If Not Yours Quotes & Sayings

Or you can stay frigid," says WIll, his green eyes glinting with mischief. "You know. If you want." Christina throws a roll at him. He catches it and bites it. "Don't be mean to her," she says. "Frigidity is in her nature. Sort of like being a know-it-all is in yours." "I am not frigid!" I exclaim. "Don't worry about it," says Will. It's endearing. Look you're all red. — Veronica Roth

I'm not threatening to kill myself. But you need to know this about me because - if you want to be my mate - I won't be like Leo. I won't let you sleep around with anyone else. I won't be forced either. I've had enough. If that makes me a dog in the manger, so be it. But if I am yours, then you damned well are going to be mine. - Anna to Charles — Patricia Briggs

Then you believe I care more for my own feelings than yours, Cathy?" he said. "No, it was not because I disliked Mr. Healthcliff, but because Mr. Healthcliff dislikes me and is a most diabolical man, delighting to wrong and ruin those he hates, if they give him the slightest opportunity. I knew that you could not keep up an acquaintance with your cousin without being brought into contact with him; and I knew he would detest you, on my account; so for your own good, and nothing else, I took precautions that you should not see Linton again. — Emily Bronte

It's not the pain that's inflicted on us by others that destroys us. It's the pain we let inside our hearts that does that. Don't let the human's anger become yours. It can drive you mad if you do. (M'Adoc) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

If you do come to Christ he will appear as a lion, in his glorious power and dominion, to defend you. All those excellencies of his in which he appears as a lion, shall be yours, and shall be employed for you, in your defense, for your safety, and to promote your glory; he will be as a lion to fight against your enemies: he that touches you, or offends you, will provoke his wrath, as he that stirs up a lion. Unless your enemies can conquer this lion, they shall not be able to destroy or hurt you; unless they are stronger than he, they shall not be able to hinder your happiness. Is. 31:4, For thus hath the Lord spoken unto me, like as the lion, and the young lion, roaring on his prey, when a multitude of shepherds is called forth against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them; so shall the Lord of hosts come down to fight for Mount Zion, and for the hill thereof. — Jonathan Edwards

What if you wake up one fine morning only to realize that the life you have been living since the last few days was nothing but a dream of yours?

Would you go back to sleep then?

I wake up each morning only to realize you're not by my side. And if this emptiness is nothing but a nightmare, let me wake up and go back to the time we were together... — Sanhita Baruah

When you're of a different race people distrust you because they are afraid. If you don't give them reason to dislike you, it becomes their problem, not yours. — Elizabeth Haydon

Little things matter far more than big ones. We remember them longer. We can't control the big things. If you think about what's happened in the past, it will be the small moments that come to the forefront, not the big transitions. The big things were just history. The small moments are yours. The books those monks printed are still preserved centuries after they were gone. Little things matter. — Joey W. Hill

Will you be bringing that outspoken maid of yours?'
'Tela? Yes. If I come.'
'She makes me nervous. I can't read her.'
'Nor can I.'
'Well of course not, if I can't.'
'But I trust her.'
Cedas' turn to misstep. He had heels on, to make him as tall as her, and she was in dance slippers. It hurt.
'Not that far,' she reassured him. — Helen Bell

The Talmud, the compilation of discussions of Jewish Law which I have quoted earlier in this book, gives examples of bad prayers, improper prayers, which one should not utter. If a woman is pregnant, neither she nor her husband should pray, "May God grant that this child be a boy" (nor, for that matter, may they pray that it be a girl). The sex of the child is determined at conception, and God cannot be invoked to change it. Again, if a man sees a fire engine racing toward his neighborhood, he should not pray, "Please God, don't let the fire be in my house." Not only is it mean-spirited to pray that someone else's house burn instead of yours, but it is futile. A certain house is already on fire; the most sincere or articulate of prayers will not affect the question of which house it is. — Harold S. Kushner

And that is the secret of this world. If you remove love of dunya from your heart, the dunya is yours for the taking. You can have the dunya because it's in your hand and not in your heart — Hamza Yusuf

With each impact you tell me that my body belongs to you; that I am
yours to use, yours to punish and yours to screw. Your words are almost as
powerful as your hand. They leave me feeling breathless and desperate for
your cock. You are working me into the usual frenzy of slutty desire that
we have both come to love. If I was permitted I would tell you how much I
love you right now and how much I need this. But it's not my words which
are important at the moment. Instead I demonstrate my devotion to you in
my complete submission to your desire. — Felicity Brandon

If you let fear make decisions for you, fear will make good decisions - but only for its own sake, not yours. p. 161 — Bridget Asher

What you see is from outside yourself, and may come, or not, but is beyond your control. But your fear is yours, and yours alone, like your voice, or your fingers, or your memory, and therefore yours to control. If you feel powerless over your fear, you have not yet admitted that it is yours, to do with as you will. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

It's just sex, Blake. Isn't that what you said to me the last time? No emotions. Just sex."

