Going Down The Right Path Quotes & Sayings

I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world, and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. — C.S. Lewis

It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great. You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn. — Anonymous

There is history the way Tolstoy imagined it, as a great, slow-moving weather system in which even tsars and generals are just leaves before the storm. And there is history the way Hollywood imagines it, as a single story line in which the right move by the tsar or the wrong move by the general changes everything. Most of us, deep down, are probably Hollywood people. We like to invent "what if" scenarios
what if x had never happened, what if y had happened instead?
because we like to believe that individual decisions make a difference: that, if not for x, or if only there had been y, history might have plunged forever down a completely different path. Since we are agents, we have an interest in the efficacy of agency. — Louis Menand

Your mind knows only some things. Your inner voice, your instinct, knows everything. If you listen to what you know instinctively, it will always lead you down the right path. — Henry Winkler

Sometimes, instead of going down the road less taken, you just charge right down the beaten path. — Charlaine Harris

Nothing made sense. Every decision felt wrong. Every direction I looked led down a path I was unaware about. For years I have worked toward one goal, stayed focused on one place I wanted to get. But now that goal felt like it wasn't quite right. — Nichole Chase

But
no
splendid is not the right word. they are splendid, but they are
they are so friendly. Oh dear!' she said, and looked up at him, half laughing, half embarassed. 'How childish that sounds! But so many of the beatiful things in the rooms beneath us
push you away
tell you to stand back
order you to admire and be abashed. These
these draw you in. These make you want to stay and
and have them for company. Yes, that's right. But I
I am still making them sould like a
like
sort of comfortable, though, am I not? Like a bowl of warm bread and milk and an extra pillos, and that's not it at all. They are not comfortable. Indeed, I feel that if I lived with them for long, I should have to learn to be ... better, or greater, myself. If this Queen of the Heavenly Mountain looked down at me from my bedroom wall every day, soon I should have to go looking for the path to her domain. I wouldn't be able to help myself. — Robin McKinley

Here we are," he said, pointing down an unshoveled path.
"The Gardens."
Cath tried to look appreciative.
You wouldn't know there was a path here at all if it weren't for one set of footprints in the melting snow.
All she could see were the footprints, some dead bushes, and a few weedy patches of mud.
"It's breathtaking," she laughed.
"I knew you'd like it. Play your cards right, and I'll bring you back during the high season. — Rainbow Rowell

Now we are going to make a new-way path. So you take a shovel, you take a ground-haker, you take a hairpin and you start digging. And you dig in all directions: up and down, in and out, right and left. Not in a straight line. Nothing natural or interesting goes in a straight line. As a matter of fact, it is the quickest way to the wrong place. And don't pretend you know where you are going. Because if you know where you are going, that means you've been there, and you are going to end up exactly where you came from. — Sherry Ruth Anderson

We commit ourselves to the journey toward reconciliation because we believe it is right-even when we are not sure, as John Paul says, how it will progress or end. We believe that walking down the path to peace offers a way better than violence and an instrument more powerful than force to conduct the affairs of humankind. We pray that others will join us.
-Harold — John Paul Lederach

Down through history man has taken many paths in his quest for God's presence, all to no avail. Only one path is correct, and that path is revealed in the Word of God. Only in the Bible do we begin to understand what these inward stirrings are and how to find entrance into the presence of God. A right understanding of the Bible opens to us the only path into the presence of God. — A.W. Tozer

The road to heaven isn't much of a road," he was saying. "It's more like a dusty trail, roughly cut out through the underbrush. Most people don't even notice it. It doesn't look like a path at all, so they walk right by. Others see it, but don't go down it because it's ugly. Dirty. Difficult. Overgrown. If they took the road to heaven, their progress would be slow, maybe immeasurable. They'd have to give up a lot because the path is narrow. — Bonnie Grove

Continue on the right path. You have potential ... Don't give up. Don't let yourself get down and quit studying or fighting for what you want. One day something good is bound to happen. You just have to keep at it. — Isabela Pamelli Martins

He would dream waking dreams about Jesus, gloriously childlike. He fancied he came down every now and then to see how things were going in the lower part of his kingdom; and that when he did so, he made use of Glashgar and its rocks for his stair, coming down its granite scale in the morning, and again, when he had ended his visit, going up in the evening by the same steps. Then high and fast would his heart beat at the thought that some day he might come upon his path just when he had passed, see the heather lifting its head from the trail of his garment, or more slowly out of the prints left by his feet, as he walked up the stairs of heaven, going back to his Father. Sometimes, when a sheep stopped feeding and looked up suddenly, he would fancy that Jesus had laid his hand on its head, and was now telling it that it must not mind being killed; for he had been killed, and it was all right. — George MacDonald

I caution writers all the time to slow down and pay more attention to the work in front of them than to the end result. I don't think you write one book and get anywhere. I think you write five books and then maybe you are finally on the right path. — Sue Grafton

