Quotes & Sayings About Getting Back To Life

Amber saw getting infected as the ultimate commitment. Like her and the guy would be doomed to be with each other. Looking back, she figured a brush with death would make her really enjoy her life. Like she would feel more alive. — Chuck Palahniuk

Safe? What can be classified as safe? Everything we do in life has a risk. Just getting out of bed each morning can be dangerous. It's not a matter of what is safe, Cooper, it's a matter of what are you going to allow to hold you back." I look down at him over my shoulder and smile. "You going to let some squeaking metal hold you back? — Brandy Nacole

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as a time of adolescence - just getting through to the real part of your life - but it's more than that. Sometimes your whole life happens in those years, and the rest of your life it's just the same story playing out with different characters. I could die tomorrow and have lived the main ups and downs of life. Pain. Loss. Love. And what you all so fondly refer to as wisdom. Wanna know the difference between adult wisdom and young adult wisdom? You have the ability to look back at your past and interpret it. I have the ability to look at my present and live it with my whole body. — Lidia Yuknavitch

It's about being able to go through the grind, willing to get back up when you're knocked down. And when life's not going well, not getting down on yourself and just getting back up and getting back to work, and striving to be the best you can be. — Robbie Lawler

Everything is working out, he keeps saying. For the first time, I'm not so sure. I think back to my life sober - working, getting up early to go on bike rides and shit, going to movies. I haven't looked at a newspaper in over two weeks. There could be a new war going on and I'd have no idea. But this is the life I want to live, right? I mean, I'm happier. — Nic Sheff

Many people are so busy just doing life, getting by day to day, that they lose touch with the deeper purpose and meaning of life itself. They wander aimlessly from day to day and, as days turn into years, on the final day of their journey here, they look back and think, "That's it? Where was the juice and sweetness and meaning of being here?" Without a vision, our life's journey can seem meaningless. — Dennis Merritt Jones

Everybody, at some point in their life, has fallen down and not felt like getting back up, but you have to, no matter how difficult it is. — Charlie Hunnam

This kind of neighborhood did not please him; he had seen it a million times, duplicated throughout the face of the earth. It had been from such as this that he had fled, early in his life, to use his sixness as a method of getting out. And now he had come back.
He did not object to the people: he saw them as trapped here, the ordinaries, who through no fault of their own had to remain. They had not invented it; they did not like it; they endured it, as he had not had to. In fact, he felt guilty, seeing their grim faces, their turned-down mouths. Jagged, unhappy mouths. — Philip K. Dick

Exactly. The dots guy. I've always thought getting older was a bit like looking at those paintings. You're born, and that's when you're standing right up next to the canvas. Nothing makes any sense. There's just a lot of light and color. But as you get older, you begin to back away, and that's when the image starts to cohere. All those little spots of color turn into flowers, or people, or dogs. You gain perspective. — Tommy Wallach

Butterflies prove that God gives second chances. Because a butterfly spends most of its life as a caterpillar, scooting along on the ground, barely getting by. When a caterpillar sees a butterfly he thinks how wonderful it would be to fly. And then one day he gets tired. Very tired. He builds a little room, curls up inside, and takes a nap. Deep in his heart he wonders if maybe that's all. Maybe life is over. But one day the caterpillar wakes up, and God has done an amazing thing. The caterpillar hakes off the little room and feels something on his back. This time when he goes a bit down the tree branch he doesn't scoot like before. He flies! — Karen Kingsbury

I sat parked for a while in the parent pickup lot, watching a bunch of little kids run relays up and down the field. To be nine years old. To have life simply about family and friends and who was mad at who and which games you wanted to play at recess, and getting gold stars on spelling tests, an feeling that first crush.
Laurel, you had everything back then, and you didn't even know it. — Jennifer Castle

We need to focus on getting people back to work, focus on jobs, the economy, the debt and the spending. That's what will improve the quality of life for American families and for hard-working taxpayers. — John Barrasso

Those are life-and-death-type experiences he goes through in the mines. Eventually he gets out and goes back to his old life. But nothing in the novel shows he learned anything from these experiences, that his life changed, that he thought deeply now about the meaning of life or started questioning society or anything. You don't get any sense, either, that he's matured. You have a strange feeling after you finish the book. It's like you wonder what Soseki was trying to say. It's like not really knowing what he's getting at is the part that stays with you. — Haruki Murakami

You might be on the back nine of life, but it's good to finish strong. — Morton Shaevitz

In times of life crisis, whether wild fires or smoldering stress, the first thing I do is go back to basics ... am I eating right, am I getting enough sleep, am I getting some physical and mental exercise everyday. — Edward Albert

I'm getting old! My back hurts, I got asthma, I just been listening to Amy Winehouse, trying not to cry. Life's crazy. — Vince Staples