"I'll only end up hurting you," I say to the wall. "Worse than I did before."

He moves from the back of the sofa and comes to stand directly in front of me. His dick is mere inches from my mouth. I have to swallow several times to keep from using my tongue on it. I close my eyes.

"I can't, Seth. If I take you now I'll be rough and I'll end up hurting you in other ways."

"Being rough wasn't a concern of yours before."

"I'm not the same person I was before. — Candi Kay

Die, then!" This alarming counsel split the air. "Die if you must, Mukunda! Never believe that you live by the power of food and not by the power of God! He who has created every form of nourishment, He who has bestowed appetite, will inevitably see that His devotee is maintained. Do not imagine that rice sustains you nor that money or men support you. Could they aid if the Lord withdraws your life breath? They are His instruments merely. Is it by any skill of yours that food digests in your stomach? Use the sword of your discrimination, Mukunda! Cut through the chains of agency and perceive the Single Cause! — Paramahansa Yogananda

Love wasn't something that could be defined or articulated, it was just something to be felt, it was something that was yours, and it didn't matter if anyone else knew or not. — Various

If this is not already a habit of yours, now is the time to begin reading a portion of the Bible every day. Ideally, read it together as husband and wife - in the morning, perhaps, or before bed. — Alex Kendrick

Truth provides the most diplomatic answer): I don't believe I've ever attended one since I was your age where I didn't feel, beforehand, an oppressive dread at the isolation that can reign in a large enough group of even the most intimate friends, much less an admixture of intimates, acquaintances, and strangers. Still, so much of my social education has been effected in such gatherings, so many true friendships have had their beginnings in meetings much like yours and mine, that I feel these affairs must not only be endured, but negotiated with a certain energy, if not commitment. — Samuel R. Delany

Why is it so important for me to forgive that son-of-a-bitch? I'm not the one at fault here. It shouldn't be about me. He's the one that did wrong. Screw his feelings. He should feel like he's hated for what he did." Lisa added another used tissue to the growing pile on the table.
Lyn warmly smiled. "Forgiving Byron isn't for his sake, it's for yours. The block in your life's road can only be removed if you forgive him for what he did. If you don't, you'll just keep bumping into that block again and again. The life you live will be miserable. You'll never be able to break the chains of the past."
Lisa listened and let the words sink into her subconscious. She realized the only way to get to the end of the road was to take the first step. There was a block preventing her from moving forward in life. She had to find a way past it. — Dane Hatchell

Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed,
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn.
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there. — J.K. Rowling

Personally, I'm a registered Democrat, and my wife has contributed to the campaigns of a number of Democratic candidates, including yours, I believe, though I have not. There's no politics in this, Ms. Grant. What there is, is a vicious sabotage attempt, which would have reduced Senator Smalls's reputation to tatters, and very probably a murder. So, if we could get back to the reason I'm here: you say you knew nothing of the pornography, and you didn't know Bob Tubbs? — John Sandford

There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you - may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn't that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours. — Anne Carson

If I lose my honor,
I lose myself: better I were not yours
Than yours so branchless. — William Shakespeare

If there is a person, place, or thing with which you do not agree, you attack it. If there is a religion that goes against yours, you make it wrong. If there is a thought that contradicts yours, you ridicule it. If there is an idea other than yours, you reject it. In this you err, for you create only half a universe. And you cannot even understand your half when you have rejected out of hand the other. — Neale Donald Walsch

But a girl's love is not a woman's love; above all, it is not a modern woman's love. I, at thirty, cannot accept your views, adopt your methods, and believe your heresies, as you might be able to teach me to do if I were eighteen, - and if I loved you. I have found out my own life-truths, and they do not accord with yours. — Florence Converse

