Center Of My Being Quotes & Sayings

I think that being liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, noncomitted to a cause but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. — Walter Cronkite

I want to tell her how much she's become the center of my being. But I can't. The words won't come. — Simone Elkeles

My own personal task is not simply that of poet and writer (still less commentator, pseudo-prophet); it is basically to praise God out of an inner center of silence, gratitude, and 'awareness.' This can be realized in a life that apparently accomplishes nothing. Without centering on accomplishment or nonaccomplishment, my task is simply the breathing of this gratitude from day to day, in simplicity, and for the rest turning my hand to whatever comes, work being part of praise, whether splitting logs or writing poems, or best of all simple notes. — Thomas Merton

Harvard's Kennedy School of Government asked me to serve as a fellow at its Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. After my varied and celebrated career in television, movies, publishing, and the lucrative world of corporate speaking, being a fellow at Harvard seemed, frankly, like a step down. — Al Franken

I want to change the world in my own way. So I do stuff that's artificial. I don't really like being the guest at someone else's party, because then I have to be entertaining. But I'll host parties because it puts you at the center of things without actually being a social person. — Susan Cain

I am not the center of the universe. And it's a lesson that I keep having to learn; it's my ongoing work, I'd say. And being in a career that is predicated on a degree of self-absorption, that is a tricky thing to negotiate sometimes. — Patrick Fabian

Pete Kilner, of West Point's Center for the Advancement of Leader Development and Organizational Learning, recalls a company commander in Iraq telling him why he'd stayed very strict about the rules of engagement in the war's very worst days. "The guys hate me now," Kilner recounts him saying, "but they're going to thank me for the rest of their lives. I saw what happened in 2003. The guys who were out there being the mad killers everyone thought were so cool, they came back, they drank and beat their wives. They divorced and killed themselves. I'm not going to let my guys do that. — Phil Zabriskie

Exclamation points are the most irritating of all. Look! they say, look at what I just said! How amazing is my thought! It is like being forced to watch someone else's small child jumping up and down crazily in the center of the living room shouting to attract attention. If a sentence really has something of importance to say, something quite remarkable, it doesn't need a mark to point it out. And if it is really, after all, a banal sentence needing more zing, the exclamation point simply emphasizes its banality! — Lewis Thomas

I think my election is one of several indications that gay and lesbian folk are being brought more into the center of things. I'd like to think that my election signals my bringing of gay and lesbian folk into the center of the church. — Gene Robinson

In the center of my being, I am floating with the waves of time in the ocean of light. — Debasish Mridha

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young. — Samuel Ullman

She was the most beautiful thing in my life and my mind had settled long ago that she always would be. I loved her so much I could barely wrap my mind around it. It was like the sun being the center of the universe, the planets all held captive around it, unable to break free of the pull and unable to sustain without its magnificence. She was my sun, the absolute center of my universe. — Kahlen Aymes

You seem to like helping, taking care of people," he said. "That is admirable."
"You enjoy being nurtured?"
"Well, that isn't all you promise. When you touch me, I feel a fire at my center. You want me to grow and find my true story, my purpose. You seem to want to be there when I see new things. You want to share and enjoy my discoveries. — Greg Bear

Deep at the center of my being there is an infinite well of love. — Louise L. Hay

My beliefs are the center of my being. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Home is the center of my being where I can hear the voice that says: 'You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests' - the same voice that gave life to the first Adam and spoke to Jesus, the second Adam; the same voice that speaks to all the children of God and sets them free to live in the midst of a dark world while remaining in the light. — Henri Nouwen

Why is it important that you are with God and God alone on the mountain top? It's important because it's the place in which you can listen to the voice of the One who calls you the beloved. To pray is to listen to the One who calls you 'my beloved daughter,' 'my beloved son,' 'my beloved child.' To pray is to let that voice speak to the center of your being, to your guts, and let that voice resound in your whole being. — Henri Nouwen

The sensation of "I" as a lonely and isolated center of being is so powerful and commonsensical, and so fundamental to our modes of speech and thought, to our laws and social institutions, that we cannot experience selfhood except as something superficial in the scheme of the universe. I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time - a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution, where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment only to vanish forever. Under such conditioning it seems impossible and even absurd to realize that myself does not reside in the drop alone, but in the whole surge of energy which ranges from the galaxies to the nuclear fields in my body. — Alan W. Watts