When it comes to signing up new talent, that's what I'm looking for
not just someone who has the skill, but someone built for this life. Someone who has the work ethic, the drive. The gift that Jordan had wasn't just that he was willing to do the work, but he loved doing it, because he could feel himself getting stronger, ready for anything. He left the game and came back and worked just as hard as he did when he started. He came into the game as Rookie of the Year, and he finished the last playoff game of his career with a shot that won the Bulls their sixth championship. THAT'S THE KIND OF CONSISTENCY THAT YOU CAN ONLY GET BY ADDING DEAD-SERIOUS DISCIPLINE TO WHATEVER TALENT YOU HAVE. — Jay-Z

I was seized at once with a profound fascination, a burning thirst to learn, to immerse myself totally, to melt away, to become as one with this foreign universe. To know it as if I had been born and raised there, begun life there. I wanted to learn the language, I wanted to read the books, I wanted to penetrate every nook and cranny.
It was a kind of malady, a dangerous weakness, because I also realized that these civilizations are so enormous, so rich, complex, and varied, that getting to know even a fragment of one of them, a mere scrap, would require devoting one's whole life to the enterprise. Cultures are edifices with countless rooms, corridors, balconies, and attics, all arranged, furthermore, into such twisting, turning labyrinths, that if you enter one of them, there is no exit, no retreat, no turning back. To become a Hindu scholar, a Sinologist, an Arabist, or a Hebraist is a lofty all-consuming pursuit, leaving no space or time for anything else. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

I'm really keen to go back and do some theatre, but I can't afford to at the moment because we're getting married in September. And then I'm hoping to direct a film at the end of this year, and that means a year of your life without pay. — Richard Roxburgh

As we stand there, it hits me how quickly everything changes - how life is like peering into a kaleidoscope, and just as you're looking at a gorgeous pattern you think you'd maybe even like to keep around forever, the colors morph into something completely different, and there's no getting back to that first pattern. No matter how much you'd like to see it again. — Holly Schindler

Whatever else you set out to do, begin by getting to know God and seeking His will in your life. If you do that, you will find Him. He will lead you. He will bless you. What a wonderful promise! But it is conditional. If you turn your back on the Lord, He will cast you off forever. — James C. Dobson

If you have the tendency to repress your anger, you have lost touch with an important part of yourself. Getting angry is a way to gain back that part of yourself by asserting your rights, expressing your displeasure with a situation, and letting others know how you wish to be treated. It can motivate you to make needed changes in a relationship or other areas of your life. Finally it can let others know that you expect to be respected and treated fairly. — Beverly Engel

The wave came again and carried them out onto the sea of pain, where he wondered again why life ever came into the world...The tide that drew them out into the troubled waters once again spent itself, and they floated slowly back, resting for a minute or so, only to be dragged out again. He held her up while she contracted and pushed inside herself, trying to open the petals of her flowering body...He lifted her, trying to free the load she was struggling with, but she was straining against the traces, getting nowhere, her eyes like those of a draft horse...Who would choose this, thought Laski, this work, this woe? Life enslaves us, makes us want children, gives us a thousand illusions about love, and all so that it can go forward. — William Kotzwinkle

Just say, dakhilak."
Without hesitation, "Dakhilak."
He nodded. Her accent was getting no better. "Now, you can never take it back."
"Well, what does it mean? Thank you?"
She should have asked sooner. He didn't turn to meet the gaze he felt on him, his voice full of sand, his stomach sick. "It gives me charge of your life. — V.S. Carnes

Now don't go getting excited that I'll suddenly notice Hutch in the soft pink light of the sunset and fall in love. He's not the love of my life, and no, we haven't been destined to get together ever since those gummy bears back in fourth grade, just because that's what happens in moves. And don't go thinking he and I become best friends in a Breakfast Club sort of way, either, with me realizing he's got a heart of gold under the Iron Maiden motorcycle jacket, and him realizing that I'm not the slut everyone thinks I am. Yes, that happens onscreen. But forget it. This is real life. He creeps me out. We have nothing in common besides leprosy. — E. Lockhart

The world says you gain your life by getting more and more and more and more, but Jesus says, 'No, that leads to death. You get it back by giving it away and when you give it away you get it back.' — Philip Yancey

Life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. — Sarah Kay

You're lying to yourself. Voron made us into serial killers. We can be okay without violence for a few weeks, but after a couple of months, the hand starts itching for the sword. You start looking for that rush. You get irritable, life turns stale, and then one day some fool crosses your path, attacks, and as you cut him down, you feel that short moment of struggle when he leverages his life against yours. If you're lucky, he's very good and the fight lasts a few seconds. But even if it doesn't, that short moment of triumph is like getting an adrenaline shot. Suddenly color comes back into life, food tastes better, sleep is deeper, and sex is rapture.
I knew exactly what he was talking about. I lived it and I felt it. — Ilona Andrews

