraq without committing any sins ... To America, I say only a few words to it and its people. I swear to God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it here in Palestine and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him. — Osama Bin Laden

She needed Andrew Simpson Smith, it was that simple. And he had spent his life training to help people like her. Gods.
"Okay, Andrew. But let's leave today. I'm in a hurry."
"Of course. Today." He stroked the place where his slight beard was beginning to grow. "These ruins where your friends are waiting? Where are they?"
Tally glances up at the sun, still low enough to indicate the eastern horizon. After a moment's calculation, she pointed off to the northwest, back toward the city and beyond that, the Rusty Ruins. "About a week's walk that way."
"A week?"
"That means seven days."
"Yes, I know the gods' calendar," he said huffily. "But a whole week?"
"Yeah. That's not so far, is it?" The hunters had been tireless on their march the night before.
He shook his head, an awed expression on his face. "But that is beyond the edge of the world. — Scott Westerfeld

Leave a light on in the wild
Cause I'm coming in a little blind
Dreamer of a lighthouse in the woods
Shining a little light to bring us back home
Went to find you in the backyard
Hiding behind our busy lives
Dreamer of a lighthouse in the woods
To help us get back into the world
Cause I know I've seen you before
Won't you shine a little light on us now?
Won't you shine a little light in your own a backyard?
Won't you shine a little light in your own backyard?
Dreamer of a lighthouse in the woods — Patrick Watson

It was as if she had spoken slightingly of a woman he loved. For he dreamed of peace by day and night. Once in sleep it had appeared to him as the great glowing shoulder of the moon heaving across his window like an iceberg, arctic and destructive in the moment before the world was struck: by day he tried to win a few moments of its company, crouched under the rusting handcuffs in the locked office, reading the reports from the sub-stations. Peace seemed to him the most beautiful word in the language: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you: O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. In the Mass he pressed his fingers against his eyes to keep the tears of longing in. — Graham Greene

She had never driven far alone before. The notion of dividing her lovely journey into miles and hours was silly; she saw it [ ... ] as a passage of moments, each one new, carrying her along with them, taking her down a path of incredible novelty to a new place. The journey itself was her positive action, her destination vague, perhaps nonexistent. [ ... ] Or she might never leave the road at all, but just hurry on and on until the wheels of the car were worn to nothing and she had come to the end of the world. — Shirley Jackson

The last man on the moon, Gene Cernan, had paused for a final look at the black beauty of the world about him. He had a message to send home before departing. "As I take these last steps from the surface for some time in the future to come, I'd just like to record that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And as we leave the moon and Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind." It's been nearly four decades since he spoke those words. No American, no earth being has yet returned to the moon. Sadly, no one will again for decades to come. — Alan Shepard

It's more that I'm afraid of time. And not having enough of it. Time to figure out who I'm supposed to be ... to find my place in the world before I have to leave it. I'm afraid of what I'll miss. — Ann Brashares

This is how we leave the world,
with the heart weeping,
and the hope that distance
brings the solving wonder
of one last clear view
before that long sleep
about the weather's changes — Mark Haddon

At last, Lady Evenstar, fairest in this world, and most beloved, my world is fading. Lo! we have gathered, and we have spent, and now the time of payment draws near."
'Arwen knew well what he intended, and long had foreseen it; nonetheless she was overborne by her grief. "Would you then, lord, before your time leave your people that live by your word?" she said. — J.R.R. Tolkien

When did we ever get this notion that our elders have little to offer society? The years of practical experience, the knowledge of past events for first-hand historical accounts, and the wisdom for dealing with problems they faced before us have given the elderly the role of Wise One or Sage in most cultures around the world. But in our self-centered, individualistic, now-oriented culture, we can leave our debts from the past in a nursing home and our debts for the future to our children. — Michael S. Horton

Remember that some organizations, especially activist groups, have no obligation to rigorous, unbiased data. They are working to convince you to adopt their view of the world and thus aren't necessarily impartial [...] This type of bias or spin is common, and you need to be on the alert for it in the reports you read. In fact, bias is a major reason to get multiple kinds of trend data before drawing conclusions. Even if activist groups don't publish false information, they might leave out key data, which might lead you in another direction. If you read particularly alarming data, for example, a trend that says, "we're losing 10 percent of all bird species each year," you should make sure you verify it with other sources.