He's not my alpha."
"Oh, he's most definitely yours," Charlie said. "He's been watching you for the last twenty minutes as if he could do very, very wicked things to you. — Savannah Stuart

Meditation is simply a strange surgical method which cuts you away from all that is not yours and saves only that which is your authentic being. It burns everything else and leaves you standing naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. It is as if you are the first man who has descended onto earth - who knows nothing, who has to discover everything, who has to be a seeker, who has to go on a pilgrimage. — Rajneesh

No woman will ever take care of my children but me, she said. I will not allow it, do you understand?
And after I am gone Madge Toxley, if you try to make them yours, then you will live to regret it. — John Boyne

It's complicated for me too. I know I'm not the man you might want me to be, for a serious relationship. But I want you so much, I don't care. I want you, Kelly, and I can try to change, if you need me to. All of me is yours. — Claire Kent

A part of me will probably always be waitin' for her. And even when I get to the end of this life and she's not there, I think I'll still just wait. It's the cruel reality of love, I think - that once you find it, it's yours to carry. And even if you lose it and never find it back again, I think you still just keep on carrying it ... and waitin' - long after the curtain closes. — Laura Miller

It's wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you're a good man,
to forget what you've said, as I forget it," she said at last.
"Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever
forget ... — Leo Tolstoy

If you're like most people, you'll do one thing for two to three years, then something else for two to three years, and then - somewhere in that five- to seven-year distance from Yale - you'll see a need to fully commit to something that's a longer-term project: graduate school, for example, or a job you need to stick with for some real time. The question is: where do you need to be with yourself such that when the time comes to 'cast your whole vote,' you're reasonably confident you're not being either fear-based or ego-driven in your choice . . . that the journey you're on is really yours, and not someone else's? If you think of your first few jobs after Yale in this way - holistically and in terms of your growth as a person rather than as ladder rungs to a specific material outcome - you're less likely to wake up at age forty-five married to a stranger." Yikes! — Marina Keegan

If you are sorry, you will leave him. Jack will never be yours, Schuyler. Not like I am yours.
-Oliver — Melissa De La Cruz

If you love something, let it go. If it does not come back it was not yours to began with. — Anna Napper

What is the state of things, then? It is this: I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him. I advise you, however, to keep what is really yours; and you cannot begin too early. For, as our ancestors believed, it is too late to spare when you reach the dregs of the cask.[1] Of that which remains at the bottom, the amount is slight, and the quality is vile. Farewell. — Seneca.

People like to say that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. There tends to be a whispered reverence around the expression, as if it has magical healing powers. Better to be hated than ignored by that angry ex of yours; better to be hated than ignored, generally.

Otherwise, you may spend your life staring straight down the barrel of the opposite of love.

But I think that's bullshit. Nonsense print copy for a paper towel. A sound bit e to needlepoint on a throw pillow. Could indifference really be worse than hate? How depressing to think we could be spending most of our days surrounded by people who feel something worse than hate toward us. — Julie Buxbaum

Are you sure? You have to be sure. I'm not saying that to cover myself, or to put the responsibility on your shoulders. It's my responsibility as much as yours. And I know that in a way no one can be sure about anything like this. I just don't know if this is the right thing, and you have to help me. — Edeet Ravel

Christ Jesus said: "I am the Vine, ye are the branches." In other words: "I, the living One who have so completely given myself to you, am the Vine. You cannot trust me too much. I am the Almighty Worker, full of a divine life and power." You are the branches of the Lord Jesus Christ. If there is in your heart the consciousness that you are not a strong, healthy, fruit-bearing branch, not closely linked with Jesus, not living in Him as you should be - then listen to Him say: "I am the Vine, I will receive you, I will draw you to myself, I will bless you, I will strengthen you, I will fill you with my Spirit. I, the Vine, have taken you to be my branches, I have given myself utterly to you; children, give yourselves utterly to me. I have surrendered myself as God absolutely to you; I became man and died for you that I might be entirely yours. Come and surrender yourselves entirely to be mine. — Andrew Murray

If you think that growth means perfection, let me assure you, it does not! You do not need to be perfect; instead, strive to be honest, admit to failures, learn to ask for and to give forgiveness, love and allow yourself to be loved. Accept and even celebrate differences in others; their "No Excuses" mindsets may look and function a bit differently than yours, but that is okay! — Farshad Asl