I remember reading Dave Barry for the first time and being like oh my God I can't believe you can do this. Watching Mel Brooks and Monty Python and SNL and all that stuff really informed me as a writer and then at high school I started a satire magazine and the college like The Lampoon really introduced me to like you know a lot of very like-minded people who really wanted to like comedy was the center of their lives. — Nicholas Stoller

Being with her is my survival; loving her is effortless. She is the shining center of my universe and her love is the moon that pulls the tide of my heart. — Jewel E. Ann

I believe, as they say, that you can't be what you don't see, and since I saw a lot of smart women in my life, education being at the center, I just mimicked that behavior. — Eva Longoria

My father, a closet astronomer, has tried to explain black holes to me, how they are so heavy they absorb everything, even light, right into their center. Moments like this are the same kind of vacuum; no matter what you cling to, you wind up being sucked in. — Jodi Picoult

I wanted to go higher than Rockefeller Center, which was being erected across the street from Saks Fifth Avenue and was going to cut off my view of the sky ... Flying got into my soul instantly but the answer as to why must be found somewhere back in the mystic maze of my birth and childhood and the circumstances of my earlier life. Whatever I am is elemental and the beginnings of it all have their roots in Sawdust Road. I might have been born in a hovel, but I determined to travel with the wind and stars. — Jacqueline Cochran

A student of color in one of my classes, for example, once told me that she noticed my cutting her off during class, something she didn't think I did with white students. I could have weighed in with my professional authority and said it wasn't true, that she was imagining it, that I treated all my students that way, that she was being too sensitive, that I travel all over the country speaking about issues of inequality and injustice, so certainly I was above such things. But what I said to her was that I was truly sorry she'd had that experience. I wasn't aware of doing that, I told her, and the fact that I didn't consciously mean to was beside the point.

To respond in this way, I had to de-center myself from my privilege and make her experience and not mine the point of the conversation. I ended by telling her I would do everything I could to oay attention to this problem in the future to make sure it didn't happen again. — Allan G. Johnson

I wrote the first draft of 'Tigerman' while my wife was pregnant - needless to say, I was relaxed and casual about her well-being during this tender time - and the novel clearly has its center in that panicked parental desperation that accompanies a first child and in the admittedly comedic extremes to which it drives us. — Nick Harkaway

Now my poor hometown is being castigated as the center of an IRS scandal. Humble workers at the Cincinnati office targeted Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations for special scrutiny when those groups applied for tax-exempt status. There's no conceivable excuse for that. It was deeply, deeply wrong. — Gail Collins

Children of course are monstrously conventional, repelled at once by whatever is off-center, out of whack, unmanageable. And being an only child I had been coddled a good deal (also scolded). I was awkward, precocious, timid, full of my private rituals and aversions. — Alice Munro

Those of us living in the state of in between have certain advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of being exposed to a new culture and in my case the freedom that comes with living in the USA. The disadvantages of course being that you will never experience again being a center or quite home anywhere ... — Shirin Neshat

More than his exterior hit me. I felt warm and safe just being with him. He brought comfort after my terrible day. So often with other people I felt a need to be center of attention, to be funny and always have something clever to say. It was a habit I needed to shake. But with him I never felt like I had to be anything more than what I already was. I didn't have to entertain him or think up jokes or even flirt. It was enough to just be together, to be so completely comfortable in each other's presence - we lost all sense of self-consciousness. — Richelle Mead

A vinal shine turns over shades of cerulean and jasper from her expressive lips, revealing a jewel-like surface beneath a light that remains colorfast in a kiss composed of infinite grace. Being in a state of rest, Nadia still makes me the center of attention, dovetailing in an erotic entwinement that impels me to knead her coiling flex. Her resplendent fullness macerated into my bosom now grants me a restful anodyne, enabling the allay of my inner soul. — Luccini Shurod

I treat everywhere as being a center from which I can enjoy the surroundings. And so Austin is very stimulating. I'm familiar with a lot of very charming people who have brought a lot of color to my life and a lot of love. — Robert Plant