Miley is always on, she's always funny, she's always writing songs, she's always making music. The parallel of the film is like Miley says, going back to her home, going back to her roots. Getting back to Tennessee was art imitating life imitating art. — Billy Ray Cyrus

These girls come; they last one season; they're completely used up and dried out and sent back home. That's not how to make a life. I want a girl to come in knowing full well what she's getting into and being able to deal and make decisions that will create a career. — Carol Alt

I've never written a book with the intention of winning someone back or getting back at someone or anything like that. It's always just been about thinking about life and how relationships fit in to what life means. — Jeffrey Brown

The negativity took some getting used to, but at the end of the day, life's too short. It's too short to get upset about what other people think . . . too short not to do what makes you happy . . . too short to not call that person back, to stay angry, to hold a grudge. — Elizabeth Meyer

If the war had taught her anything, it was to take nothing for granted: that it wasn't safe to put off what mattered. Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back. — M.L. Stedman

I seemed to perceive that my problem - that what I had to do to prepare myself for getting into contact with her, was just to get back into contact with life. I had been kept for twelve years in a rarefied atmosphere; what I then had to do was a little fighting with real life, some wrestling with men of business, some travelling amongst larger cities, something harsh, something masculine. — Ford Madox Ford

I always feel a little blue when a fun trip is over. The planning and anticipation of a vacation, and then the trip itself, are always so much fun. Getting home and back to real life always makes me feel a little empty. — Karey White

My primary pastoral work had to do with Scripture and prayer. I was neither capable nor competent to form Christ in another person, to shape a life of discipleship in man, woman or child. That is supernatural work, and I am not supernatural. Mine was the more modest work of Scripture and prayer- helping people listen to God speak to them from the Scriptures and then joining them in answering God as personally and honestly as we could in lives of prayer. This turned out to be slow work. From time to time, impatient with the slowness, I would try out ways of going about my work that promised quicker results. But after a while it always seemed to be more like meddling in these people's lives than helping them attend to God. More often than not I found myself getting in the way of what the Holy Spirit had been doing long before I arrived on the scene, so I would go back, feeling a bit chastised, to my proper work: Scripture and prayer; prayer and Scripture. — Eugene H. Peterson

You know what they say about living well as the best revenge. I did well because it was the one defense I had. Escape has been the motivating force in my life. Getting away from him, getting away from her, putting that household behind me. The funny this is, I haven't moved an inch, and the harder I run, the faster I keep slipping back to them ... There are laws for everything except the harm families do. — Sue Grafton

Are we ever getting out of these mountains?" she asked without turning to look at him.
He moved up behind her and put his arms around her.
She leaned back against him. Her hair glistened with melting snow. She felt small in his arms.
"We're going to get out of here," he whispered as he slowly turned her to face him. "Do you trust me?"
She raised her head to meet his eyes and held his gaze for a long moment. "With my life. — B. J. Daniels

The pigeon had been unlucky. Ten birds had been on their way back to their Ilkley coop, flying in stolid, heavy formation; nine had returned home. The tenth, flying low over the moor at the base of this avian wedge, had plummeted soundlessly to the soil, its senses overwhelmed by the tendrils of consciousness which had enwrapped them.

When the pigeon awoke, moments later, all of the rudimentary universal constructs which defined pigeonness in its brain had been carefully swept away, save one. The entity didn't need birdseed; it didn't need a pigeon coup in Ilkley; but it needed to fly.

And it needed as much of the pigeon's cerebral activity as possible to focus on getting it to its desired location, which meant that for the first time in its life, this pigeon was reading roadsigns.

It was also experiencing emotions for which it was somewhat unprepared, most notably an insistent, imperative yearning for Leeds United. — Windsor Holden

I missed my father so much when he died that writing about his life and mine was a way of bringing him back to life and getting me to sort of understand more about him and what made him the father, the husband and the man that he was, and how that made me the man, husband and father that I am. — Dan Hill

If I'm happy with the song and it's a hit song or not, for the rest of my life, I can hang my hat on knowing I did the best I could, and I'll enjoy getting out there and doing it. That's all that really matters for me. The icing on the cake is people actually enjoy it and sing it back to you. That's when you know that you've done something great. — Jake Owen

Jenna reached over and held one of my hands, Kara held the other, and I felt like the universe was holding us all.
For that night, maybe just for that magic moment, it all seemed to make so much sense, like the thousand puzzle pieces of my life were all in place and I knew the How and Why of all things. It was one of those moments that I was sure would stay impressed on me forever because it was real and true. It was as tangible as the blanket beneath me. I felt lik I had touched something, something as big as the universe, and it had touched me back.
I didn't know that even a big moment like that could be snuffed out in a matter of days by packing to go home, by the wrong teacher on the wrong school schedule, or by my uncle getting his brains blown out at a traffic stop.
But all that just made Kara and Jenna brighter stars in my sky. I had no way of knowing that, in a matter of weeks, even those stars would be snuffed out. — Mary E. Pearson