It was at this period that Drogo realised how far apart men are whatever their affection for each other, that if you suffer the pain is yours and yours alone, no one else can take upon himself the least part of it; that if you suffer it does not mean that others feel pain even though their love is great: hence the loneliness of life. — Dino Buzzati

There is another life both for you and for me,' said I. 'If it be the will of God that we should sow in tears now, it is only that we may reap in joy hereafter. It is His will that we should not injure others by the gratification of our own earthly passions; and you have a mother, and sisters, and friends who would be seriously injured by your disgrace; and I, too, have friends, whose peace of mind shall never be sacrificed to my enjoyment, or yours either, with my consent; and if I were alone in the world, I have still my God and my religion, and I would sooner die than disgrace my calling and break my faith with heaven to obtain a few brief years of false and fleeting happiness - happiness sure to end in misery even here - for myself or any other! — Anne Bronte

If you love something - let. If it is yours - it will come back. I love you not because of who you are, but for who I am when I'm with you. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

According to Keltar legend, each Druid born into the clan was destined for a soul mate, a perfect match in heart and mind, as well as body, coming together with an explosive, incendiary passion that could not be denied. If the Keltar male exchanged the sacred Druid binding vows with his true love, and his mate willingly returned them, they could bind their souls together for all eternity, in this life and forever beyond. The vows linked them inextricably. 'Twas said if a Keltar gave the vows and they were not returned, he would be forever incomplete, missing a part of his heart, aching for the love of a woman he could never have, eternally bound to her, through this life and all his future existence, whether in the cycle of rebirth, heaven, hell, or even an eternal Unseelie prison. If aught must be lost ... the legendary vows began, 'twill be my life for yours ... — Karen Marie Moning

When I wake up in the morning ... I don't think, wow, how can I make her love me more? How can I have my way with her? I, I, I? Not in my vocabulary. In fact, I'm a big fan of the letter u. I eat, I think of you. I drink, I drink to you. I cry, so you don't have to. I'd die, for you to live. And I'd survive with a broken heart only if it meant mending yours. - Nixon — Rachel Van Dyken

As the years go by, the circle of the Ojibway gets bigger and bigger. Canadians of all colours and religion are entering that circle. You might feel that you have roots somewhere else, but in reality, you are right here with us. I do not know if you feel the throbbing of the land in your chest, and if you feel the bear is your brother with a spirit purer and stronger than yours, or if the elk is on a higher level of life than is man. You may not share the spiritual anguish as I see the earth ravaged by the stranger, but you can no longer escape my fate as the soil turns barren and the rivers poison. Much against my will, and probably yours, time and circumstance have put us together in the same circle. And so I come not to plead with you to save me from the monstrous stranger of capitalist greed and technology. I come to inform you that my danger is your danger too. My genocide is your genocide. — John Ralston Saul

Give me, if you will, prayers;
Or let me know dryness,
An abudance of devotion,
Or if not, then barrenness.
In you alone, Sovereign Majesty,
I find my peace,
What do you want of me?
Yours I am, fo ryou I was born:
What do you want of me? — Teresa Of Avila

VI. If you were coming in the fall, I'd brush the summer by With half a smile and half a spurn, As housewives do a fly. If I could see you in a year, I'd wind the months in balls, And put them each in separate drawers, Until their time befalls. If only centuries delayed, I'd count them on my hand, Subtracting till my fingers dropped Into Van Diemen's land. If certain, when this life was out, That yours and mine should be, I'd toss it yonder like a rind, And taste eternity. But now, all ignorant of the length Of time's uncertain wing, It goads me, like the goblin bee, That will not state its sting. — Emily Dickinson

Werewolf Property Laws
1. If I want it, it's mine.
2. If I like it, it's mine.
3. If I don't like it, I'm still not giving it to you.
4. If it's mine, it cannot appear to be yours in any way.
5. If it's yours, it will soon be mine.
6. If it once was mine, it'll be mine forever and I'll be getting it back.
7. If it looks good on me, beside me, or under me, it's mine.
8. If it's shiny, I'll probably make it mine.
9. If I trick you out of it, it's so fucking mine.
10. If you bargain with me, you'll soon be mine.
11. If you have a soul, my dark heart wants to make it mine. — Finn Marlowe

