Grasping Best Quotes & Sayings

Clearly, Channing had not taught her young charges that the Declaration and Constitution, while two of the noblest documents in the history of humankind, were also, naturally, products of their time that reflected the limitations of their time (which, needless to say, is why the Constitution has been amended so many times since its ratification); no, she had taught them to revile the founding fathers - men whose vision, courage, and sacrifice made possible the freedom these students have known (and taken for granted) all their lives. These young women were incapable of grasping that the very criteria by which they presumed to judge the author of the Declaration and Constitution would not be available to them if not for those men's efforts. To say this, of course, is not to blame these students for their ignorance, but to underscore just how profoundly ill-served they are by courses of this sort. — Bruce Bawer

You told me trees could speak
and the only reason one heard
silence in the forest
was that they had all been born knowing different languages.

That night I went into the forest
to bury dictionaries under roots,
so many books in so many tongues
as to insure speech.

and now this very moment,
the forest seems alive
with whispers and murmurs and rumblings of sound
wind-rushed into my ears.

I do not speak any language
that crosses the silence around me
but how soothing to know
that the yearning and grasping embodied
in trees' convoluted and startling shapes
is finally being fulfilled
in their wind shouts to each other.

Yet we who both speak English
and have since we were born
are moving ever farther apart
even as branch tips touch. — Carol Goodman

Phil Needle stood in the parking lot, suddenly grasping that this was so, that nothing is lost in a world utterly mapped, that nothing is rogue with everything cross-pollinated, as the shouts on the beach lured him across the street to the sand. — Daniel Handler

Particularly at those moments when we have the sorest need of grasping the sharp realities of life do the threads of thought snap off in the brain. — Victor Hugo

Most people never realize that 80% of the work is done before you step in a room. That's why they spend their entire lives grasping for magical tactics instead of changing their entire mindset. — Ramit Sethi

It is impossible to grasp the fullness of God without grasping the fullness of the love of Christ. — Lysa TerKeurst

All right-wing antigovernment rage in America bears a racial component, because liberalism is understood, consciously or unconsciously, as the ideology that steals from hard-working, taxpaying whites and gives the spoils to indolent, grasping blacks. — Rick Perlstein

[About sex]: If we're not intentional about pursuing God's best for our marriages, and grasping the tremendous role intimacy plays in that relationship, what was intended to be deeply enjoyed - a passionate, life-giving love affair... alight with laughter, fiercely protected, and drenched in freedom - becomes a stuffy, awkward thing to be endured. — Joy McMillan

In many ways marine biology is at a pivotal moment, when we are discovering the richness of the ocean at the very time we are grasping how we've managed to deplete it over the last few centuries. Preserving what's left, as well as rebuilding parts of it to a semblance of what it used to be, requires us to relinquish some of the power we have exercised in the past. It requires living with sharks. — Juliet Eilperin

That night marks my life's dark center, the moment when growing up ended and the long downward slope toward death began. The wonder to me now is that I thought myself worth saving ... I reached out and clung for life with my good left hand like a claw, grasping at moving legs to raise myself from the dirt. Desperate to save myself in a river of people saving themselves. And if they chanced to look down and see me struggling underneath them, they saw that even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious. That is what it means to be a beast in the kingdom. — Barbara Kingsolver

Lacking the direct test of success or failure, the voter tends to turn, not to those politicians whose measures have the best chance of success, but to those with the ability to 'sell' their propaganda. Without grasping logical chains of deduction, the average voter will never be able to discover the error that the ruler makes. — Murray Rothbard

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith. — Soren Kierkegaard

I think that the best kind of change, is the change that comes from the inside and begins it's way out until it emerges on the outside; a change that is born underneath then continues and spreads until it has reached the surface. That's a true change. A powerful change. And I have found that while we are emerging, changing into something glorious; it is actually us becoming who we really are. A water lily is born underneath the water, inside the soil at the bottom of the river or lake. And the water lily has always been a water lily for that whole time that it was sprouting out of the wet soil, reaching up through the dark water towards the sunlight, stretching and grasping for the surface; where it then buds and blooms on the outside in the sunshine. It doesn't bud and bloom on the surface and then try to reach down below into the soil. — C. JoyBell C.