Life ... we understand it differently at different stages. It's what is interesting about getting older, you realize your relationship with the past is always negotiable. There is a lot of freedom in that, because you realize you can go back to what you did such a long time ago. You can talk with the dead, talk with your lost self, your disappeared self, and you can visit those places again, and understand it differently. That makes a huge difference. — Jeanette Winterson

Rock & Roll is so great, people should start dying for it. You don't understand. The music gave you back the beat so you could dream. A whole generation running with a Fender bass...

The people just have to die for the music. People are dying for everything else, so why not the music? Die for it. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't you die for something pretty?

Perhaps I should die. After all, all the great blues singers did die. But life is getting better now.

I don't want to die. Do I? - Lou Reed (1965-1968) — Legs McNeil

Hadrian caught her arm. "You go back and we'll continue searching."
"I'm not going to rest while you risk your life. Are you nuts? You stay. I stay."
Hadrian cupped her cheek. "Think of the babies. They need their mother. You're much more fierce than I am. Go back and we'll keep looking."
She hated it whenever he pulled the children card on her. It was the one and only thing he knew she wouldn't argue against. "You're a rank bastard, Hadrian Scalera!"
Instead of getting angry, he flashed that charming grin that always melted her heart. "Hadrian Erixour." He pressed his helmet to hers and turned her around to head back without him. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

'Back To Love' is a way of letting people know that sometimes you get caught up in trying to be successful in school or in your social life, and it's a reminder not to forget that each day people are getting older. Nobody is promised tomorrow, so we should make sure that we spend quality time with quality people. — Anthony Hamilton

I had lunch with my brothers," Mark said, his face serious. "While you were still asleep. They told me. About Corey and that stupid set-up you agreed to where you'd pretend not to be my wife ... "
"I never agreed to pretend not to be your wife," Dylan said.
Mark's face grew serious then. "That's what it amounted to in the end though, didn't it? You pulled away from me in exchange for me getting ... what?"
"Your career back," Dylan said. "Your life."
"Dylan, you're my life. You. — Nia Forrester

I think that something similar happens with our psychic muscles. They cramp around our wounds - the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both - to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So those wounds never have a chance to heal. Perfectionism is one way our muscles cramp. In some cases we don't even know that the wounds and the cramping are there, but both limit us. They keep us moving and writing in tight, worried ways. They keep us standing back or backing away from life, keep us from experiencing life in a naked and immediate way. — Anne Lamott

The suite was set: Chris and I in the left, back room; Tom and Ricky in the left, front room; Junior and Danny Tampon in the back, right room next to the bathroom; and Dickstein all by his peanut-dick-self in the front, right room. It was quite a radical change from the suite that surrounded me, Chris, and Tom the previous year. Just getting rid of Lebeuf was addition by subtraction. The Beachside Dorm, Suite 524, would be one of the happiest places in my two-decade life. Freedom of expression was never diminished, unless Dickstein opened his mouth and shit flew out of it. — Phil Wohl

I feel like we have to keep our eyes on the road. Being nostalgic is like taking an offramp and getting a sandwich - and then you get back on the highway. I don't want to be spending the rest of my life at the gas station. — Eddie Vedder

The truth is: while it may have been rough getting here, I've awakened to a dream. The most incredible man in the world came into my life and gave it back to me. — Tessa Dawn

Sometimes things aren't very clear, that's all. Things look like they're going against us, and though it always turns out fine at the end, and we can always look back and say oh of course it had to happen that way, otherwise so-and-so wouldn't have happened - still, while it's happening, in my heart I keep getting this terrible fear, this empty place, and it's very hard at such times to really believe in a Plan with a shape bigger than I can see ... — Thomas Pynchon

I know what blood poisoning is, Katniss," says Peeta. "Even if my mother isn't a healer."
I'm jolted back in time, to another wound, another set of bandages. "You said that same thing to me in the first Hunger Games. Real or not real?"
"Real," he says. "And you risked your life getting the medicine that saved me?"
"Real." I shrug. "You were the reason I was alive to do it. — Suzanne Collins

Getting over it doesn't mean forgetting it, it just means reducing the pain to a tolerable level, a level that doesn't destroy you. I know that right now the idea of getting over it is unimaginable. It's impossible, inconceivable, unthinkable. You don't want to get over it. Why should you? It's all you've got. You don't want kind words, you don't care what other people think or say, you don't want to know how they felt when they lost someone, They're no you, are there! They can't feel what you feel. The only thing you want is the things you can't have. It's gone. Never coming back. No one know how that feels. No one know what it's like to reach out and touch someone who isn't there and will never be there again. No one knows the unifiable emptiness. No one but you. You and me, love. We don't want anything. We want to die, but life won't let us. We're all it's got. — Kevin Brooks