In a world that moves as fast as ours does, sensational problems sometimes arise, but if it's really an issue, more than one expert will be covering it. — Eric Garland

There are those much more rare people who never lose their curiosity, their almost childlike wonder at the world; those people who continue to learn and to grow intellectually until the day they die. And these usually are the people who make contributions, who leave some part of the world a little better off than it was before they entered it. — William Herbert Sheldon

It seemed unthinkable for me to leave the world forever before I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce — Ludwig Van Beethoven

The effects which follow too constant and intense a concentration upon evil are always disastrous. Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes even perceptibly worse than it was, before the crusade began. By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself. — Aldous Huxley

Shortly before the United States entered World War II, I received an invitation to come to the American Consulate in Vienna to pick up my immigration visa. My old parents were overjoyed because they expected that I would soon be allowed to leave Austria. I suddenly hesitated, however. The question beset me: could I really afford to leave my parents alone to face their fate, to be sent, sooner or later, to a concentration camp, or even to a so-called extermination camp? Where did my responsibility lie? Should I foster my brain child, logotherapy, by emigrating to fertile soil where I could write my books? Or should I concentrate on my duties as a real child, the child of my parents who had to do whatever he could to protect them? — Viktor E. Frankl

Reagan was president. He had the authority to end the infighting, set policy, and advance American interests in the Middle East. Before him was a clear choice; Shultz arguing for engagement, Weinberger for disengagement. Engagement would likely have involved the use of military force; disengagement offered the comfort of a casualty-free retreat. In the post-Vietnam era, for this president, at this time, disengagement made more sense. He still talked a good game, but when it was time for a decision, he punted. "In the weeks immediately after the bombing," he later wrote, "I believed the last thing we should do was turn tail and leave."58 And yet, fearful of another Vietnam, he waited a few months and then pulled the remaining marines out of Beirut. According to McFarlane many years later, his decision opened the door to the terrorism that has plagued the region and the world ever since. "I am convinced we could have stopped it then, just as it was starting, but Reagan chose not to. — Marvin Kalb

Her evil cannot reach us here. Let us burn the ancient tree-mace trees and close off the ancient ways. Tear down the tower, the crown of our barrow, and let us hide ourselves from evil. Let no one leave the mound, and if evil grows, we shall flee farther.
No! Let evil hear the pounding of our feet! Let evil hear our drumming and our chanting songs of war. Let evil fear us! Let evil flee! In any world, may dark things know our names and fear. May their vile skins creep and shiver at every mention of the faeren. Let the night flee before the dawn and darkness crowd into the shadows. We march to war!
- Nudd, the Chestnut King — N.D. Wilson

I answered that what I wanted more than anything else in the world was to write, nothing else but that, nothing. Jealous. She's jealous. No answer, just a quick glance immediately averted, a slight shrug, unforgettable. I'll be the first to leave. There are still a few years to wait before she loses me, loses this one of her children. For the sons there's nothing to fear. But this one, she knows, one day she'll go, she'll manage to escape. — Marguerite Duras

He knew exactly what this was. A severe panic attack. "Princess?" She glanced at him, shook her head and clutched even tighter at herself. "Please, leave me alone. I can't breathe." His heart went out to her and her fear. He closed the distance between them and placed his hands on her arms to help steady her. "Kiara? Hauk wears women's underwear." Kiara froze at his words, not quite sure she'd heard what he said. "Come again?" "Hauk wears women's underwear. Pink and really girly. You know, one of those skimpy things that tucks into the crack of his fat ass." In spite of her terror, she laughed at the image of the huge, fierce Andarion in a tiny pink G-string. "Hauk wears women's underwear?" Nykyrian's grip loosed on her arms. "Better?" Surprisingly enough, she was. Somehow that unexpected image had managed to break through her panic and center her back in the real world. No one had ever been able to do that before. Her — Sherrilyn Kenyon

