Grand Narrative Quotes & Sayings

You, too, were supposed to be a one-night stand. A quick fix. A conquest. A ten-line poem in my grand anthology of lovers.
But you altered the narrative, you marked your territory on my timeline o that as I look back, I find I can neatly divide my more recent past into two unequal halves: before you and after. — Rosalyn D'Mello

What I wanted was for them to have a grand, sweeping narrative that they deserved, the kind of American history that belongs to the Wright Brothers and the astronauts, to Alexander Hamilton and Martin Luther King Jr. Not told as a separate history, but as part of the story we all know. Not at the margins, but at the very center, the protagonists of the drama. And not just because they are black, or because they are women, but because they are part of the American epic. — Margot Lee Shetterly

His name has to be Wrayson. Say it slow. Ray-sin. Rays-in. It's a double meaning
Gil Wrayson is undergoing a transformation. And he has to let the rays of sunlight in
those rays of sunlight coming in the form of Tiny's songs
in order to become his true self
no longer a plum, but a sun-soaked raisin. Don't you see? — John Green

We fear our highest possibility. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments. — Abraham Maslow

I'd once heard that we are nothing but our stories. Forget the blood and bones and genes and cells. They're not what we are. We are, rather, our stories. We are an accumulation of experiences that we have fashioned into our own grand, sweeping narrative. — Ken Ilgunas

Power is the ability to coerce others to do what they would not otherwise do. — Michael Bunker

There is no plan. There is no actual grand narrative. Think about what may happen later, but live, learn, and act in the now. Look into the dark corners that narratives want to forget and that make you uncomfortable. Don't ignore the truth just because it doesn't agree with the world you want, because it's the world you're going to get. — Vinay Gupta

I am not given to making sense out of life - or coming up with some grand narrative on it - other than to measure it by what you think you want to do in life. As for me, I have done what I had wanted to, to the best of my ability. I am satisfied. — Lee Kuan Yew

The world around you is not equipped to provide the help you need to make it through this often treacherous journey. — Thomas S. Monson

While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone. — Colm Toibin

Winners lose more often than losers lose. — William Cranch Bond

Some receive Christ in terms of the forgiveness of sin and the hope of heaven, yet know little of His fullness and the wealth that is to be found in Him. — Andrew Murray

And as I watch him disappear around the corner, i can't help but wonder if this is the exact moment where i officially lost everything. — Mandy Hubbard

History is a yarn. And can I deny that what I wanted all along was not some golden nugget that history would at last yield up, but History itself: the Grand Narrative, the filler of vacuums, the dispeller of fears of the dark? — Graham Swift

if the wealthiest fraction of a society feel that they can afford to insulate themselves from the common fate and buy their way out of the common institutions, that is also a form of social isolation. — Anthony B. Atkinson

Jung Chang was the first person to tell a grand historical, political story through a personal narrative. — Aminatta Forna

We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves. — Paul Gauguin

Seek simplicity but distrust it. — Alfred North Whitehead

Freud, one of the grand masters of narrative, knew that the past is not fixed in the way that linear time suggests. We can return. We can pick up what we dropped. We can mend what others broke. We can talk with the dead. — Jeanette Winterson

I was afraid you were going to have sex with that man, and I knew you weren't prepared. I brought you condoms!" The memory of her mom sprawled on the ground with her leg twisted under her, lying amongst the scattered condoms, — Hailey Mansfield

The crucial question, therefore, is not how to accomplish the final reconciliation. That messianic problem ought not to be taken out of God's hands. The only thing worse than the failure of some modern grand narratives of emancipation would have been their success! Merely by trying to accomplish the messianic task, the have already done too much of the work of the antichrist. In demasking anti-messianic projects that offer universal salvation, Lyotard helps us ask the right kind of question, which is not how to achieve the final reconciliation, but what resources we need to live in peace in the absence of the final reconciliation. — Miroslav Volf

There is a period of tapering when we're not in the gym quite as long to try to save our bodies, but leading up to the competition we try to keep things similar to the rest of the year. — Jonathan Horton

Our experience with knowledge, the way we know things, is not that neat. It doesn't fit into a grand narrative, the way we've been taught to read. — Richard Misrach

I'm not perfect, either. In the end, it's only God's judgement that matters, and I've learned enough to know that no one can presume to know the will of God. — Nicholas Sparks

Your life will contribute to a grand and wonderful story no matter what you do. You have been spoken. You are here, existing, choosing, living, shaping the future and carving the past. Your physical matter and your soul exist, not out of necessity, not voluntarily, and not under their own strength. There is absolutely nothing that you or I can do to guarantee that we will continue to exist. You aren't doing anything that makes you be. We aren't the Author. You and I are spoken. We have been called into this art as characters, born into this thread of occurrence tumbling downstream in the long Niagara of loss set in motion by the trouble that faced our first father and first mother. We will contribute to this narrative. But how? — N.D. Wilson

Look into a mirror, make eye contact with yourself, and say "I love me" as many times as possible during the day. — Wayne Dyer

As per usual, trouble comes in several directions at once. — Garth Nix