My bisexuality is part of the expression of the flexibility, the changeability of my spirit that feels essential and precious to the center of my life. My bisexuality is a part of my desire to remain an outsider, to be able to "pass" into polarized worlds, to abandon expectation, to honor the mystery of being. My bisexuality is a celebration of the ever-opening flesh, the expansive, fluid mirror of social discourse. — Michelle T. Clinton

I smiled at her, but that brooding cloud still hung over me, even as I lay there so full of happiness. I had never thought I could love another person this much. I also never thought I'd live in such fear of losing another person. Was that how everyone in love felt? Did they all cling tightly to their beloved and wake up terrified in the middle of the night, afraid of being alone? Was that an inevitable way of life when you loved so deeply? Or was it just those of us who walked on a precipice who lived in such a panic?
I brought my face a mere whisper from hers. "I love you so much."
She blinked in that way I'd come to recognize, when she was afraid she might cry. "I love you too. Hey." She slid one of her hands up and rested it on my cheek. "Don't look like that. Everything's going to be okay. The center will hold."
"How do you know?"
"Because we are the center. — Richelle Mead

I think being a liberal, in the true sense, is being nondoctrinaire, nondogmatic, non-committed to a cause - but examining each case on its merits. Being left of center is another thing; it's a political position. I think most newspapermen by definition have to be liberal; if they're not liberal, by my definition of it, then they can hardly be good newspapermen. If they're preordained dogmatists for a cause, then they can't be very good journalists; that is, if they carry it into their journalism.
[Interview with Ron Powers (Chicago Sun Times) for Playboy, 1973] — Walter Cronkite

Women are another race. They are always changing, like the moon. You can only win by being the cool center of their being. You have to represent something solid and loving. The anchor. Even if you are not. You can't tell them the truth. You have to lie and play games. I've never in my entire life been with someone with whom I didn't have to play a game. I've never been with anyone with whom I could be exactly who I am. — Orson Welles

This was all an excuse, I think. I was doing fine. I had a 93 average and I was holding my head above water. I had good friends and a loving family. And because I needed to be the center of attention, because I needed something more, I ended up here, wallowing in myself, trying to convince everybody around me that I have some kind of ... disease. I don't have any disease. I keep pacing. Depression isn't a disease. It's a pretext for being a prima donna. Everybody knows that. My friends know it; my principal knows it. The sweating has started again. I can feel the Cycling roaring up in my brain. I haven't done anything right. What have I done, made a bunch of little pictures? That doesn't count as anything. I'm finished. My principal just called me and I hung up on him and didn't call back. I'm finished. I'm expelled. I'm finished. — Ned Vizzini

If the way to the center were easy to find - if it were capable of being captured in doctrines or were subject to human control - it would not be the genuine way. If the path that opens the heart and the mind could be found by simple belief, all the true believers would be opening the doors and windows of their hearts with gestures of true compassion. They would readily understand the common threads in the words "Jesus was right," "Moses led me along," and "Mohammed opened doors in my heart." When the great way opens even for a moment the path between mind and heart widens. The heart begins to find the thought of unity buried within it and the mind begins to see subtleties that were impossible to grasp just a minute before. Finding the great way requires a willingness to surrender again and again, not simply a zeal for bowing one's head in the same old way. — Michael Meade

Everyone has a different path. I knew no one in the acting industry growing up. I never did a play until college. I was not outspoken when I was younger and I hated being the center of attention. But I had a dream of being an actor. I went to NYU and studied theatre. I learned a craft. And began my career straight out of college. — Peter Facinelli

So I really did stop and change what I saw I was about, and really try to put that principle into play as the center of everything - my friendships, my marriage, my career, my family, my way of being in the world. And that changed everything for me. — Kathy Mattea

Only in love can I find you, my God. In love the gates of my soul spring open, allowing me to breathe a new air of freedom and forget my own petty self. In love my whole being streams forth out of the rigid confines of narrowness and anxious self-assertion, which make me a prisoner of my own poverty emptiness. In love all the powers of my soul flow out toward you, wanting never more to return, but to lose themselves completely in you, since by your love you are the inmost center of my heart, closer to me than I am to myself. — Karl Rahner