We are not going to do the "does God test people" topic complete justice here because it's complicated, but a fair, brief summary would be this: Yes, God sometimes tests us (Deuteronomy 13:3, I Chronicles 29:17). But by God tests us, we don't mean He puts us through trials to see if we will fail (even secretly hoping we will fail). No, when God tests us, He is looking to find out what is in our hearts. He is looking to expose strength and weakness, to show us where we are and where we need to grow. His tests are not so much like a driver's license exam - you pass or fail - but like the diagnostic test a car manufacturer does on the cars themselves before releasing them into the world. The manufacturer needs to know if the vehicles are safe and ready for the road or if they need more work before they leave the factory. — Elizabeth Laing Thompson

So little do we see before us in the world and so much reason have we to depend cheerfully upon the great Maker of the world, that He does not leave His creatures so absolutely destitute but that in the worst circumstances they have always something to be thankful for, and sometimes are nearer their deliverance than they imagine; nay, are even brought to their deliverance by the means by which they seem to be brought to destruction. — Daniel Defoe

The Shadow is what people are hunting throughout the tale. Or else it can dog the hero, refusing to leave him alone. It's a potent force that bewitches as much as it torments. It can lead to hell or heaven. It's the hollow forever inside you, never filled. It's everything in life you can't touch, hold on to, so ephemeral and painful it makes you gasp. You might even glimpse it for a few seconds before it's gone. Yet the image will live with you. You'll never forget it as long as you live. It's what you're terrified of and paradoxically what you're looking for. We are nothing without our shadows. They give our otherwise pale, blinding world definition. They allow us to see what's right in front of us. Yet they'll haunt us until we're dead. — Marisha Pessl

It is through the eyes of youth that everything is constantly being seen anew and rediscovered with the advantage of knowing what has gone before; it is youth that is not mired in the old ways of approaching the challenges of this imperfect world. Each new generation yearns to prove itself - and, in proving itself, to accomplish great things for humanity. Among living creatures, to die and leave the stage is the way of nature - old age is the preparation for departure, the gradual easing out of life that makes its ending more palatable not only for the elderly but for those also to whom they leave the world in trust. — Sherwin B. Nuland

Most officially "poor" Americans today have things that middle-class Americans of an earlier time could only dream about - including color TV, videocassette recorders, microwave ovens, and their own cars. Moreover, half of all poor households have air-conditioning.
Leftist redistribution of income could never accomplish that, because there are simply not enough rich people for their wealth to have such a dramatic effect on the living standards of the poor, even if it was all confiscated and redistributed. Moreover, many attempts at redistributing wealth in various countries around the world have ended up redistributing poverty.
After all, rich people can see the political handwriting on the wall, and can often take their money and leave the country, long before a government program can get started to confiscate it. They are also likely to take with them skills and entrepreneurial experience that are even harder to replace than the money. — Thomas Sowell

It's scary to trust and fall in love with someone, isn't it? You accept someone and welcome them to your world. You show each of your voids. You show how dark it is, inside you and how scary it is, to stay there. And one day they will leave. Adding more voids into you making the older one a lot bigger, and making you get darker and scarier than before inside. — Akshay Vasu

Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Don't leave now that you're here -
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine. — Faiz Ahmad Faiz

I can't think of a better rationale to create a work of art. I don't care what form one's art takes, it has to be an attempt to leave the world a better place than it was before we got here or it's not doing its job. And I don't mean just making things that are pretty. — Charles De Lint

I desire before I leave the world, as my best legacy to my family,, my serious, solemn advice, to make choice of my God for their God. He has been my father's God, and the God of your Mother's predecessors. I solemnly charge you to make it your first care to seek after peace with God, and being reconciled, to make it your study to please God in all things. — Robert Dabney

Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world ... That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God's new world, which he has thrown open before us. — N. T. Wright

It's just that every time I've come home for the past five years - before that, even. From college - something's changed a little more . . ." " - and you're not sure you like it, eh?" Henry was grinning in the moonlight and she could see him. She sat up. "I don't know if I can tell you, honey. When you live in New York, you often have the feeling that New York's not the world. I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Maycomb it's like leaving the world. It's silly. I can't explain it, and what makes it sillier is that I'd go stark raving living in Maycomb." Henry said, "You wouldn't, you know. I don't mean to press you for an answer - don't move - but you've got to make up your mind to one thing, Jean Louise. You're gonna see change, you're gonna see Maycomb change its face completely in our lifetime. Your trouble, now, you want to have your cake and eat it: you want to stop the clock, but you can't. Sooner or later you'll — Harper Lee