Her eyes weren't blinking. There was still something almost dead in them, something very far away. She seemed to be seeing all the way through to the back of him and beyond, out into the cold space of the future in which they would both soon be dead, out into the nothingness that Lalitha and his mother and his father had already passed into, and yet she was looking straight into his eyes, and he could feel her getting warmer by the minute. And so he stopped looking at her eyes and started looking into them, returning their look before it was too late, before this connection between life and what came after life was lost, and let her see all the vileness inside him, all the hatreds of two thousand solitary nights, while the two of them were still with the void in which the sum of everything they'd ever said or done, every pain they'd inflicted, every joy they'd shared, would weigh less than the smallest feather on the wind. — Jonathan Franzen

Instead, I read books in the library, huddling on a bean bag in a corner and getting lost in somebody else's victories and troubles. I never had much time for fiction before. I preferred real life. Mathematics. Solutions. Things that actually have a bearing on my life. But I can understand now why people read, why they like to get lost in somebody else's life. Sometimes I'll read a sentence and it will make me sit up, jolt me, because it is something that I have recently felt but never said out loud. I want to reach into the page and tell the characters that I understand them, that they are not alone, that I'm not alone, that it's okay to feel like this. And then the lunch bell rings the book closes and I'm plunged back into reality. — Cecelia Ahern

It's true we all build imaginary prisons for ourselves. Believe that we are trapped behind the invisible bars of the lives we have somehow carelessly constructed for ourselves, despite our youthful promises to ourselves. We see adults who are stagnant and miserable as we grow up. They graffiti the walls behind them with their mistakes and we swear secret oaths that we will heed those warnings. We're much too clever, we know all the shortcuts and the back alleys. — Thomas Lloyd Qualls

By God, I shall spend the rest of my life getting my heart back, healing and forgetting every scar you put upon me when I was a child. The first move I ever made, after the cradle, was to crawl for the door, and every move I have made since has been an effort to escape. — Thomas Wolfe

I can't go through you walking out on me again," he said. "I've got skin tougher than a rhinoceros hide, but I've always been a big weakling when it comes to you. If you want back into my life, it has to be for good this time." "For better or for worse, for richer or poorer . . . is that what you mean?" "Till death do us part. Yeah, that's what I'm getting at." Her face was beautiful and shining and confident. "That's what I want too. — Elizabeth Camden

I was always willing to take a great deal of the burden of getting along in life on my own shoulders, but I wasn't willing to give myself a pat on the back. I was always looking to somebody else to give me that.. That was all wrong. — Raquel Welch

They mock Him by denying His very existence, but instead of feeling free, they just feel angry because suddenly life doesn't make sense anymore. They want to be rid of God, and they want life to have meaning anyway, and it just doesn't work and it makes them angry. And anger kills. I've lived long enough to know, and I can see it coming. Anger is going to be right at the heart of the demise of this country. America is going to fall, and when we do, we're not getting back up again. — Ann Tatlock

Why would you want to make them happy?" Amberdrake turned back to his little friend, and sat with a sad smile on his face. "Because they are bitter, unhappy people, and very little else makes them happy. They say what they do out of envy, for any number of reasons. It may be because I lead a more luxurious life than they, or at least they believe I do. It may be because there are many people who do call me friend, and those are all folk of great personal worth; a few of them are people that occupy high position and deservedly so. Perhaps it is because they cannot do what I can, and for some reason, this galls them. But they have so little else that gives them pleasure, I see no reason to deprive them of the few drops of enjoyment they can extract from heaping scorn and derision on me." Gesten shook his head. "Drake, you're crazy. But I already knew that. I'm getting some sleep; this is all too much for me. Good night." "Good night, Gesten," Amberdrake said — Mercedes Lackey

Dreams are a direct feedback mechanism to the dreamer. They will tell you if you're getting sick, if you need to repair your relationship with your kids, if you're in a toxic romantic relationship, if you need self-care; the imagery will report back to you all matters in you waking life that require attention. — Teresa DeCicco

I always liked it when people go back in time to discover things about themselves, like with 'A Christmas Carol' and you're getting a tour of your life by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. — John Cusack

I don't tell her that my grasp on truth, on words, on people, has slipped. I was getting close, so close to normal again, and that's been snatched away. I'm not even back where I started. I'm somewhere else entirely, so far off the map I don't know where to turn next. — Daisy Whitney

Because she is already a doer who, I am certain, is fully capable of making all her dreams come true.
Well, maybe not all> my dreams, I thought, smiling to Ian, who was smiling back. But most. Which was fine, since I'd learned that getting most of what you wish for in life is often as good as getting it all. — Sarah Strohmeyer