Simplicity brings back the joys of Paradise. Not that we have pure pleasure without a moment's suffering, but when we are surrendered to God, we are not grasping for pleasure, and even our troubles are received with thanksgiving. This inner harmony, and this deliverance from fear and the tormenting desires of self, create a satisfaction in the soul which is above all the intoxicating joys of this world put together. — Francois Fenelon

No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future. — Ludwig Von Mises

I'd looked around my room at the ribbons and sashes and rosettes hanging from the walls, at the photos of my ponies clearing the highest fences with me crouched in the saddle, a look of utter determination on my face. I'd made myself look hard at the pictures, at my legs swinging backwards over the fences, at my body lying low over my pony's neck, my hands grasping at the reins as I turned them in mid-air. At the way that Teddy's eyes were bulging as I pulled him around a tight turn, at the way the veins popped out on Buck's lathered neck, at Springbok's open mouth, dripping with foam.
I'd looked hard at them all, and I hadn't liked what I'd seen. — Kate Lattey

Instead of trying to freeze the present moment and hang on to it, we need to remember that life is a process of constantly letting go. The ego wants dependable rituals and people who stay the same. But to be free means that we enjoy this touch, this kiss, this sunrise, and then let it go. This is sometimes described as not letting the ground under your feet get too solid, not grasping for security or predictability. — Charlotte Kasl

You saved us in the nick of time."
"Have I saved you?" asked the Hemulen in surprise. "I didn't mean to. I was looking for the caterpillars that were making such a noise down there." (Hemulens are generally a bit slow in grasping an idea, but they are very pleasant if you don't annoy them.) — Tove Jansson

I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a. subjective side won't get us very far. — Niels Bohr

The wild hetman stood like a statue for a space, dimly grasping something of the cosmic tragedy of the fitful ephemera called mankind and the hooded shapes of darkness which prey upon it. — Robert E. Howard

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. — Charles Dickens

Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as Garfield Gets Spayed, and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you how to be excellent: In Search of Excellence, Finding Excellence, Grasping Hold of Excellence, Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It, etc. — Dave Barry

Worrying does not accomplish anything. Even if you worry twenty times more, it will not change the situation of the world. In fact, your anxiety will only make things worse. Even though things are not as we would like, we can still be content, knowing we are trying our best and will continue to do so. If we don't know how to breathe, smile,and live every moment of our life deeply, we will never be able to help anyone. I am happy in the present moment. I do not ask for anything else. I do not expect any additional happiness or conditions that will bring about more happiness. The most important practice is aimlessness, not running after things, not grasping. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The American Colossus was fiercely intent on appropriating and exploiting the riches of all continents - grasping with both hands, reaping where he had not sown, wasting what he thought would last forever. New railroads were opening new territory. The exploiters were pushing farther and farther into the wilderness. The man who could get his hands on the biggest slice of natural resources was the best citizen. Wealth and virtue were supposed to trot in double harness. — Gifford Pinchot

Imagine a pantomime directed by Quentin Tarantino, where villains are booed, heroes are blood-stained, the body-count is high, the entertainment pulsating, the language filthy and the audience screamed behind you' as tackles hurtled in like boulders crashing down a mountain-side. Such was the epic drama that gripped the Emirates yesterday. A derby crammed with sound, fury and significance ended with everyone grasping for breath, with Arsenal regaining the high ground of the Premier League ... This was the Premier League at its raw, mistake-filled, mesmerising best. Utterly compelling. — Henry Winter

Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping, and away from objects in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is. This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate 'me,' and in turn the sense of 'me' strengthens itself this way. — Adyashanti

Do you ride?" That sounded sort of dirty, and the way he looked at me felt sort of dirty, too. No one ever looked at me like that.
"Why 'Ghost'?" I asked.
Grasping the top of the car door, he leaned over it and spoke in a dramatic, foreboding voice. "Because she's so fast she disappears down the streets at night."
"That sounds dangerous."
His dimple appeared. "The best things in life are. — Jenn Bennett

They're a slow-moving lot, reporters. Slothlike. Weighed down by all that righteous indignation about the freedom of the press and the public's right to know, not to mention the liquid lunches they see as their constant due. Go out now and you're playing right into their grasping, ink-stained hands." He cocked an ear to the door. "I'm doing my best to protect your reputation here. It wouldn't do to have a serving wench caught in a compromising position with the lord of the manor."
"You don't have the cleavage to make a good serving wench, Eli. — Kate Meader