Your life is your path.
It's what's right in front of you.
You can't walk down anyone else's path.
The task is to live your own and
to not try to follow someone else's path
just because you think it looks better. — Jose N. Harris

Frank thought. Each time he became someone else's spy it got easier. The ideological virgin usually finds his first time an excruciating experience, just as an amateur hiker, used to the straight-and-narrow freeway of nine-to-five reliability, looks askance at the boulder-strewn path of mercenary betrayal, winding on up into the clouds and down into terrible moraines. But after the first time, the pain and intimacy and guilt becomes a habit subject to check listed procedures; and to the professional, the politically promiscuous soul, all that matters is the craft itself, the right skitter and stab and swing of the hips, so that in the end you can laugh at the inevitability of your own violent death. Frank was now almost at that stage. — William T. Vollmann

It wasn't that Harry had gone down the wrong path, it wasn't that the road to sanity lay somewhere outside of science. But reading science papers hadn't been enough. All the cognitive psychology papers about known bugs in the human brain and so on had helped, but they hadn't been sufficient. He'd failed to reach what Harry was starting to realise was a shockingly high standard of being so incredibly, unbelievably rational that you actually started to get things right,as opposed to having a handy language in which to describe afterwards everything you'd just done wrong. Harry could look back now and apply ideas like 'motivated cognition' to see where he'd gone astray over the last year. That counted for something, when it came to being saner in the future. That was better than having no idea what he'd done wrong. But that wasn't yet being the person who could pass through Time's narrow keyhole, the adult form whose possibility Dumbledore had been instructed by seers to create. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I say we cut a path right down the fucking middle and kill anything that moves," I growled.
Ristan raised a brow and whistled. "Damn , Flower. That almost made me hard. Shock me with that blood thirsty little inner vixen. — Amelia Hutchins

Surrendering to change is always a leap of faith. For something new to enter your life, you have to let go of the past and join your immediate experience right now. The key is less in what you do than how connected you are in yourself as you do it. In life there is no predetermined path you should or have to walk; you lay down the path by how you take each step. This is one of life's greatest truths. — Richard Moss

You believe in heaven, Mister Stoner?'
'More than I believe in here, aye.'
She smoothed a corner of the folded blanket. 'Out here in the quiet heaven seems near, nearer than the inn where it's all bustle and noise.'
'You can hear the Almighty speak in the silences, you mean. See His hand most clear. I believe so too, but you got to want to see Him. hear Him.' He looked toward the hatchet throwers. 'Not turn a blind eye and ride right over what He's put in your path, nor try to outrun Him. Mebbe it's up to you and me to slow some folks down so they get quiet enough to hear Him. — Laura Frantz

"You're thinking too much, as usual," I said.
A dismissive snort as he got to his feet. He tried running again, and didn't fall, but did more lurching than loping, his legs threatening to tangle at every step.
"Apparently this could take a while, so how about you practice and I'll head back to the house - "
He darted past me and veered to block my path.
I smiled. "I knew that'd work. So as I right? It's better when you act, not think?"
A sigh whistled out of his nostrils, condensation hanging in the frigid air.
"You hate that, don't you? We should keep a scorecard, see who's right more often: me or you."
He rolled his eyes.
"Not a chance, huh? You'd never live it down if I beat you. But I am right this time. Your body knows how to move as a wolf. You just need to shut your brain off and let your muscles do their thing." — Kelley Armstrong

Know the feelin, when you feelin like a villain,
You be havin good thoughts but the evils be revealin'.
And the stresses of life can take you off the right path,
Jealousy and envy tends to infiltrate your staff ...
We gotta hold it down so we can move on past
All adversities, so we can get through fast. — Q-Tip

What matters is that my daughter is surrounded by love. I believe in the right to go down the path that feels best for you. — Monica Cruz

Your desire for consistency itself will set you on the right path. As long as you keep going up, never mind if you come down once or twice. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Imagine you are walking down a leafy path ... The sun is receding, and you are walking alone, caressed by the breezy light of the late afternoon. Then suddenly, you feel a large drop on your right arm. Is it raining? You look up. The sky is still deceptively sunny ... seconds later another drop. Then, with the sun still perched in the sky, you are drenched in a shower of rain. This is how memories invade me, abruptly and unexpectedly ... — Azar Nafisi

When your footsteps and thoughts carry you down the same path your heart and soul are directing you, you will know without a doubt that you are headed in the right direction. — Molly Friedenfeld

If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man's soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left. — Quentin Crisp

Gut reaction is not always God's path. What feels right at the moment has nearly led me down some wrong avenues. — Cindy McCormick Martinusen

