Lapsed Quotes & Sayings

To become a lapsed Catholic, first go to a Catholic university. — Susan Sarandon

I am the indoctrinated child of two lapsed Irish Catholics. Which is to say: I am not religious. — Meghan O'Rourke

Prose is not so dependent on sound. The line of poetry, with the breaking of the line - to me, sound is the kind of doorway into poetry. And my sense of sound, or my ability to control it, lapsed or grew less. — Donald Hall

Colin didn't want to go back to his room. He walked around for a very long time, looking down at the sidewalks and streets, and thought of the things he and Dana might say to each other if she were with him. And every once in a while he would catch himself smiling and laughing a little, and it was those moments right after - as, having lapsed into fantasy, there was a correction, a moment of nothing and then a loose and sudden rush, back into the real world in a trick of escape, as if to some new place of possibilities - that he felt at once, and with clarity, most exhilarated, appreciative, disappointed, and accepting. — Tao Lin

I don't think it's any coincidence that I lost my religious faith and 'manned up' in the same year. I was described somewhere as a lapsed Catholic, which is funny because I'm not going back! I want to achieve things rather than live life in an animalistic way. — Jimmy Carr

The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read. — Anthony Burgess

I suppose I'm a lapsed Catholic. You would consider me an atheist or agnostic. — George R R Martin

Those who had demanded no more than an end to the bombing of North Vietnam and a commitment to negotiations saw their demands being realized, and lapsed into silence. — Noam Chomsky

Unni will come, if not today, then tomorrow. Today is nearly gone, but other todays stir fecund in the word tomorrow, many other todays when this one has lapsed from existence. And because I think of Unni, invoking his name in this for ever recurrent today, already he is here for me. - The Mountain is Young — Han Suyin

But one of the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation, Taylor argues, was a disenchantment of the world. Critical of the ways such an enchanted, sacramental understanding of the world had lapsed into sheer superstition, the later Reformers emphasized the simple hearing of the Word, the message of the gospel, and the arid simplicity of Christian worship. The result was a process of excarnation - of disembodying the Christian faith, turning it into a "heady" affair that could be boiled down to a message and grasped with the mind. To use a phrase that we considered above, this was Christianity reduced to something for brains-on-a-stick. The — James K.A. Smith

Instead, he reflected on what she'd said earlier, about their similarities, thinking she was right and hoping that it was enough to keep her coming back to the ranch. After a while their conversation lapsed into a peaceful lull, and he realized he had no — Nicholas Sparks

Ede had been pregnant not quite the full term: eight months, two weeks, four days. She had lapsed into an extended silence - partly because she was still in mourning - still enraged and afraid of speech. And partly, too, because the child itself had taken up dreaming in her belly - dreaming and, Ede was certain, singing. Not singing songs a person knew, of course. Nothing Ede could recognize. But songs for certain. Music - with a tune to it. Evocative. A song about self. A song about place. As if a bird had sung it, sitting in a tree at the edge of a field. Or high in the air above a field. A hovering song. Of recognition. — Timothy Findley

I'm a lapsed Zen Buddhist. I've read hundreds of books on Zen, I meditated daily for about fifteen years, and once spent a month studying with Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh. — Will McIntosh

I'm a lapsed Buddhist like I'm a lapsed Catholic. I take it to a point. — Abel Ferrara

Having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed ere long into an amiable indifferentism which to outward appearance differed but little from the indifferentism ... — Samuel Butler

I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta.
No matter. My brain shuts off. I listen. I respond. And they are too dumb to know that I am not there. — Charles Bukowski

I may be small, but Im not a child to be afraid of a pretended demon speaking in tongues. Im a lapsed Christian and a pagan of convenience. The worst I can do on my conscience is cut your throat and ask the forest to count it as a sacrifice come the Yule, so cease your nonsense and tell me how you know my name. — Christopher Moore

I used to do calligraphy, and I'm afraid that has lapsed, but I've always been interested in book printing. — Alice Waters

Modern ecumenism rightly began in mission, but then lapsed into a merger mentality, then defensive bureaucracy, and finally into unrepresentative forms of extreme politicization. — Thomas C. Oden

Devareux also made mention of finding "angel hair" that melted when touched but was so radioactive as to break a Geiger counter, as well as having been shot with lasers coming from the graves in the Jewish Cemetery. As a lapsed Episcopalian, Jasmine might have been vague as to the details of Jewish burials, but felt confident no Goldstein on record had consented to laser turrets atop their dearly departed Uncle Morrie. — Thomm Quackenbush

During intermission she peeked out at the theater, watching it refill. When it was almost full and the lights blinked on and off, she saw three people file in through the center door and her breath caught. Time lapsed as they walked down the center aisle: three teenage girls all in a row.
They were so big, so bright, so beautiful, so magnificent to Carmen's eyes that she thought she was imagining them. They were like goddesses, like Titans. She was so proud of them! They were benevolent and they were righteous. Now, these were friends. — Ann Brashares

I'm a lapsed Catholic in the best sense of the word. — Denis Leary

When asked why they quit, the lapsed dieters cited complexity as the single most important reason for giving up. Simplicity is even more important when people are tired, stressed, or otherwise cognitively impaired. — Donald Sull