It is always now. This might sound trite, but it is the truth. It's not quite true as a matter of neurology, because our minds are built upon layers of inputs whose timing we know must be different.11 But it is true as a matter of conscious experience. The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world. But we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth - overlooking it, fleeing it, repudiating it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to avoid being happy while struggling to become happy, fulfilling one desire after the next, banishing our fears, grasping at pleasure, recoiling from pain - and thinking, interminably, about how best to keep the whole works up and running. — Sam Harris

Don't live life as a spectator. Always examine life: Espouse new ideas, long for
new things, constantly discovering new interests, escaping from boring
routines. Engage life with enthusiasm; grasping life aggressively and squeezing
from it every drop of excitement, satisfaction, and joy. The key to unleashing life's potential is attitude. The person who approaches
life with a child-like wonder is best prepared to defy the limitations of time, is
more "alive," more of a participant in life than the person who remains a
spectator. — Felix Baumgartner

Being lost without grasping the rather obvious fact that we are lost is by far the best guarantee we have that we're going to stay lost. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

First - if you are in love - that's a good thing - that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.
Second - There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you - of kindness and consideration and respect - not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had. — John Steinbeck

To say that the vote fraud conspiracy theorists are tilting at windmills is an understatement. They're using a legitimate public process to pursue an agenda that is, at best, grasping at straws and, at worse, partisan. — George Voinovich

Give up grasping and see things as they are. THE SEVENTH DALAI LAMA — Lama Surya Das

I started grasping at moments that weren't misery. Slowly, slowly, I found them. — Kate Milford

You let go of my hand
to hold on to my heart
Distance grasps us tight
now that we are apart — Munia Khan

We perceive and interpret the outer world through a set of incredibly fine internal receptors. But we are incapable, by ourselves, of grasping or tweezing out any permanent, sharable figment of it. Practically speaking, we ritually verify what is there, and are disposed to call it reality. But, with photographs, we have concrete proof that we have not been hallucinating all our lives. — Max Kozloff

Many troubled Midwestern towns are grasping for ways to fend off decline and, in some cases, extinction. — Stephen Kinzer

For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics. — Brian Greene

From a memory deep inside her, so faint it only held sounds and slips of color, a tiny, three-year-old Azalea wailed, "Papa."
"Papa," said Azalea to the lifeless form of the King. The word was so forgein, it choked her throat. "Papa ... you can't leave us, Papa ... It would be very ... out of order-"
Bramble knelt opposite her, grasping the King's bandaged hand.
"She's-she's right, Papa," Bramble stuttered. "We have ... rules ... "
Clover fell to her knees and pressed her handkerchief to his chest. Blood soaked through.
"Papa," she whispered.
The girls knelt around the King, their skirts spead out like forlorn blossoms, swallowing , and whispering one word.
"Papa."
"Papa."
"Papa. — Heather Dixon

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. — Aesop

He drank life from these breasts now dry, and he took his first steps in this garden, grasping these fingers that are now like trembling reeds. — Kahlil Gibran

Aryans?" I asked, thinking I must have heard the word incorrectly.
Christian and Allie nodded.
"Aryans as in white supremacist, those sorts of Aryans?"
"Yes," Christian said.
"Neo-Nazis?" My mind was having a hard time grasping the idea of a power-hungry vampire leading an army of Hitler's Youth. "Skinheads and their ilk?"
"Hasi, what is it you find so unbelievable?" Adrian asked, a smile in his voice.
"Oh, I don't know. I guess I just expected that any army Saer raised would be ... you know ... the evil undead." Everyone just looked at me. "Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Neo-Nazis are more or less the evil undead. Right. So we have Saer about to attack at any moment with a bunch of goose-stepping Nazis. Great. Anyone here do a really good Winston Churchill impression? — Katie MacAlister

Then it's a matter of troubleshooting, grasping the bull by the horns, seizing the nettle, coping and hoping, damning torpedoes and trying any old thing. — Kim Stanley Robinson

We believed in another world, but we admitted the feebleness of our senses. Then came 'enlightenment,' and made everything so very clear and enlightened, that we can see nothing for excess of light, and go banging our noses against the first tree we come to in the wood. We insist, now-a-days, on grasping the other world with stretched-out arms of flesh and bone. — E.T.A. Hoffmann