My goal in life is to leave behind a safe and healthy world for our children. Before I leave this world, I want to be satisfied that at least I tried. I know I can make a difference, even if it might only be a small one. — Maisie Shiell

Kazuhiko could have taken his gun and aimed it at the person behind them. But Sakura wouldn't want that. What she wanted was to leave this world quietly before they got sucked into this horrible massacre. Nothing was more important to him than her. There was no room for compromise. If this were what her trembling soul wanted, then he would follow her. Had he been more eloquent he might have described his feelings as something like, "I'm going to die for her honor."
Their two bodies danced in the air beyond the cliff, their hands still clasped together, the black sea under them. — Koushun Takami

Then thus incensed, the Paphian queen replies: "Obey the power from whom thy glories rise: Should Venus leave thee, every charm must fly, Fade from thy cheek, and languish in thy eye. Cease to provoke me, lest I make thee more The world's aversion, than their love before; Now the bright prize for which mankind engage, Than, the sad victim, of the public rage." At this, the fairest of her sex obey'd, And — Homer

I've been asked if I'm a prophet and told more than once by highly spiritual friends that I'm an angel. In both cases I've kept myself quiet. The answer is not as important as the perception, and the perception made remains always extremely far from what I can say. There is no answer I can give to anyone. I've tried to offer it, but the most enlightened personalities I ever met are incapable of accepting it as well. This world is simply not ready for me. But I didn't came here to show myself to the world. I came here with a mission and I will leave it before anyone knows who I am. I have a human body, a normal lifestyle and a human identity, and that's all I want others to know. They can't and shouldn't see more than that. The truth would scare them, because most humans are so incredibly arrogant, that they can't conceive the idea that they are far more insignificant that they would ever imagine, That truth would devastate anyone at present time. — Robin Sacredfire

My determination is not to remain stubbornly with my ideas but I'll leave them and go over to others as soon as I am shown plausible reason which I can grasp. This is the more true since I have no other purpose than to place truth before my eyes so far as it is in my power to embrace it; and to use the little talent I have received to draw the world away from its old heathenish superstitions and to go over to the truth and to stick to it. — Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek

And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowing we'll never see each other again. Leaving others on the side of the road, hoping that we will. Finding my mother in my father's story and saying good-bye before before I have a chance to know her better. — Amy Tan

Whatever way you put it, I am here only because my world is here. When I took my first breath, my world was born with me. When I die, my world dies with me. In other words, I wasn't born into a world that was already here before me, nor do I live simply as one individual among millions of other individuals, nor do I leave everything behind to live on after me. People live thinking of themselves as members of a group or society. However, this isn't really true. Actually, I bring my own world into existence, live it out, and take it with me when I die. — Kosho Uchiyama

Each one dreams the dream of life in his own way. I have dreamed it in my library; and when the hour shall come in which I must leave this world, may it please God to take me from my ladder - from before my shelves of books! ... — Anatole France

This way of behaving, this way of feeling, so hysterical, so sad, when someone has died, I don't like at all and would like to avoid. It's not as if the whole thing has not happened before, it's not as if people have not been dying all along and each person left behind is the first person ever left behind in the world. What to make of it? Why can't everybody just get used to it? People are born and they just can't go on and on, but it is so hard, so hard for the people left behind; it's so hard to see them go, as if it had never happened before, and so hard it could not happen to anyone else, no one but you could survive this kind of loss, seeing someone go, seeing them leave you behind; you don't want to go with them, you only don't want them to go. — Jamaica Kincaid

Why did so many die in the night? As though they wished to kiss us and deliver us with sweet dreams before taking their leave of the world. — Ruth Downie

The rule is you have to dance a little bit in the morning before you leave the house because it changes the way you walk out in the world, — Sandra Bullock

Repeat to yourself every day and as often as you can: 'O Lord, have mercy on all those who will appear before You today.' For every hour, every second, thousands of men leave this world and their souls appear before the Lord, and no one knows how many of them leave this earth in isolation, sadness, and anguish, with no one to take pity on them or even care whether they live or die. And so your prayer for such a man will rise to the Lord from the other end of the earth, although he may never have heard of you or you of him. But his soul, as it stands trembling before the Lord, will be cheered and gladdened to learn that there is someone on earth who loves him. And the Lord's mercy will be even greater to both of you, for, however great your pity for the man, God's pity will be much greater, for He is infinitely more merciful and more loving than you are. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As human beings, nobody gets out of this world free. We all have to do some suffering before we leave. — Mike Tyson