You're not going," he said as soon as she'd finished. "If I have to tie you up and sit on you until this insane whim of yours passes, you are not going to Idris." - Jace — Cassandra Clare

It is quite usual for us to gather pieces of information from various sources, thinking in this way to increase our knowledge. Actually, following this way we end up not knowing anything at all ... Instead of gathering knowledge, you should clear your mind. If your mind is clear, true knowledge is already yours. — Shunryu Suzuki

I know I had no right to do this to you, but if you ask me if I regret it, I will answer you no. If you ask me if I'd do it again, I'd say yes. I would do it again and again and again. There is a darkness in me that lives and breathes just like yours, except it's motivated by love, and not by pain. — Angela Richardson

It's sweet and everything, but it's like you're not even there sometimes. It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things."
"Like what?" I asked. My mouth was dry.
"I don't know. Like take their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date. Or tell people what you need. Or what you want. — Stephen Chbosky

I am no prince if not yours. -Brandon Maxfield — Ninya Tippett

But he came back to his idea.
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat ... "
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

He spoke to her, though, if only through his verse. One night in the banqueting hall, just before a ball, he responded to requests for a verse by raising his glass high. Though he spoke to them all his eyes were on her.

"Tis not that I am weary grown
Of being yours, and yours alone,
But with what face can I incline
To damn you to be only mine?"

She walked out before she heard the rest. — Judith James

I gave you a few laughs and showed you a good time, but there was no future with me. So although it was fun while it lasted, you made up your mind to choose the stability and security a rich man can offer."
She shook her head. "No."
"No?"
"If you look in your heart, you know that's not true."
"So, what is it then, he went into a jealous rage and he threatened
you?"
"Yes."
"With your life?"
"No."
"Well then ... "
"With yours. — N. Lombardi Jr.

Hey!" said the guy in the video. "Greetings from your friends at Camp Half-Blood, et cetera. This is Leo. I'm the ... " He looked off screen and yelled: "What's my title? Am I like admiral, or captain, or-"
A girl's voice yelled back, "Repair boy."
"Very funny, Piper," Leo grumbled. He turned back to the parchment screen. "So yeah, I'm ... ah..supreme commander of the Argo II. Yeah, I like that! Anyway, we're gonna be sailing towards you in about, I dunno, an hour in this big mother warship. We'd appreciate it if you'd not, like, blow us out of the sky or anything. So okay! If you could tell the Romans that. See you soon. Yours in demigodishness, and all that. Peace out! — Rick Riordan

When we too are armed and trained, we can convince men that we have hands, feet, and a heart like yours; and although we may be delicate and soft, some men who are delicate are also strong; and others, coarse and harsh, are cowards. Women have not yet realized this, for if they should decide to do so, they would be able to fight you until death; and to prove that I speak the truth, amongst so many women, I will be the first to act, setting an example for them to follow.
- Veronica Franco 1546-1591 — Veronica Franco

I won't share you, Dylan. I mean that. If you think for one second now that we're married, you can try and pull some kind of shit over on me, you'd better think again. I can take whatever you can dish out when it comes to pain, embarrassment and humiliation, and whatever else you have going on in that wicked mind of yours, but I'll be damned if I'll share you with another woman. Or man."
What the fuck? I almost laugh at her, but she's so serious she would probably slap the shit out of me. "Calm the hell down. I'm not trying to pull anything over on you, okay? And seriously, a man?"
"Well, I don't know. Maybe one of your secrets is that you like getting pegged in the ass or something."
This time I laugh out loud at her and she narrows her eyes at me.
"Don't ask me to peg you either, because it's never going to happen."
I laugh even louder. Good God this woman is funny. "I promise you that I don't want to be pegged, Isa. — Ella Dominguez

The average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: These notions of yours are all very fascinating, no doubt, but we make a decent living. Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac, and my foreman enjoys his espaliered pear trees. I think as a matter of fact, we do not wish to make the changes that you suggest. — Julia Child

Make no mistake, what's yours is mine. I don't need a legal document to make me feel any safer in our marriage. If you decide to divorce me and rake me over the coals, I'm not sure any amount of money would ease the pain of losing you. It's a non-issue for me. — Meredith Wild