To get the idea that you are the center," Oliveira thought, resting more comfortably on the board. "But it's incalculably stupid. A center as illusory as it would be to try to find ubiquity. There is no center, there's a kind of continuous confluence, an undulation of matter. All through the night I'm a motionless body, and on the other side of town a roll of newsprint is being converted into the morning paper, and at eight-forty I will leave the house and at eight-twenty the paper will have arrived at the newsstand on the corner, and at eight forty-five my hand and the newspaper will come together and begin to move together through the air, three feet from the ground, heading towards the streetcar stop. — Julio Cortazar

I'm so used to being behind the scenes. I didn't really want to be front and center. One of the elements of my relationships with the artists I work with is that I'm not front and center, and they are. — Arthur Fogel

I now think that was distanced me from Tricia and from the Rape Crisis Center was their use of generalities. I did not want to be one of a group or compared with others. It somehow blindsided my sense that I was going to survive. Tricia prepared me for failure by saying that it would be okay if I failed. She did this by showing me that the odds out there were against me. But what she told me, I didn't want to hear. In the face of dismal statistics regarding arrest, prosecution, and even full recovery for the victim, I saw no choice but to ignore the statistics. I needed what gave me hope, like being assigned a female assistant district attorney, not the news that the number of rape prosecutions in Syracuse for that calendar year had been nil. — Alice Sebold

I pressed forward, pushing my body along hers, and wrapped my arms around her waist. Some of the intensity of my anger dissipated and drained away. After a very long, steamy kiss, I broke away, breathing hard.
Rimmel's head collapsed against the wall and she stared up at me with unfocused hazel eyes. The flecks of color in the center were green today. "Romeo," she gasped.
I pulled back enough so I could lift her arm and grasp her fingers. She made a sound of protest when I pushed back the material of the shirt once more and stared down at the dark blotches marring her skin.
"How were you going to explain this to me?" I rumbled.
"I wasn't going to lie, it that's what you're implying," she snapped.
"Ah, baby." I groaned and lifted her wrist to press my lips to the marks. "I'm being a jerk."
"You said it ... " She agreed, letting the rest of her sentence fall away.
I smiled against her skin and then kissed her inner wrist once more. — Cambria Hebert

Hugo has been infinitely tender with me, but while he talks of June I think of our hands locked together. She does not reach the same sexual center of my being that man reaches; she does not touch that. What, then, has she moved in me? I have wanted to possess her as if I were a man, but I have also wanted her to love me with the eyes, the hands, the senses that only women have. It is a soft and subtle penetration. — Anais Nin

I had never before considered the possibility that I might never even want a drink yet still be left with this horrible, throbbing vacancy in the center of my being, right where my mental health and contentment were supposed to be. — Augusten Burroughs

Will Carmel eventually forget about this adventurous time with us? Will she shun Thomas and go back to being the center of SWC? She wouldn't do that, would she? I mean, she did just compare me to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My opinion of her isn't the highest right now. — Kendare Blake

I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy. — Black Elk

My films generally center around thousands of pictures being flashed in rapid succession to create the illusion of motion. — Lars Von Trier

I started doing regional theater. My first job was 'The Importance of Being Earnest' at Dallas Theater Center. — Anna Camp

There is no real separation or gap in consciousness. 'I AM' cannot be divided. I may conceive myself to be a rich man, a poor man, a beggar man or a thief, but the center of my being remains the same regardless of the concept I hold of myself. At the center of manifestation there is only one 'I AM' manifesting in legions of forms or concepts of itself and 'I am that I am.' 'I AM' is the self definition of the absolute, the foundation on which everything rests. 'I AM' is the first cause-substance. 'I AM' is the self definition of God. "I AM hath sent me unto you" "I AM THAT I AM — Neville Goddard

But we came for the Kennedy Center Awards, which was an incredible honor. Being a British person, I was bestowed this honor. And my partner and I, David, came. And we were so pleasantly surprised by George Bush and his knowledge of AIDS. He really - he treated David and I - and Laura - treated us like - they were so friendly and so courteous. — Elton John

I was Pluto, her rejected planet, but that didn't mean I could stop her from being the center of my universe. — Blakney Francis