In Muspell, at the edge of the flame, where the mist burns into light, where the land ends, stood Surtr, who existed before the gods. He stands there now...It is said that at Ragnarok, which is the end of the world, and only then, Surtr will leave his station. He will go forth from Muspell with his flaming sword and burn the world with fire, and one by one the gods will fall before him. — Neil Gaiman

My ambition is not to leave behind me a pile of money for my heirs to quarrel about, but to find out what there is of interest in this world before I cross the border and begin to explore the other world. — George H. Hepworth

How does she know what I'm feeling? How does she know anything about anything? She doesn't. She can't. She can't just barge into my most secret world and then try to show me around it. Get out, I want to holler at her. Get out of my room. Get out of my life. Get out of my paintings. Get out of everything! Blow back to your realm already and leave me alone. How can you take this experience away from me before I've even gotten to experience it? I want to say all these things but can't make any words. I can hardly breathe. — Jandy Nelson

The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the nest before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance. — Umberto Eco

It is no small advantage to the holy life to "begin the day with God." The saints are wont to leave their hearts with Him over night, that they may find them with Him in the morning. Before earthly things break in upon us, and we receive impressions from abroad, it is good to season the heart with thoughts of God, and to consecrate the early and virgin operations of the mind before they are prostituted to baser objects. When the world gets the start of religion in the morning, it can hardly overtake it all the day. — Thomas Case

Fuck me. I'm so tired of being me. Me beautiful. Me ugly. Blonde. Brunette. A million fucking fashion makeovers that only leave me trapped being me.
Who I was before the accident is just a story now. Everything before now, before now, before now, is just a story I carry around. I guess that would apply to anybody in the world. What I need is a new story about who I am.
What I need to do is fuck up so bad I can't save myself. — Chuck Palahniuk

When we rise in the morning ... at the table we drink coffee which is provided to us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese, or cocoa by a West African; before we leave for our jobs we are already beholden to more than half the world. — Martin Luther King Jr.

All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes
characters even
caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you. — Diane Setterfield

For we must not dwell on Death, as it is a mystery and it is something Unknown we leave to the Lord and his disposing for if we knew everything we would be too full of perfectly known things, and thus never rested nor content but driven with busyness and stuffed full. When I rode out in the early mornings in summertimes everything appeared to me, one after the other, in its own selfe without having to be known about beforehand, before you even get to it. In the order of the world is a deep pattern. You can't know if beforehand. If you did you would remain forever unsurprised and dwarfed and hardened. In the early mornings one after another we broke up the planes of water in the pools of Beaverdam with slow steps, horse and rider, and the trees appeared in their reflections like underwater spirits of themselves. Before these things a person is silent. — Paulette Jiles

Yet there was always in me, even when I was very small, the sense that I ought to be somewhere else. And wander I did, although, in my everyday life, I had nowhere to go and no imaginable reason on earth why I should want to leave. The buses took to the interstate without me, the trains sped by. So I wandered the world through books. I went to Victorian England in the pages of 'Middlemarch' and 'A little Princess', and to Saint Petersburg before the fall of the tsar with 'Anna Karenina'. I went to Tara, and Manderley, and Thornfield Hall, all those great houses, with their high ceilings and high drama, as I read 'Gone with the Wind', 'Rebecca' and 'Jane Eyre'. — Anna Quindlen

Stranger, think long before you enter,
For these corridors amuse not passing travellers.
But if you enter, keep your voice to yourself.
Nor should you tinkle and toll your tongue.
These columns rose not, for the such as you.
But for those urgent pilgrim feet that wander
On lonely ways, seeking the roots of rootless trees.
The earth has many flowery roads; choose one
That pleases your whim, and gods be with you.
But now leave! - leave me to my dark green solitude
Which like the deep dream world of the sea
Has its moving shapes; corals; ancient coins;
Carved urns and ruins of ancient ships and gods;
And mermaids, with flowing golden hair
That charm a patch of silent darkness
Into singing sunlight. — G.A. Kulkarni