Los Angeles people are incapable of passively mainlining TV and movies. Here you have to read who produced or directed every episode, who wrote it, who had guests shots and whether you know them personally and if they like you. You have to figure out who everybody's agent is and whether yours is better. You not only know but deeply care about the difference between such job titles as Producer, Supervising Producer, and Executive Story Editor ... So while the rest of the country is lying stupid in a media-induced coma, people in L.A. are in constant withdrawal. — Cynthia Heimel

Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours. — Marcus Aurelius

The world has grown too large for one army of the nation, my brother. You will ride where I tell you to ride, conquer where I tell you to conquer. The world is yours, if you can put aside the base part of you that tells you to rule it all. That you may not have. Now give me an answer and your oath. Your word is iron, brother, and I will take it. Or I can just kill you now. — Conn Iggulden

In politics, the connection between what you pay for and what you actually get is problematic at best ...
This is another way of asserting that your vote in the marketplace counts for so much more than your vote in the polling booth. Cast your dollars for the washing machine of your choice and that is what you get
nothing more and nothing less. Pull the lever for the politician of your choice and, most of the time (if you're lucky), you will get some of what you do want and much of what you don't. The votes of a special interest lobby may ultimately cancel out yours. As someone much wiser than me once said, "[P]olitics may not be the oldest profession, but the results are often the same."
— Lawrence W. Reed

Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience.... Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren't fit to face death today, it's very unlikely you will be tomorrow.... 589 — Anonymous

A few of the managers we spoke with for this book worried that the tour of duty framework might give employees "permission" to leave. But permission is not yours to give or to withhold, and believing you have that power is simply a self-deception that leads to a dishonest relationship with your employees. Employees don't need your permission to switch companies, and if you try to assert that right, they'll simply make their move behind your back. — Reid Hoffman

Languor is upon your heart and the slumber is still on your eyes.

Has not the word come to you that the flower is reigning in splendour among thorns? Wake, oh awaken! let not the time pass in vain!

At the end of the stony path, in the country of virgin solitude, my friend is sitting all alone. Deceive him not. Wake, oh awaken!

What if the sky pants and trembles with the heat of the midday sun---what if the burning sand spreads its mantle of thirst---

Is there no joy in the deep of your heart? At every footfall of yours, will not the harp of the road break out in sweet music of pain? — Rabindranath Tagore

My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours ... it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually. — Frederick Buechner

Whatever his secret was, I have learnt one secret too, and namely: that the soul is but a manner of being
not a constant state
that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations. The hereafter may be the full ability of consciously living in any chosen soul, in any number of souls, all of them unconscious of their interchangeable burden. — Vladimir Nabokov

If you do not want what I want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong. Or if my beliefs are different from yours, at least pause before you set out to correct them. Or if my emotion seems less or more intense than yours, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel other than I do. Or if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, please let me be. I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up trying to change me into a copy of you. — David Keirsey

The problem about cutting out the best of your heart and giving it to people, is that 1. It hurts to do that; and 2. You never know if they are going to throw it away or not. But then you should still do it. Because any other way is cowardice. At the end of the day, it's about being brave and we are only haunted by the ghosts that we trap within ourselves; we are not haunted by the ghosts that we let out. We are haunted by the ghosts that we cover and hide. So you let those ghosts out in that best piece of your heart that you give to someone. And if the other person throws it away? Or doesn't want it to begin with? Someone else will come along one day, cut out from his/her heart that exact same jagged shape that you cut out of your own heart, and make their piece of heart fit into the rest of yours. Wait for that person. And you can fill their missing piece with your soul. — C. JoyBell C.

Your right is to work, and not to expect the fruit. The slave-owner tells the slave: 'Mind your work, but beware lest you pluck a fruit from the garden. Yours is to take what I give.' God has put us under restriction in the same manner. He tells us that we may work if we wish, but that the reward of work is entirely for Him to give. Our duty is to pray to Him, and the best way in which we can do this is to work with the pick-axe, to remove scum from the river and to sweep and clean our yards. This, certainly, is a difficult lesson to learn. — Mahatma Gandhi

Look. I'm your expert consultant for a rather pathetic monetary wage, and under that agreement I have the option of selecting a technical assistant. He's mine."

She blew out a breath, paced to the window. Paced back. "Not just yours. It makes him mine, too. I don't know how to deal with a teenaged type person."