There is point in your life when you come face to face with the reality that you cannot take another step on your own. For me, I had never experienced that point, but depression brought me there. I have slowly, painfully and continually been confronted by my brokenness. Coming to terms with the fact that I am broken has been at the center of my accepting my being loved.
For me, now, there exists a sense of desperate need for what God brings to my spiritual and mental self. Without His voice I cannot cope with the darkness, but with His whisper of "you are My beloved", I can take a step each day away from the chasm. I am broken but not beyond mending, not beyond love.
It has been this desperation that has opened a crevice in which I am seeing Him for the first time. He is why my soul can find some peace even when my mind is dark and numb. It is this love that continually has brought me back from the edge of the impostor to the honesty of my broken, inner self — David Hulon Hood

What Are You Made of:
Your belief system in regards to where you stand within the world are at the Core of everything you've done, was able to do, and will do.
If you believe you don't have any control of your well-being, then what you will do and are capable of doing are based on this assumption.
If you believe that you are at the center of all that has and will take place in your life, then you will make all possible effort to think and do that which will produce the results that you seek. — Therone Shellman

My foot slips on a narrow ledge; in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us ... the present moment. The purpose of mediation practice is not enlightenment' it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. — Peter Matthiessen

My mother was always in the center of her own agitation, seeming as though, far away, part of her was being chased along a dirt road by a swarm of bees. — Laura Kasischke

But I look into her eyes and she looks into my eyes and we recognize it - the excitement of being here, the excitement of being now. And maybe I'm realizing what a part of it she is and maybe she's realizing what a part of it I am, because suddenly we're not crashing as much as we're combining. The chords swirling around us are becoming a tornado, and we are at the center of each other. My wrist touches hers right at the point of our pulses, and I swear I can feel it. That thrum. We are moving to the music and at the same time we are a stillness. I am not losing myself in the barrage. I am finding her. And she is - yes, she is finding me. The crowd is pressing in on us and the bassline is revealing everything and we are two people who are part of a lot more people, and at the same time we're our own part. There isn't loneliness, only this intense twoliness. — David Levithan

Jesus said, "These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full" (John 15:11).The center of joy for the Christian is Christ. The joy is Christ's joy. It is simply the life of the Lord Jesus Christ being lived out in an individual. Christian joy is letting Christ live His life out through you so that what He is, you become. There are other kinds of joy found in other places in the world, but there is no place where you can find Christian joy except in Christ. — David Jeremiah

Eh, I've always rather enjoyed being fashionably late." I picked up the violin case for Melanie, giving her an hug before clambering off the rock. "I feel like we should be leading a procession in, Pied Piper style."
"I know just the thing." A hint of her old self peeked through her eyes.
A moment later the first bars of "Safety Dance" hummed from the strings. I bit my lip trying not to giggle. Together the two of us broke out in lopsided chorus as I twirled about her. Ignoring the stares of the elves, we strutted up the center of the caravan, Brystion trailing behind us bemusedly. — Allison Pang

He looks a bit like Robert Pattinson - if you genetically spliced him with Buzz Lightyear. He has dark, quiffy hair and wide-spaced eyes, though his skin is tanned as opposed to diamond sparkly white. He has a very square jaw with a dimple in the center of his chin but alas no jet
65
THE SOUND
SARAH ALDERSON
pack. I note that his eyebrow is cocked and the smile on his face is half sneer, half smirk as if he's laughing at Eliza but she doesn't seem to realize.
I shake my head. I'm making a lot of assumptions here and the only two that I can safely claim are true are the ones about him being neither a vampire nor a space ranger. — Sarah Alderson

My version of success is that my life is full, purposeful, beautiful and boundless. I attribute this success to my spirituality, my good health, and my community of positive relationships which have all come to me as a creation of choice. Success comes from finding your center and your self; being self-centered in a positive and peaceful way. — Bryant McGill

A process for discernment: God is my ultimate source of truth and wisdom, and dwells forever at the center of my being. Therefore, any thought, emotion, or action that takes me further from my center can be neither truthful, nor wise. — Bill Crawford

I'd heard that swimming feels so good when you're pregnant, and I love being in the ocean. I was even paddle boarding up until 17 weeks, but then my center of gravity and balance were completely off. — Marisa Miller

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it. — May Sarton

Even my landlord, who is a moderate Lebanese guy, says, "But bin Laden says what we think." These people believe that bin Laden is being targeted not because of the World Trade Center and Washington; they are not convinced by the evidence that has been produced. They believe he's being targeted because he tells the truth. — Robert Fisk