Suddenly I was remembering myself, that very night, caring about nothing but getting to Richmond. Was it the same for these people; had their hearts and minds been all concerned with earthly things? I wondered if this was hell. Back to Life The next I saw a city in which the walls, houses, streets, seemed to give off light, while moving among them were beings as blindingly bright. — Gerard Radcliff

If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, "Bye. I have to go. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here." And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently. (Steve Jobs) — Walter Isaacson

Next, take a look at the quality of the people who surround you. Do these people back you emotionally, or not? If they don't back you, are they at least passive? If not, get rid of them. Sometimes it is hard to drop off your mates at the great bus stop of life. But remember, your energy will only rise in direct relationship to the number of things you are able to get rid of - not to the things you acquire. By getting rid of things, attitudes, encumbrances, and blocks of one kind or another, things fly. — Stuart Wilde

My homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air;
no bird here can sing as well
as the birds sing over there.

We have fields more full of flowers
and a starrier sky above,
we have woods more full of life
and a life more full of love.

Lonely night-time meditations
please me more when I am there;
my homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air.

Such delights as my land offers
Are not found here nor elsewhere;
lonely night-time meditations
please me more when I am there;
My homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air.

Don't allow me, God, to die
without getting back to where
I belong, without enjoying
the delights found only there,
without seeing all those palm-trees,
hearing thrush-songs fill the air. — Goncalves Dias

I'm well aware that it's life I need, and it's life I'm looking for. But the offer has gotten "interpreted" by well-meaning people to say, "Oh, well. Yes, of course ... God intends life for you. But that is eternal life, meaning, because of the death of Jesus Christ you can go to heaven when you die." And that's true ... in a way. But it's like saying getting married means, "Because I've given you this ring, you will be taken care of in your retirement." And in the meantime? Isn't there a whole lot more to the relationship in the meantime? (It's in the meantime that we're living out our days, by the way.) Are we just lost at sea? What did Jesus mean when he promised us life? I go back to the source, and what I find is just astounding. — John Eldredge

Returning the Pencil to Its Tray Everything is fine - the first bits of sun are on the yellow flowers behind the low wall, people in cars are on their way to work, and I will never have to write again. Just looking around will suffice from here on in. Who said I had to always play the secretary of the interior? And I am getting good at being blank, staring at all the zeroes in the air. It must have been all the time spent in the kayak this summer that brought this out, the yellow one which went nicely with the pale blue life jacket - the sudden, tippy buoyancy of the launch, then the exertion, striking into the wind against the short waves, but the best was drifting back, the paddle resting athwart the craft, and me mindless in the middle of time. Not even that dark cormorant perched on the No Wake sign, his narrow head raised as if he were looking over something, not even that inquisitive little fellow could bring me to write another word. — Billy Collins

It always has been and always will be the same. The old folk of our grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden; and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generation. "Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you will find the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift as did the German Minnesingers long before them and the old Norse Saga writers long before that. And for the same thing sighed the early prophets and the philosophers of ancient Greece. From all accounts, the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened to the public, for it is very pleasant even now if you only keep as much as possible in the sunshine and take the rain good-temperedly. — Jerome K. Jerome

Last time I said something perhaps I shouldn't have, something that's been taken the wrong way: "The poor are always with you." At that moment, back then, I wanted my friends' attention. I meant I was going to die soon, but they would have the rest of their lives to care for the poor. But the rich have twisted my words to mean something quite different: that there's nothing you can do about the poor. That the poor are part of life, like disease or accidents or hurricanes or getting old. Poverty is natural. You'll never get rid of it, so forget about trying. Don't worry that the poor have so much less than you do. Go eat your big meal, go drive your big car, go sleep in your big house. Let the poor look in the windows. Jesus says it's OK. Well, Jesus doesn't say it's OK. OK? P — Tony Hendra

You need to understand something, you drink deeply from wells of freedom and liberty and opportunity that you did not dig. You eat lavishly from banquet tables prepared for you by your ancestors. You sit under the shade of trees that you did not plant or cultivate or care for. You have a choice in life, you can just sit back, getting fat, dumb, and happy, consuming all the blessings put before you, or it can metabolize inside of you, become fuel to get you into the fight, to make this democracy real, to make it true to its words that we can be a nation of liberty and justice for all. — Cory Booker

Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back. She began to feel an urgency, a need to seize an opportunity. Before anyone else did. — M.L. Stedman