Those who cannot conquer must bend the knee. They must find strength, or serve those of us who have. You are my generals. I will send you out: my hunting dogs, my wolves with iron teeth. When a city closes its gates in fear, you will destroy it. When they make roads and walls, you will cut them, pull down the stones. When a man raises a sword or bow against your men, you will hang him from a tree. Keep Karakorum in your minds as you go. This white city is the heart of the nation, but you are the right arm, the burning brand. Find me new lands, gentlemen. Cut a new path. Let their women weep a sea of tears and I will drink it all. — Conn Iggulden

If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress. — Barack Obama

Personally, I don't think it right to make up things about real people - although I suppose there's an argument for saying that once you're dead you're not real any more. But then we have to define what we mean by real and none of us wants to go down that tortuous path because we all know where it leads (madness or a first-class honours, or both). — Kate Atkinson

Some people are lucky enough to stumble across the right path straight away; most of us only discover what the right one is by going down the wrong one first. — Toby Young

Logic doesn't always lead us down the right path. Logic tells us not to take chances. Not to chase after that risk. To ignore the what ifs. I guess part of growing up is deciding when to listen to your head...and when to listen to your heart. — Jenny B. Jones

When the sun sets at night and you lay your head down on your pillow, you must believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that your business will be successful. More than anyone, you, the business owner, should have incredible faith that you will experience prosperity. This journey is not about following a popular path that leads to fame and fortune, instead, it is about creating an extension of God's kingdom right here on earth. As beacons of light and salt of the earth, Christians should provide an example of what true victory means to the rest of the world. — V.L. Thompson

I'm helped by a gentle notion from Buddhist psychology, that there are "near enemies" to every great virtue - reactions that come from a place of care in us, and which feel right and good, but which subtly take us down an ineffectual path. Sorrow is a near enemy to compassion and to love. It is borne of sensitivity and feels like empathy. But it can paralyze and turn us back inside with a sense that we can't possibly make a difference. The wise Buddhist anthropologist and teacher Roshi Joan Halifax calls this a "pathological empathy" of our age. In the face of magnitudes of pain in the world that come to us in pictures immediate and raw, many of us care too much and see no evident place for our care to go. But compassion goes about finding the work that can be done. Love can't help but stay present — Krista Tippett

The holy grail is right here in this gem of a book. Tosha Silver's wisdom goes down as easy as a mint milkshake and leaves you feeling so free you'll want to do cartwheels on the beach. But don't be fooled by the simplicity of this message. Look no further for an easeful path to enlightenment infused with rapture and hope, which comes as much needed medicine for the soul. — Lissa Rankin

When Jesus invites you to follow Him, his invitation comes to you right where you are. He doesn't want you to wait until tomorrow in hopes that you will finally be heading down the right path; He wants you to say yes today and he will lead you out of where you are now. — Kyle Idleman

Again and again, we keep returning to this question: what does the Bible say? If it forbids women from taking the office of pastor or elder (as I have argued extensively elsewhere),4 then we have no right to say this is a "unique time" when we can disobey what God's Word says. Therefore those who argue that women should have all ministry roles open to them because this is a "unique time" in history are taking the church another step down the path toward liberalism. — Wayne A. Grudem

The girl's arms jutted out at awkward angles, not quite hands on the hips belligerent but not relaxed either, as if they weren't all the way under the girl's control. "I came to find you."
"I didn't know. If I'd known ... "
"It doesn't matter now." The girl's attention was unwavering. "This is where you are."
"It is at that."
The girl looked sad. Her soil-dark eyes were clouded over by tears she hadn't been able to shed. "I came here to find you."
"I couldn't have known." Maylene reached out and plucked a leaf from the girl's hair.
"Doesn't matter." She lifted a dirty hand, fingernails flashing chipped red polish, but she didn't seem to know what to do with her outstretched fingers. Little girl fears warred with teenage bravado. Bravado won. "I'm here now."
"All right, then." Maylene walked down the path toward one of the gates. She pulled the key from her handbag, twisted it in the lock, and pushed open the gate. — Melissa Marr

I had finally become aware of how much I was capable of, how little I had to lose, and how deep into Douglas's soft sand I had sunk. Magellan's letters, which Douglas had recited, had become part of my being. It was as if I was right there with Magellan, following every curve of his pen as he wrote down his words to his beloved ones confiding his secret. I had become the ink, and the tip was tattooing my path. I was going to follow his dream, but still, I wished I knew why. — Celma Ribeiro

I live completely without regret. Sure there are plenty of things that someone could second guess, but I see the path of life like driving down the road without a map. The thing is, some dark alleys open up in majestic places, and some bright and shiny highways to the top end in cliffs to the bottom. You never know until you get there. What I know for sure is that if many years ago I actually had a map to the path of life, the destination that I would have chosen is right here, with this family, in this place, and with these smiles. That makes anything that could have been regretful, the best decision in the world. — Michael A. Wood Jr.