"Ah, well, I'd say you'd deal with him as you deal with everyone else. You order him around, and if he argues or doesn't jump quickly enough you freeze his blood with one of those vicious looks you're so good at and verbally abuse him. It always works so well for you."

"You think so?"

"There, see." He cupped her chin. "There it is now. I can actually feel my blood running cold. — J.D. Robb

The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's. — G.K. Chesterton

It was the artist's duty to find the appropriate objects, and the audience's job to decipher meaning. If the piece failed to work, it was their fault, not yours. — David Sedaris

If I could tell the world just one thing
It would be that we're all OK
And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful
And useless in times like these
I won't be made useless
I won't be idle with despair
I will gather myself around my faith
For light does the darkness most fear
My hands are small, I know
But they're not yours, they are my own
But they're not yours, they are my own
And I am never broken — Jewel

How many people can you claim truly care about you? I mean, not just the people in your life who are fun to hang out with, not just the people who you love and trust. But people who feel good when you are happy and successful, feel bad when you are hurt or going through a hard time, people who would walk away from their lives for a little while to help you with yours. Not many. I felt that from Jake and I wasn't sure how to handle it. Because there's another side to it, you know. When someone is invested in your well-being, like your parents, for example, you become responsible for them in a way. Anything you do to hurt yourself hurts them. I already felt responsible for too many people that way. You're not really free when people care about you; not if you care about them. — Lisa Unger

If you're a Christian, here's the good news: who you really are has nothing to do with you - how much you can accomplish, who you can become, your behavior, your strengths, your weaknesses, your sordid past, your family background, your education, your looks, and so on. Your identity is firmly anchored in Christ's accomplishment, not yours; His strength, not yours; His performance, not yours; His victory, not yours. — Tullian Tchividjian

It is not love that is to blame. But each of us has resistance to the very love we desire. We also have resistance to the space and independence we need. So we go back and forth, not letting ourselves have one or the other. It all boils down to this: Are you willing to have your relationships be a pathway to fully revealing yourself and your potential? If you answer is Yes, real intimacy can be yours on a daily basis. — Gay Hendricks

Even if you win three or four times, the next victory will not necessarily be yours without trying. — Malala Yousafzai

It would be superfluous to mention more who, though others deemed them the happiest of men, have expressed their loathing for every act of their years, and with their own lips have given true testimony against themselves; but by these complaints they changed neither themselves nor others. For when they have vented their feelings in words, they fall back into their usual round. Heaven knows! such lives as yours, though they should pass the limit of a thousand years, will shrink into the merest span; your vices will swallow up any amount of time. The space you have, which reason can prolong, although it naturally hurries away, of necessity escapes from you quickly; for you do not seize it, you neither hold it back, nor impose delay upon the swiftest thing in the world, but you allow it to slip away as if it were something superfluous and that could be replaced. — Seneca.

If you want something, my dearest love, the duke had once told her, you will never get it. Want is a timid, abject word. It implies that you know you will be left wanting, that you know you do not deserve the object of your desire but can only hope for a miracle. You must expect that object instead, and it will be yours. There is no such thing as a miracle. — Mary Balogh

So whether or not you can find it in your heart to love me again, I needed to thank you for saving me. And if there is any part of you capable of forgiving me, you know where I'll be. Tonight, next year, the next, for eternity. The choice is yours. — Colleen Hoover

You're the one with the family tree that doesn't branch." She illustrated said tree with her fingers. "How many Egyptian gods slept with their brothers' and sisters' wife's mother's uncle's dogs? Hmm? I ask you?" He wasn't quite sure if he should be offended or amused by her attack on his family. Honestly, he had no real feelings for any of them other than hatred and disdain but ... "Have you visited your pantheon lately?" "We're not talking about my pantheon, here. Are we? No. We're insulting yours."
-Lydia and Seth- — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I just...Leave a note. Or tell me next time.'
'Would you have let me go if I had?'
'I do not LET you do anything.' He tilted my face up, Mor and Azriel looking away. 'You are your own person, you make your own choices. But we are mates-- I am yours, and you are mine. We do not let each other do things, as if we dictate the movements of each other. But...I might have insisted I go with you More for my own mental well-being, just to know you were safe. — Sarah J. Maas

Gestalt Prayer
I do my thing and you do yours.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
And if by chance we find each other, then it is beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped. — Frederick Salomon Perls