Do you know the real secret of how Presidents become Presidents?" Before I can answer, he explains, "It's because they're good at getting people to do things for them. In fact, they're not just good at it. They're maestros. Virtuosos. To get that title of President, you need thousands of people doing thousands of different things, all for your benefit. It's a massive churning machine. And y'know what feeds that machine?" he asks. "People like you, Beecher. It's fed with your life, and your family, and your reputation. Because when things go wrong ... and they always go wrong ... the President isn't allowed to have that skunk smell around him. So when that happens, he doesn't just replace you. He crumples you up, tosses you out back, and ... chomp goes the woodchipper. — Brad Meltzer

You've sort of made up for it tonight,' said Harry. 'Getting the sword. Finishing off the Horcux. Saving my life.'
'That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was,' Ron mumbled.
'Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was,' said Harry. 'I've been trying to tell you that for years.'
Simultaneously they walked forwards and hugged, Harry gripping the still sopping back of Ron's jacket. — J.K. Rowling

I did everything wrong," he said. "I misunderstood everything. Moon Child gave me so much, and all I did with it was harm, harm to myself and harm to Fantastica."
Dame Eyola gave him a long look.
No," she said. "I don't believe so. You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that was your way. And do you know why? Because you are one of those who can't go back until they have found the fountain from which springs the Water of Life. And that's the most secret place in Fantastica. There's no simple way of getting there."
After a short silence she added: "But every way that leads there is the right one. — Michael Ende

I wish you could go through life without ever caring about anything, without ever getting attached to people and dreams and inaccessible places. It just makes you sad when you can never go back. — Elizabeth Wein

Being sick allows you to check out of life. Getting well again means you have to check back in. It is absolutely crucial that you feel ready to check back into life because you feel as though something has changed from the time before you were sick. Whatever it was that made you feel insecure, less than, or pressured to live in a way that was uncomfortable to you has to change before you want to go back there and start over. — Portia De Rossi

I had turned away from the picture and was going back to the world where events move, men change, light flickers, life flows in a clear stream, no matter whether over mud or over stones. — Joseph Conrad

You're on the verge of getting your soul and your life back and he's still what determines your happiness ? You don't need a relationship to be happy, Georgina. — Richelle Mead

If I did something to hurt Frankie and she said that I was never getting near her heart again, I'd spent the rest of my life trying anyway. That's the difference between you and me, Tom. I'd go back to the moment it all fell apart and I'd start there. — Melina Marchetta

There are two types of spirits. One makes the transition to the spirit realm and goes on to whatever comes next. They can still come back to connect with people who are alive, but it's like dropping by for a visit, and then they go back to whatever it is they were happily doing in the next life. On the other hand, earthbound spirits - ghosts - are folks who pass but still have unfinished business. They feel like they're going to be judged for something they did wrong; or they don't know they are dead; or they are angry about being dead and not getting to finish something. They have been cheated out of life. They stay on a plane that's closer to the plane of earth, and that's why they're always at the corners of our vision and the edges of our dreams. Once they complete the process and resign themselves to the fact that their time on earth is finished and they've done what they can do, they can move to the next level. — Jodi Picoult

Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task
such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping
I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something. — Isaac Asimov

I have nothing against people getting their band back together, but the artists I love marked a time in my life, and to merge that time with now can be personally depressing. — Babatunde Adebimpe

[Myne] shouldn't be enjoying the feeling of closeness, of holding someone who didn't belong to him, but damn, this felt good. He didn't get to be with females often, not when his bite caused excruciating pain, and he definitely didn't get to save a life ... ever. Nicole was depending on him in order to survive, and he began to shake with the magnitude of it all. Rike, he whispered to himself. If you come back and don't mate this female before the next daybreak, I'll kill you myself. Of course, that was if Riker didn't kill him first for getting a raging erection for his female. — Larissa Ione

Page 142: "When a spouse says to the alcoholic, "you need to go to AA," that is obviously not true. The addict feels no need to do that at all, and isn't. But when she says, "I am moving out and will be open to getting back together when you are getting treatment for your addiction," then all of a sudden the addict feels "I need to get some help or I am going to lose my marriage." The need has been transferred. It is the same with any kind of problematic behavior of a person who is not taking feedback and ownership. The need and drive to do something about it must be transferred to that person, and that is done through having consequences that finally make him feel the pain instead of others. When he feels the pain, he will feel the need to change ... A plan that has hope is one that limits your exposure to the foolish person's issues and forces him to feel the consequences of his performance so that he might have hope of waking up and changing. — Henry Cloud

The dog approached again, cautiously. I found the bologna sandwich, ripped off a chunk, wiped the cheap watery mustard off, then placed it on the sidewalk.
The dog walked up to the bit of sandwich, put his nose to it, sniffed, then turned and walked off. This time he didn't look back. He accelerated down the street.
No wonder I had been depressed all my life. I wasn't getting proper nourishment. — Charles Bukowski

