How One Loses Quotes & Sayings

I wonder of what you must daily endure in America, having no government to protect you, no one to tell you what to do. Is it true you're given no ration card, that you must find food for yourself? Is it true that you labor for no higher purpose than paper money? What is California, this place you come from? I have never seen a picture. What plays over the American loudspeakers, when is your curfew, what is taught at your child-rearing collectives? Where does a woman go with her children on Sunday afternoons, and if a woman loses her husband, how does she know the government will assign her a good replacement? With whom would she curry favor to ensure her children got the best Youth Troop leader? — Adam Johnson

You will come across obstacles in life
fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure. You will learn that this reaction determines how successful we will be in overcoming
or possibly thriving because of
them. Where one person sees a crisis, another can see opportunity. Where one is blinded by success, another sees reality with ruthless objectivity. Where one loses control of emotions, another can remain calm. — Ryan Holiday

When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be. — Oscar Wilde

Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it.
You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself
to get lost.
Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Maybe some of you already know.
To those people, I can only say: I'm sorry. — Lauren Oliver

It is the business of the very few to be independent; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it, even with the best right, but without being OBLIGED to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life in itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it, nor sympathize with it. And he cannot any longer go back! He cannot even go back again to the sympathy of men! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Shame is internalized when one is abandoned. Abandonment is the precise term to describe how one loses one's authentic self and ceases to exist psychologically. — John Bradshaw

Since dugpas wished to get you out of here, where you were safe, how
else should they expel you than by causing you to expel yourselves by
violence? When fools make war they expend their resources squandering
money and life and food until the victor loses with the vanquished,
and another, who is wiser, overwhelms them both. No dugpa would do
such foolishness. He sacrifices little dugpas, even as the governments
send soldiers to be slain, because there are always plenty who will
fill the lower ranks. But one little sleepy, stupid, belly-loving
dugpa is as useful to him as an army that a government flatters and
sends to its death; because he wages war by causing his enemy to
make mistakes, and he wins not by what he himself does, but through
the self-destroying acts of whomsoever he would conquer. — Talbot Mundy

That is where young people so often and so grievously go wrong: that they (whose nature it is to have no patience) throw themselves at each other when love comes over them, scatter themselves abroad, just as they are in all their untidiness, disorder and confusion ... : But what is to be done then? How is life to act upon this heap of half crushed matter which they call their communion and which they would dearly like to style their happiness, if that were possible, and their future? So each one loses himself for the other's sake, and — Rainer Maria Rilke

Ky can play this game. He can play all of their games, including the one in front of him that he just lost. He knows exactly how to play, and that's why he loses every time. — Ally Condie

I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself. — Oscar Wilde

The bow is life: the source of all energy. The arrow will leave one day. The target is a long way off. But the bow will stay with you, and you must know how to look after it. It requires periods of inaction - a bow that is always armed and braced loses its strength. Therefore, allow it to rest, to recover its firmness; then, when you draw the bow-string, the bow will be content, with all its strength intact. — Paulo Coelho

Where one person sees a crisis, another can see opportunity. Where one is blinded by success, another sees reality with ruthless objectivity. Where one loses control of emotions, another can remain calm. Desperation, despair, fear, powerlessness - these reactions are functions of our perceptions. You must realize: Nothing makes us feel this way; we choose to give in to such feelings. Or, like Rockefeller, choose not to. And it is precisely at this divergence - between how Rockefeller perceived his environment and how the rest of the world typically does - that his nearly incomprehensible success was born. — Ryan Holiday

That's how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage enough for both. — Jose Saramago

Since I have never one a debate let me tell you how not to lose one. — Richard M. Nixon

When children have shame-based parents, they identify with them. This is the first step in the child's internalizing shame because the children carry their parent's shame. ABANDONMENT: THE LEGACY OF BROKEN MUTUALITY Shame is internalized when one is abandoned. Abandonment is the precise term to describe how one loses one's authentic self and ceases to exist psychologically. Children cannot know who they are without reflective mirrors. Mirroring is done by one's primary caregivers and is crucial in the first years of life. Abandonment includes the loss of mirroring. Parents who are shut down emotionally (all shame-based parents) cannot mirror and affirm their children's emotions. — John Bradshaw

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone. — Coco Chanel

Even after all our frailties and failures, Christ Jesus can hardly wait to acknowledge us before the very angels of God. If He is that unashamed of us in all our imperfections, how can we be ashamed of Him, our Redeemer and Deliverer? So don't duck your head in shame under the coffee table. At one time or another, all of us have faced the temptation to shrink away from openly acknowledging Christ. But I've learned one of the best ways to get over our attacks of shame: do it over and over until it loses its intimidation. The more we practice, the easier it gets! — Beth Moore