The moral, of course, is that you must always try to see other people's Point of View before you criticize anybody. Histories are crammed full of unkind things, silly things, and untrue things - why? Because so often the people who write them will not try to see or feel any Point of View but their own ... So mind that you always look out for the Point of View and help people to see yours, too, if you want them to understand you. — Katherine Paterson

And so, as quietly as he had lived, he slipped out of town, leaving only a note behind:
Well, that's that. I'm off, and if you don't believe I'm leaving, just count the days I'm gone. When you hear the phone not ringing, it'll be me that's not calling. Goodbye, old girl, and good luck.
Yours truly,
Earl Adcock
P.S. I'm not deaf. — Fannie Flagg

If, for even one moment, you can look at someone with the eyes of true love, you'll know those eyes are not yours. Your eyes could never look with that amount of love. Your eyes could never be that unconditional. Your eyes could never, even in a million years, see only beauty and total perfection in your beloved. Those are the eyes of God looking down through you. — Michael A. Singer

This is where the wise man turns away. This is where the holy kneel and call on God. These are the last miles, my brothers. Don't look to me to save you. Don't think I will not spend you. Run if you have the wit. Pray if you have the soul. Stand your ground if courage is yours. But don't follow me.
Follow me, and I will break your heart. — Mark Lawrence

Don't love too blindly: blindly you will love if you love at all, but a little care is still possible to a well-disciplined heart. May that heart be yours as it was not mine. Cultivate the art of renunciation. — Thomas Hardy

You love him still and struggle against your love, feeling that it will undo you. He knows this and he will tempt you by every lure he can devise, every deceit he can employ. Sorrow and sin will surely follow if you yield; happiness never can be yours with him; doubt, remorse and self-reproach will kill love, and a time will come when you will find that in gaining a brief joy you have lost your peace forever. Oh, Agatha, be warned in time, do not listen to your own weak heart but to the conscience that nothing can bribe or silence. — Louisa May Alcott

And the fuck is yours too, WTF. That question does not apply 'to everything every day.' If it does, you're wasting your life. If it does, you're a lazy coward and you are not a lazy coward.
Ask better questions, sweet pea. The fuck is your life. Answer it. — Cheryl Strayed

My letters seeking a job, though truthful, diminished the full truth. Face would blanch if the facts had been complete: "Dear Sir," I thought. "Do you have a position for a journeyman burglar, con man, forger and car thief; also with experience as armed robber, pimp, card cheat and several other things. I smoked marijuana at twelve (in the 40's) and shot heroin at sixteen. I have no experience with LSD and methedrine. They came to popularity since my imprisonment. I've buggered pretty young boys and feminine homosexuals (but only when locked up away from women). In the idiom of jails, prisons and gutters (some plush gutters) I'm a motherfucker! Not literally, for I don't remember my mother. In my world the term, used as I used it, is a boast of being hell on wheels, outrageously unpredictable, a virtuoso of crime. Of course by being a motherfucker in that world I'm a piece of garbage in yours. Do you have a job? — Edward Bunker

But you are not one of us. For you, this thing is irreversible except by death, and not only the flesh is altered. Only the strongest of you can resist the collapse of the soul into the form; the mind is lazy, it naturally imitates the body. I have known none of you yet who can remain human when they wear another skin. But the thing is yours to do, if you should wish to do it. — Catherynne M Valente

What kind of expression is this - "punishing Israel"? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we youths of fourteen who, if they don't behave properly, are slapped across the fingers? Let me tell you who this government is composed of. It is composed of people whose lives were spent in resistance, in fighting and in suffering. You will not frighten us with "punishments." He who threatens us will find us deaf to his threats. We are only prepared to listen to rational arguments. You have no right to "punish" Israel - and I protest at the very use of this term. — Menachem Begin

Discipline, not the Muse, results in productivity. If you write only when she beckons, your writing is not yours at all. — Kenneth Atchity

I ask you to try something. If someone grieves you, or dishonors you, or takes something of yours, then pray like this: "Lord, we are all your creatures. Pity your servants, and turn them to repentance," and then you will perceptibly bear grace in your soul. Induce your heart to love your enemies, and the Lord, seeing your good will, shall help you in all things, and will Himself show you experience. But whoever thinks evil of his enemies does not have love for God and has not known God. — Silouan The Athonite