We all know the story: how a defiant and undisciplined collection of citizen soldiers banded together to defeat the mightiest army on earth. But as those who lived through the nearly decadelong saga of the American Revolution were well aware, that was not how it actually happened. The real Revolution was so troubling and strange that once the struggle was over, a generation did its best to remove all traces of the truth. No one wanted to remember how after boldly declaring their independence they had so quickly lost their way; how patriotic zeal had lapsed into cynicism and self-interest; and how, just when all seemed lost, a traitor had saved them from themselves. — Nathaniel Philbrick

Since the start of the Abe administration, we resumed peace treaty negotiations with Russia, which had lapsed during the three years of the Democratic Party of Japan administration. — Shinzo Abe

I've usually found every Catholic family has one lapsed member, and it's often the nicest. — Evelyn Waugh

When we read or hear how some professed Christian has turned defaulter, or lapsed into drunkenness, or slipped from the communion table into open disgrace, it simply means than a human arm has broken. The man has forsaken the everlasting arms. — Theodore L. Cuyler

The house had not merely lapsed back into the equilibrium of the woods but was blighted, as if inside it did not contain a hearth and a chair and a bed but my cankered heart. — Paul Harding

Webster lapsed into silence. Started thinking hard. He was a smart enough bureaucrat to know if you can't beat them, you join them. You force yourself to think like they think. — Lee Child

Then the sun broke through for good and shone down on the giant white statue of Jesus that looked over virtually all of Rio from the summit of Corcovado Mountain. In the prior two months, I'd seen the statue from dozens of vantage points, but never like this, from a police helicopter hovering at the figure's eye level two hundred and fifty feet away, close enough for me to understand the immensity of the statue and its simple, graceful lines. I am a lapsed Catholic, but I tell you, I got chills up and down my spine. "That's incredible," I said as the helicopter — James Patterson

That exploration of faith would become an important aspect of the series, embodied in the relationship between the pious Shepherd Book and the lapsed believer Mal Reynolds. Captain Reynolds "is a man who has learned that when he believed in something it destroyed him," Joss said. "So what he believes in is the next job, the next paycheck and keeping his crew safe." The series pushes past the idea that a belief in God is necessary for a moral life, and questions the definition of morality that others want to impose. Mal, to Joss, is a "guy who looks into the void and sees nothing but the void - and says there is no moral structure, there is no help, no one's coming, no one gets it, I have to do it. — Amy Pascale

We are holiday-only lapsed Catholics who support homosexuality and a woman's right to choose. — David Levithan

Amusement, even ironic amusement, is the beginning of sincere appreciation, as any lapsed hipster knows. — Last Man Standing

What have you done to it, Monkeyman? - he breathed.
- Well, - said Arthur, - nothing in fact. It's just that I think a
short while ago it was trying to work out how to ...
- Yes?
- Make me some tea.
- That's right guys, - the computer sang out suddenly, - just coping
with that problem right now, and wow, it's a biggy. Be with you in a
while. It lapsed back into a silence that was only matched for sheer
intensity by the silence of the three people staring at Arthur Dent. — Douglas Adams

It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane. — Philip Jose Farmer

I was brought up Catholic. I'm lapsed. From the age of three I was with the nuns. Now I'm an atheist. — Paul Bettany

If there is one place in the United States where private styles make up for public images, it is San Francisco, where all lapsed lovers of America, even loyalists like me experiencing spasms of disillusionment, should be taken for refresher courses. The tides of all-American conformity beat vainly against the San Franciscan rock. — Jan Morris

Pop was a devout Roman Catholic; I'm a lapsed Catholic. I'm not the village atheist, but I exert my right not to believe, and I doubt I would have been very public about that were he still alive, simply just so as not to hurt his feelings. — Christopher Buckley

They did not use the sonic stunners but the foray gun, the ancient weapon that fires a set of metal fragments in a burst. They shot to kill him. He was dying when I got to him, sprawled and twisted away from his skis that stuck up out of the snow, his chest half shot away. I took his head in my arms and spoke to him, but he never answered me; only in a way he answered my love for him, crying out through the silent wreck and tumult of his mind as consciousness lapsed, in the unspoken tongue, once, clearly, 'Arek!' Then no more. I held him, crouching there in the snow, while he died. They let me do that. Then they made me get up, and took me off one way and him another, I going to prison and he into the dark. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees
Whose ears have heard,
The Holy Word,
That walk'd among the ancient trees.

Calling the lapsed Soul
And weeping in the evening dew:
That might controll,
The starry pole;
And fallen fallen light renew!

O Earth O Earth return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass.

Turn away no more:
Why wilt thou turn away
The starry floor
The watry shore
Is giv'n thee till the break of day.