White Sky. Trees fading at the skyline, the mountains gone. My hands dangled from the cuffs of my jacket as if they weren't my own. I never got used to the way the horizon there could just erase itself and leave you marooned, adrift, in an incomplete dreamscape that was like a sketch for the world you knew -the outline of a single tree standing in for a grove, lamp-posts and chimneys floating up out of context before the surrounding canvas was filled in-an amnesia-land, a kind of skewed Heaven where the old landmarks were recognizable but spaced too far apart, and disarranged, and made terrible by the emptiness around them. — Donna Tartt

We have this consolation, that it was the evident dispensation of God which brought us to this country; and still further, that if the world was all before us, where to choose our place of rest, we should not desire to leave Burmah. — Adoniram Judson

Ask any parent what we want for our children, and invariably we say 'a better life.' To that end, we give our time, our sleep, our money, and our dreams, much as our parents did before us. We all want a better life for our children. But what we want for them ceases to matter if we leave them an unlivable world. — Leonor Varela

I call you children because that is what you are. You have not fended for yourselves, you have not felt the terrible blows that life gives you. As we speak, there is hatred and prejudice residing in our world's heart. Now a man can make a difference in the world, even if it is a small one. We all have fates, including me. We can choose to make that fate one that will bring hope, or one that will bring destruction. Times are changing, and we must grow wiser for it. So now I must encourage you- I must beg you-when you leave these school walls and enter this world, to not be as idiotic and imbecilic as the generation before you. — Mordred

A person desires to leave a mark of goodness on earth before death arrives. All artists are creators in the face of death. All of life a person seeks to salvage something worthwhile and enduring from living a tragic life. We must eventually dance with death. A person begins on a road leading to personal enlightenment by giving up false beliefs, quelling destructive desires, overcoming fearfulness, and by seeking truth. In order to lead an evocative life full of truth, I must stop living a false life, conquer my fearfulness, and begin expressing love, wonder, and gratitude for all the beauty and splendor of the world. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I know that the day will come when my sight of this earth shall be lost, and life will take its leave in silence, drawing the last curtain over my eyes.
Yet stars will watch at night, and morning rise as before, and hours heave like sea waves casting up pleasures and pains.
When I think of this end of my moments, the barrier of the moments breaks and I see by the light of death thy world with its careless treasures. Rare is its lowliest seat, rare is its meanest of lives.
Things that I longed for in vain and things that I got
let them pass. Let me but truly possess the things that I ever spurned and overlooked. — Rabindranath Tagore

Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent, leave the house before you find something worth staying in for. — Banksy

Swamiji: That is but a state of stupefaction, as under liquor. What will be the use of merely remaining like that? Through the urge of Advaitic realisation, you should sometimes dance wildly and sometimes remain lost to outward sense. Does one feel happy to taste of a good thing all by oneself? One should share it with others. Granted that you attain personal liberation by means of the realisation of the Advaita, but what matters it to the world? You must liberate the whole universe before you leave this body. Then only you will be established in the eternal Truth. Has that bliss any match, my boy? (VII. 162-63) — Swami Vivekananda

To live a life of excellence, you will have to take risks. You will have to step into new territory and climb new mountains. If you're up to something that's as big as you are, it's going to be scary. If it feels perfectly safe, you are probably underachieving. To leave your mark in the world, you will have to stand someplace you've never been willing to stand before. And you will have to have the courage to aspire to excellence. — Debbie Ford

In the past men were handsome and great (now they are children and dwarfs), but this is merely one of the many facts that demonstrate the disaster of an aging world. The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the nest before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance. Mary no longer loves the contemplative life and Martha no longer loves the active life, Leah is sterile, Rachel has a carnal eye, Cato visits brothels, Lucretius becomes a woman. Everything is on the wrong path. In those days, thank God, I acquired from my master the desire to learn and a sense of the straight way, which remains even when the path is tortuous. — Umberto Eco

There is indeed a great deal of futility amongst the human race which we do not commonly see, for it all forms part of our illusion; but let a man be much annoyed by something that others do, so that he is separated from them and has to leave them, and looks back at what they are doing, and he'll see at once all manner of whimsical absurdities that he had not noticed before; and Ramon Alonzo in the shade of his oak, waiting for the noon to go by, grew very contemptuous of the attitude that the world took up towards shadows. — Lord Dunsany