Nature gives all, without reservation, and loses nothing; man or woman, grasping all, loses everything. — James Allen

Some people believe that mirror neurons are also central to our ability to empathize with others and may even account for the emergence of gestural communication and spoken language. What we do know is that certain neurons increase their firing rate when we perform object-oriented actions with our hands (grasping, manipulating) and communicative or ingestive actions with our mouths. These neurons also fire, albeit less rapidly, whenever we witness the same actions performed by other people. Research — Sam Harris

all monkeys playing with a microwave. Push a button, a light comes on inside, so it's a light. Push a different button and stick your hand inside, it burns you, so it's a weapon. Learn to open and close the door, it's a place to hide things. Never grasping what it actually did, and maybe not even having the framework necessary to figure it out. No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito. So — James S.A. Corey

It is true that the grasping of truth is not possible without empirical basis. However, the deeper we penetrate and the more extensive and embracing our theories become the less empirical knowledge is needed to determine those theories. — Albert Einstein

Radical simply means grasping things at the root. — Angela Y. Davis

There's nothing on earth like the feel of someone who loves you grasping your hand in the dark when you're lost and afraid — Mia Sheridan

In response, Tom's cock grazed Jon's bare stomach and left behind a slick streak. Jon grinned and sat back on his own heels, grasping his cock in one hand to rub it against the head of Tom's. The first mate let out another low sound, closing his eyes as he thrust his hips further forward. Jon obliged him for a moment; taking the wide head in one hand, he thumbed along the underside, teasing Tom as he stroked his own cock. They'd been at this for the better part of an hour. — Bey Deckard

Kasen lifted one of the bottles and read the label. "This stuff can kill you." "Yeah, but obviously not quick enough." He went to take another swig. Nykyrian jerked it out of his hand. "Hey!" He pulled it away from his grasping hand. "Don't even make that noise at me." Syn curled his lip. "You and Vik. You're both traitors. You might as well move in with Shahara, too." Vik had gone to live with her and refused to come back until Syn "got over himself". Little wormy betraying mecha bastard. Kasen shook her head. "I think this is the first time I've ever seen you drink from a bottle." Nykyrian snorted. "Lucky you. I've seen him tap a keg and funnel it."
- Kasen, Syn, & Nykyrian — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The Mad Affliction's arm shot out of the cage, grasping for me. I jumped back. His long, ragged talons swiped the air in front of me.

"Free me!" the Mad Affliction cried. He grasped for Bethany, but she backed away, too. "Free me and know the living nightmare that is unending madness!"

"You're not doing yourself any favors," I told him. — Nicholas Kaufmann

But can I say, now that she is dead, long dead that I only half believed in her. I wanted, I needed her to revolt. I know, revolutions take vast energy like volcanic eruptions. I know. And the sick must husband their resources even as they are resourceful for their husbands. But I couldn't help wanting for her, couldn't help the feeling that she'd given in, that she had measured out with coffee spoons what it was that she might ask of life and having found it lacking, tragically, gapingly lacking, had decided none-the-less to accept her modest share. I wanted her ignoble, irresponsible, unreasonable, petty, grasping, fucking greedy for the lot of it, jostling and spitting and clawing for every grain of life. — Claire Messud

Pragmatically, aesthetic value can be recognized or experienced, but it cannot be conveyed to those who are incapable of grasping its sensations and perceptions. To quarrel on its behalf is always a blunder. — Harold Bloom

There is the image of the man who imagines himself to be a prisoner in a cell. He stands at one end of this small, dark, barren room, on his toes, with arms stretched upward, hands grasping for support onto a small, barred window, the room's only apparent source of light. If he holds on tight, straining toward the window, turning his head just so, he can see a bit of bright sunlight barely visible between the uppermost bars. This light is his only hope. He will not risk losing it. And so he continues to staring toward that bit of light, holding tightly to the bars. So committed is his effort not to lose sight of that glimmer of life-giving light, that it never occurs to him to let go and explore the darkness of the rest of the cell. So it is that he never discovers that the door at the other end of the cell is open, that he is free. He has always been free to walk out into the brightness of the day, if only he would let go. (192) — Sheldon B. Kopp

The political is replacing the metaphysical as the characteristic mode of grasping reality. — Harvey Cox