How many men had made her? Her brothers, by dying? Yah Tayyib, by rebuilding her? All those dead boys whose heads she brought back to the clerks? Raine, by teaching her how to drive and how to die? Tej and Rhys and Khos and all Raine's half-breed muscle? They were just men. They were just people. They had made her as surely as Queen Ayyad and Queen Zaynab, Bashir, Jaks, Radeyah, and her sisters had. Her hoards of sistesr, Kine and the bel dames and the women who kicked her out of school for getting her letters fucked. No, she could have gone either way; followed all or none of them. It wasn't what was done to you. Life was what you did with what was done to you.
"You didn't make me," Nyx gasped. "I made myself. — Kameron Hurley

The Time Line is great for getting things into perspective when you feel a bit lost and lacking direction or if you have a big change coming up such as moving to secondary school, your parents splitting up or having a new family arrangement. When you experience grief or loss, whether that is for a person or a part of your life such as leaving your Primary School, you can travel back along the time line, identify which skills you need from your old life, anchor them and bring them into the present as you move forward to Secondary School. Once you've done the Time Line a few times it will be in your head and you can conjure up the image and the steps without moving. This can be useful in situations when you can't actually move physically, in class for instance. — Judy Bartkowiak

The essence of the Revolution is to abolish the attainment of unqualified power of man over man either by vote-getting, money-pressure or crude terror. The Revolution repudiates profit or terror altogether as methods of human intercourse. It turns the attention of men and women back from a frantic and futile struggle for the means of power, a struggle against our primary social instincts, to an innate urgency to make and to a beneficial competition for preeminence in social service. It recalls man to a clean and creative life from the entanglements and perversion of secondary issues into which he has fallen. It replaces property and official authority by the compelling prestige of sound achievement. Eminent service remains the only source of influence left in the world . . . — H.G.Wells

And back in the spring of 1720, Sir Isaac Newton owned shares in the South Sea Company, the hottest stock in England. Sensing that the market was getting out of hand, the great physicist muttered that he "could calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people." Newton dumped his South Sea shares, pocketing a 100% profit totaling £7,000. But just months later, swept up in the wild enthusiasm of the market, Newton jumped back in at a much higher price - and lost £20,000 (or more than $3 million in today's money). For the rest of his life, he forbade anyone to speak the words "South Sea" in his presence. 4 — Benjamin Graham

Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded in ebullient despatches as the enemy falls back; then the beginning of a long, morale-sapping trudge with rations getting shorter and the first snowflakes upon your face. The enemy burns Moscow and you yield to General January, whose fingernails are very icicles. Bitter retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually you fall beneath a boy-gunner's grapeshot while crossing some Polish river not even marked on your general's map. — Julian Barnes

That's what you might call the normal pattern of female life. I've seen many girls and women, with strong maternal instincts, keen on getting married but mainly, though they mayn't quite know it themselves - because of their urge to motherhood. And the babies come; they're happy and satisfied. Life goes back into proportion for them. They can take an interest in their husbands and in the local affairs and in the gossip that's going round, and of course in their children. But it's all in proportion. The maternal instinct, in a purely physical sense, is satisfied, you see. — Agatha Christie

I scowled listening to my back cracking and popping.
Either i was getting old, Wade had fucked me out of alignment, or the stress of the past week had taken more of a toll than I had previously allowed myself to imagine. — Ethan Day

Courtney, I had this all planned out, and I wanted to make it so special for you, but something just came over me, and I ... well, shit ... I couldn't wait another minute. I love you, Courtney. I want to love you for the rest of my life. I want to wake up to you every morning and lie down next to you every night. I want to make love to you on our kitchen island as much as we want to. I want to sit with you on the back porch and watch you while you're lost in one of your books. I want to see your stomach getting bigger with our kids, and hell, I even want to fight with you and then have make-up sex. I want the world for both of us, and more than anything, I want to make all your dreams come true. I want to be your Prince Charming, Courtney. I want to be your everything. Will you marry me? — Kelly Elliott

Restaurant, bar, night club. . . Eat, drink, walk. . . YAWN. . .
For some people, this is ALL they can think of when getting ready for a date.
Isn't a "shortlist" like this enough to make you and your girlfriend want to yawn?
Why not fill your love story with truly wondrous and exciting activities, or surprise your date with something unusual and adventurous?
Infuse your personal life with miracles and astonishment - not monotony.
Isn't this what everyone dreams of on our little planet? At the same time, who holds us back from fulfilling our own dreams, other than ourselves?
Fill the life around you with joy. It will be returned to you tenfold.

CREATE happy moments. . . MAKE miracles happen!
LOVE is a miracle. — Sahara Sanders

Funny how things work themselves out. Things happen that split up family and friends, then things happen that bring them back together. Everyone is in your life for a reason. My hope is for all the reasons to be good. Those who love you never lose touch, are always consistent, and unquestionable. — April Mae Monterrosa