I always prayed the same way at night: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Please bless my mother, father, sister, everyone in the word, and me. And please make my father quit drinking."
As a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism, this is what I know: Something bad is coming; it always does. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed. I can't talk about our secrets; no one understands. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Questions bounced off my self-constructed wall of values
a barricade I'd made from the fears I'd pushed into my darkness.
How could Ryan, a professional baseball player, really resist all those women? How could I really trust Jerry, my childhood friend? I'd barely awakened to sex and already boys were the seventh wonder of the world. Did anyone really trust another person? I needed proof. That proof hadn't revealed itself ... yet. — Pamela Taeuffer

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of the demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed. — Herman Melville

The image of those widmestern storms that rip up the world as you know it, and leave, like a sacrifice, a rainbow to make you forget what has come before. — Jodi Picoult

When he sat in the rowboat again, the oars ready but not yet dipped into the water to take him away from the island, Jeff looked back. He didn't see the busy land crabs nor the overgrown interior; he saw the beach, knowing it was there just beyond sight, keeping the sight of it clear in his inner eye. He splashed the oars into the water. Behind him, a great blue squawked - Jeff turned his head quickly. The heron rose up from the marsh grass, croaking its displeasure at the disturbance, at Jeff, at all of the world. Its legs dragged briefly in the water before it rose free to swoop over Jeff's head with a whirring of powerful wings. It landed again on the far side of the ruined dock, to stand on stiltlike legs with its long beak pointed toward the water. Just leave me alone, the heron seemed to be saying. Jeff rowed away, down the quiet creek. The bird did not watch him go. — Cynthia Voigt

Before the Dawn
In the darkest night the sun may seem like an extinguished match or an ember drowned by rain.
A light forever lost.
The cold world grows steadily colder and shrinks like the abused, closing in on all sides. Laughter, smiles, the glimmer of dancing eyes, and all else indicative of human brightness is gone. Colors leeched from everything leave shadows and emotion dull-gray in their absence.
Time is a void. A moment feels eternal.
Hope does not blossom in the darkness but withers fast, starving for what only the sun can offer. As its petals turn to dust, fear blows in and sweeps the remnants away. The soul succumbs by degrees to nightmares emboldened by the dead of night.
All is lost! All is lost!
The wretched sun, repulsed by our nothingness,
has abandoned the lives in its care!
And then the eyes open wide,
seeing mountains take shape on the horizon. — Richelle E. Goodrich

That's because true travel, the kind with no predetermined end, is one of the most selfish endeavors we can possibly undertake-an act in which we focus solely on our own fulfillment, with little regard to those we leave behind. After all, we're the ones venturing out into the big crazy world, filling up journals, growing like weeds. And we have the gall to think they're just sitting at home, soaking in security and stability.
It is only when we reopen these wrapped and ribboned boxes, upon our triumphant return home, that we discover nothing is the way we had left it before. — Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Just before the light completely vanished, I saw Dimitri's face join Lissa's. I wanted to smile. I decided then that if the two people I loved most were safe, I could leave this world. The dead could finally have me. And I'd fulfilled my purpose, right? To protect? I'd done it. I'd saved Lissa, just like I'd sworn I'd always do. I was dying in battle. No appointment books for me.
Lissa's face shown with tears, and I hoped that mine could convey how much I loved her. With the last spark of life that I had left, I tried to speak, tried to let Dimitri know I loved him too and that he had to protect her now. I don't think he understood, but the words of the guardian mantra were my last conscious thought.
They come first. — Richelle Mead

I spent my entire life waiting for you, Marianne, and I didn't even know it until you arrived. Being burned was the best thing that ever happened to me because it brought you. I wanted to die but you filled me with so much love that it overflowed and I couldn't help but love you back. It happened before I even knew it and now I can't imagine not loving you. You have said that it takes so much for me to believe anything, but I do believe. I believe in your love for me. I believe in my love for you. I believe that every remaining beat of my heart belongs to you, and I believe that when I finally leave this world, my last breath will carry your name. I believe that my final word
Marianne
will be all I need to know that my life was good and full and worthy, and I believe that our love will last forever. — Andrew Davidson