- "Introduction to the Songs of Experience — William Blake

I'm a lapsed altar boy. — Guillermo Del Toro

There's nothing sexier than a lapsed Catholic. — Woody Allen

Where there is no danger of overt action there is rarely any interference with freedom. That is why there has so often been amazing freedom of opinion within an aristocratic class which at the same time sanctioned the ruthless suppression of heterodox opinion among the common people. When the Inquisition was operating most effectively against the bourgeois who had lapsed into heresy, the princes of the Church and the nobles enjoyed the freedom of the Renaissance. — Walter Lippmann

A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle. — Walker Percy

That solar hue, that variegation of gleam and shade, made Don Fabrizio's heart ache as he stood black and stiff in a doorway: this eminently patrician room reminded him of country things; the chromatic scale was the same as that of the vast wheat fields around Donnafugata, rapt, begging pity from the tyrannous sun; in this room, too, as on his estates in mid-August, the harvest had been gathered long before, stacked elsewhere, leaving, as here, a sole reminder in the color of the stubble burned and useless now. The notes of the waltz in the warm air seemed to him but a stylization of the incessant winds harping their own sorrows on the parched surfaces, today, yesterday, tomorrow, forever and forever. The crowd of dancers, among whom he could count so many near to him in blood if not in heart, began to seem unreal, made up of that material from which are woven lapsed memories, more elusive even than the stuff of disturbing dreams. — Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

At first, right at the outset, yes, I did feel an urge, and I lapsed into great anxiety. I kept thinking all the time of how I was going to live; I wanted to test my fate, felt anxious particularly at certain moments. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

And at that very moment, when the kiss was laid on the boy's head, and the mother's arm were firmly wrapped around her child as they'd been when she'd first held him, when she'd first cradled him as a baby, when she'd held him as a child crying over some lost bauble, when she'd held him as a boy when a fever had come on strong, when she'd held him as a young man in the full throat of summer, and when the horse had thrown him and he lay motionless on the flagstones and she'd held him then- at that very moment, the ivy ceased its endless writhings and lapsed into immobility and fell quiet. — Colin Meloy

Mumbling obeisance to abhorrence of apartheid is like those lapsed believers who cross themselves when entering a church. — Nadine Gordimer

Who gave thee, O Beauty,
The keys of this breast,
Too credulous lover
Of blest and unblest?
Say, when in lapsed ages
Thee knew I of old?
Or what was the service
For which I was sold? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I never could do anything with figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in that, as soon as I reach nine times seven- [He lapsed into deep thought, trying to figure nine times seven. Mr. McKelway whispered the answer to him.] I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get that far all right with a little hesitation. After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage a statistic. — Mark Twain

I was born a Catholic and now I'm a lapsed Catholic. I'm something but I'm not a believer any more. — Paul Bettany

But in his lapsed and sinful state, man is not capable, of any by himself, either to think, to will, or to do that which is really good, but it is necessary for him to be regenerated and renewed in his intellect, affections or will, and in all his powers, by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, that he may be qualified rightly to understand, esteem, consider, will, and perform whatever is truly good. When he is made a partaker of this regeneration or renovation, I consider that, since he is delivered from sin, he is capable of thinking, willing, and doing that which is good, but yet not without the continued aids of Divine Grace. — James Arminius

Henderson, Hitler lapsed into a typical display of sentimental hogwash, though — William L. Shirer

He remembered something about darkness, about pressure and weighted blankets and silence. Though he had no idea how he was going to get hold of any of those things up on top of a building.

"Tell me," Kit said. Tell me what you need.

"Put your arms around me," said Ty. His hands were pale blue blurs in the air, as if Kit were looking at a time-lapsed photo. "Hold on to me."

He was still rocking. After a moment, Kit put his arms around Ty, not knowing what else to do. — Cassandra Clare

She learned how to deal with the moments when his memory lapsed. Sometimes, she felt it happen even without him saying a word. On a sunny fall day, she lay next to him on the ground, and as he dozed she felt his old life, his memories, radiate off his skin. She felt everything leave him but her. She shed her own life, too, to match him. They lay there together like a point in time. A cloud drifted in front of the sun and things to shift inside of him, and when she sensed this, she allowed things to shift inside of her, too. They became their regular selves again, still warm from the lost memory of a minute ago.
But underneath her happiness was a dread that one day this would be all they had. All associations would be lost: the smell of the gloves, the sound of the truck door slamming shut. All the details she still wanted to know. Everything reduced to nothing more than itself. — Emily Ruskovich

You were baptized?"
"My sister told me that yes, Father baptized me shortly after birth. My mother was a Protestant of a faith that deplored infant baptism, so they had a quarrel about it." The Bishop held out his hand to lift the Speaker to his feet. The Speaker chuckled. "Imagine. A closet Catholic and a lapsed Mormon, quarreling over religious procedures that they both claimed not to believe in. — Orson Scott Card

It is easy to replace man, and it will take no great time, when Nature has lapsed, to replace Nature. — Alice Meynell

To all the secret writers, late-night painters, would-be singers, lapsed and scared artists of every stripe, dig out your paintbrush, or your flute, or your dancing shoes. Pull out your camera or your computer or your pottery wheel. Today, tonight, after the kids are in bed or when your homework is done, or instead of one more video game or magazine, create something, anything.
Pick up a needle and thread, and stitch together something particular and honest and beautiful, because we need it. I need it.
Thank you, and keep going. — Shauna Niequist