We risk great peril if we kill off this spirit of adventure, for we cannot predict how and in what seemingly unrelated fields it will manifest itself. A nation that loses its forward thrust is in danger, and one of the most effective ways to retain that thrust is to keep exploring possibilities. The sense of exploration is intimately bound up with human resolve, and for a nation to believe that it is still committed to a forward motion is to ensure its continuance. — James A. Michener

How do you like to be remembered? Me, I would like to be remembered like an elusive good book that does not appear lovable to everyone, gets underrated at times, yet never loses its rarity to inspire, whenever one comes down to the verge of despair, and that functions like ember, forgotten, but when the weather goes cold, one suddenly remembers to reignite it for warmth and comfort. — Aishah Madadiy

Have you heard about the demotion of the planet Pluto? I, for one, am incensed. How do you go your whole life being a planet and then, suddenly, you're not a planet anymore. Correction: dwarf planet. What does that even mean? I see an idiom taking shape. Five, ten years from now, when someone gets dissed or demoted or loses his or her job, people will say, "He was plutoed." "Are you plutoing me?" someone will say when witnessing a snub. "That was some pluto, wasn't it?" Hmm, I'm not sure about the syntax of the last one, but I think you get the gist. — Lisa Lutz

How frightful a thing it is for the preacher when he becomes accustomed to his work, when his sense of wonder departs, when he gets used to the unusual, when he loses his solemn fear in the presence of the High and Holy One; when, to put it bluntly, he gets a little bored with God and heavenly things. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

There are words like 'orphan', 'widow' and 'widower' in all languages. But there is no word in any language to describe a parent who loses a child. How does one describe the pain of 'ultimate bereavement'! (Page 50) — Neena Verma

In this world, man is a target of death, an easy prey to calamities, here every morsel and every draught is liable to choke one, here one never receives a favour until he loses another instead, here every additional day in one's life is a day reduced from the total span of his existence, when death is the natural outcome of life, how can we expect immortality. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landscape, an overwhelming hallucination can make one feel that oneself, as an individual human being, is slowly being unraveled. The surrounding space is so vast that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a balanced grip on one's own being. The mind swells out to fill the entire landscape, becoming so diffuse in the process that one loses the ability to keep it fastened to the physical self. The sun would rise from the eastern horizon, and cut it's way across the empty sky, and sink below the western horizon. This was the only perceptible change in our surroundings. And in the movement of the sun, I felt something I hardly know how to name: some huge, cosmic love. — Haruki Murakami

In a family, no matter how dysfunctional she is, when one member loses, when one becomes smaller, all lose, all end up becoming smaller. — Angelos Michalopoulos

And how can we lose this maddening self, lose it entirely? Love? Yes, but as old Cephalus once heard Sophocles say, the least of us know that love is a cruel and terrible master. One loses oneself for the sake of the other, but in doing so becomes enslaved and miserable to the most capricious of all the gods. — Donna Tartt

I think about how truly interesting and odd it is that when a woman marries, traditionally she loses her name, becoming absorbed by the husband's family name - she is in effect lost, evaporated from all records under her maiden name. I finally understand the anger behind feminism - the idea that as a woman you are property to be conveyed between your father and your husband, but never an individual who exists independently. And on the flip side, it is also one of the few ways one can legitimately get lost - no one questions it. — A.M. Homes

We have deemed all these words necessary in order to explain that we have been traveling more slowly than was predicted, concision is not a definitive virtue, on occasion one loses out by talking too much, it is true, but how much has also been gained by saying more than was strictly necessary. — Jose Saramago

I learned that the cells in our body are replaced every seven years, which means that one day, I'll have a body full of cells that were never sick. sbut it also means that the parts of me that knee and loved Sadie will disappear. I'll still remember loving her, but it'll be a different me who loved her. And maybe that is how we move on. We grow new cells to replace the grieving ones, diluting our pain until it loses potency. — Robyn Schneider

when a community loses its memory, its members no longer know one another. How can they know one another if they have forgotten or have never learned one another's stories? If they do not know one another's stories, how can they know whether or not to trust one another? People who do not trust one another do not help each other, and moreover they fear one another. And this is our predicament now. Because of a general distrust and suspicion, we not only lose one another's help and companionship, but we are all now living in jeopardy of being sued. — Wendell Berry

How do you conduct an intimate relationship where no one ever loses it? Where no one ever lashes out, where no one ever smacks anyone in the mouth? — Jo Brand