Knowing that it is the earth that we tread, we learn to tread carefully, lest it be rent open. Realizing that it is the heavens that hang above us, we come to fear the echoing thunderbolt. The world demands that we battle with others for the sake of our own reputation, and so we undergo the sufferings bred of illusion. While we live in this world with its daily business, forced to walk the tightrope of profit and loss, true love is an empty thing, and the wealth before our eyes mere dust. The reputation we grasp at, the glory that we seize, is surely like the honey that the cunning bee will seem sweetly to brew only to leave his sting within it as he flies. What we call pleasure in fact contains all suffering, since it arises from attachment. Only thanks to the existence of the poet and the painter are we able to imbibe the essence of this dualistic world, to taste the purity of its very bones and marrow. — Soseki Natsume

It took me a while to realize--but thankfully realized before it was too late--that a fancy house, car, and cable television don't bring much happiness if you're dead. If you're at the weight that I was--or close to it--and you put your love of food and laziness ahead of the love of your family, you're being selfish. Nothing else you've ever done will matter if your family is left alone with that fancy house, car, and cable television when you're gone. It's one thing to leave this world unexpectedly in some tragic accident, but it's stupid and selfish when you're packing your bags every time you sit at the dinner table. — Shawn Weeks

I've never written a book, except my first, without at some point considering that I might die before it was completed. This is all part of the superstition, the folklore, the mania of the business, the fetishistic fuss ... Dying in the middle of a wo(rd), or three-fifths of the way through a nov(el). My friend the nov(el)ist Brian Moore used to fear this as well, though for an extra reason: "Because some bastard will come along and finish it for you." Here is a novelist's would-you-rather. Would you rather die in the middle of a book, and have some bastard finish it for you, or leave behind a work in progress that not a single bastard in the whole world was remotely interested in finishing? — Julian Barnes

Pleasure without God, without the sacred boundaries, will actually leave you emptier than before. And this is biblical truth, this is experiential truth. The loneliest people in the world are amongst the wealthiest and most famous who found no boundaries within which to live. That is a fact I've seen again and again. — Ravi Zacharias

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in. — James Baldwin

Franz Kafka wrote, "It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you." And Kafka was born a century before the Internet! — Austin Kleon

My gift to you, Yukiko-chan.' He nodded. 'Use it to cut away your fear, and leave nothing in its wake. Cherish it. And cherish this truth I speak to you now, if no other before or after: The greatest tempest Shima has even known waits in the wings for you to call its name. Your anger can topple mountains. Crush empires. Change the very shape of the world.'
He pressed the blade into her hand, watched her with cool eyes the colour of steel.
'Your anger is a gift. — Jay Kristoff

FINISTERRE
The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves. — David Whyte

Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be. Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before. — Erich Fromm

Once again, without explaining anything, they understood that they must leave. Go away before this world woke up and continued with a life from which they were forever excluded. — Andrei Makine

When you read my stories, I want you to see the world through my eyes; as if I based my work on you. Come away with me, and I'll show you a world that you've never seen before or ever want to leave. — Nila N. Brown

I wrote these letters in the mornings before work, in the library, during my sessions of prolonged loitering in Commons, where I remained every evening until asked to leave by the janitor. It seemed my whole life was composed of these disjointed fractions of time, hanging around in one public place and then another, as if I were waiting for trains that never came. And, like one of those ghosts who are said to linger around depots late at night, asking passersby for the timetable of the Midnight Express that derailed twenty years before, I wandered from light to light until that dreaded hour when all the doors closed and, stepping from the world of warmth and people and conversation overheard, I felt the old familiar cold twist through my bones again and then it was all forgotten, the warmth, the lights; I had never been warm in my life, ever. — Donna Tartt

Before I leave the earth, I'll have released a bunch of albums and a bunch of movies. I'm going to do it all. It's just that I have to strategically position myself on how I do it so that the world receives it. — Jessica White

People who are buried leave
Behind their memories.
People feel sad for them and
Worry, but for the living man,
They are never sorry.
This person, who is the sufferer,
Will never be able to withstand,
The chances snatched from him,
He thinks, "Am I under a ban?"
So he dies, and the world is
Forever in debt
For the man who faced
Death before his death. — Umera Ahmed