Leaving For No Reason Quotes & Sayings

Almost everything ... all external expectations ... all pride ... all fear of embarrassment or failure ... these things just fall away in the face of death ... leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose. You are already naked ... there is no reason not to follow your heart. — Steve Jobs

I was becoming too dependent on female attention, allowing it to be my sole reason for leaving the house besides food. In the process of dehumanizing the opposite sex, I had also been dehumanizing myself. — Neil Strauss

Kelly looked at the cop, then sighed. "What a cluster. I take it you haven't been killing young women and leaving their half-eaten bodies in the desert?"
Adam was ticked. I could tell it even if he was looking like a reasonably calm businessman. Adam's temper was the reason he wasn't one of Bran's werewolf poster boys. When angered, he often gave in to impulses he wouldn't otherwise have given in to.
"Sorry to disappoint you," Adam told Kelly in silky tones. "But I prefer rabbits. Humans taste like pork." And then he smiled. Kelly took an involuntary step backward.
Tony gave Adam a sharp look. "Let's not make things worse, if we can help it, gentlemen. — Patricia Briggs

I think that love can indeed be many things. But the one thing it will never be is practical. Love is irrational by its very nature. It demands passion, fire, and no less than absolute surrender. It is a longing, a burning that consumes you, leaving you without reason, or defense. When love comes, nothing can stand in its way. — Sherry D. Ficklin

Let's admit the real reason that we ban cell phones is that, given the opportunity to use them, students would vote with their attention, just as adults would 'vote with their feet' by leaving the room when a presentation is not compelling. — Marc Prensky

But the possibility of abuse may be a good reason for leaving capabilities out of other computer languages, it's not a good reason for leaving capabilities out of Perl . — Larry Wall

I'd thought I had recovered for good from that sadness, but as I felt my marriage disintegrate, the memory of my raw yearning for babies and my husband's refusal to have them with me came back to me as part of the reason I was now leaving him. It felt like the heart of why I was so lonely with him. — Kate Christensen

I found out I was in love with you, winter before last," she said. "I wasn't going to say anything about it because - well, you know. If you'd felt anything like that for me, you'd have known I did. But it wasn't both of us. So there was no good in it. But then, when you told us you're leaving ... At first I thought, all the more reason to say nothing. But then I thought, that wouldn't be fair. To me, partly. Love has a right to be spoken. And you have a right to know that somebody loves you. That somebody has loved you, could love you. We all need to know that. [ ... ] — Ursula K. Le Guin

By taking notice of those feelings and images that seemed to be in my blood and bones rather than in my head, I had found myself able to behave, not less reasonably, but more so. Apparently it was as much a false extreme to try and live by reason alone, leaving the passions out of count, as to ignore reason and put passion in its place as the guiding force of life. — Marion Milner

Wasn't it true, then, that everything in his life from that point on had been a succession of things he hadn't really wanted to do? Taking a hopelessly dull job to prove he could be as responsible as any other family man, moving to an overpriced, genteel apartment to prove his mature belief in the fundamentals of orderliness and good health, having another child to prove that the first one hadn't been a mistake, buying a house in the country because that was the next logical step and he had to prove himself capable of taking it. Proving, proving; and for no other reason than that he was married to a woman who had somehow managed to put him forever on the defensive, who loved him when he was nice, who lived according to what she happened to feel like doing and who might at any time - this was the hell of it - who might at any time of day or night just happen to feel like leaving him.
It was as ludicrous and as simple as that. — Richard Yates

I believe we accept too indifferently the fact of infantile amnesia - that is, the failure of memory for the first years of our lives - and fail to find in it a strange riddle. We forget of what great intellectual accomplishments and of what complicated emotions a child of four years is capable. We really ought to wonder why the memory of later years has, as a rule, retained so little of these psychic processes, especially as we have every reason for assuming that these same forgotten childhood activities have not glided off without leaving a trace in the development of the person, but that they have left a definite influence for all future time. — Sigmund Freud

Neither should, for the same reason, the lessons be for too long a period; they fatigue and bore a horse, and it should be returned to the stable with the same good spirits it had upon leaving it. — Francois Robichon De La Gueriniere

June 28, 1983 Mianus River Bridge Greenwich, Connecticut George Tesla was drunk. This wasn't new for him, but the reason was. He was going to be a father. Fifty years old, and he'd knocked up a thirty-year-old carnie. Someone careful enough to live through a trapeze act ought to be careful enough to not get pregnant. But she hadn't been. Tatiana flat-out refused to talk about abortion or adoption or any sensible solution to the problem. She was perfectly willing to talk about leaving him to raise the baby alone, but nothing else. Her mind was set. He leaned against the cold side of the bridge and took a long sip of Jack Daniel's from his silver hip flask. He'd bought the flask when he was first made professor of mathematics at New York University. Another thing that would have to change, since Tatiana had told him she had no intention of giving up performing to move to New York — Rebecca Cantrell

He walked back to St George's-in-the-East, which in his mind he had now reduced to a number of surfaces against which the murderer might have leaned in sorrow, desperation or even, perhaps, joy. For this reason it was worth examining the blackened stones in detail, although he realised that the marks upon them had been deposited by many generations of men and women. It was now a matter of received knowledge in the police force that no human being could rest or move in any area without leaving some trace of his or her identity; but if the walls of the Wapping church were to be analysed by emission spectroscopy, how many partial or residual spectra might be detected? And he had an image of a mob screaming to be set free as he guided his steps towards the tower which rose above the houses cluttered around Red Maiden Lane, Crab Court and Rope Walk. — Peter Ackroyd

that there is no reason he should grieve. He will perhaps say it was too early for me to leave for the forest. But even if affection should prevent me from leaving my family just now of my own accord, in due course death would tear us apart, and in that we would have no say. Birds settle on a tree for a while, and then go their separate ways again. The meeting of all living beings must likewise inevitably end in their parting. This world passes away and disappoints the hopes of everlasting attachment. It is therefore unwise to have a sense of ownership for people who are united with us as in a dream - for a short while only and not in fact.3 — Huston Smith

The truth is, what I learned this year is that life is hard ... Good people die for no reason. Little kids get sick. The people that are supposed to love you end up leaving. — Jennifer Weiner

The problem of finding a collection of "wise" men and leaving the government to them is thus an insoluble one. That is the ultimate reason for democracy. — Bertrand Russell

If it's of any comfort, B. J. Casey and her colleagues speculate that there's an evolutionary reason why Kirk rather than Spock so often emerges the victor in the quest for control over an adolescent's mind. Human beings need incentives to leave the family nest. Leaving home is dangerous; leaving home is hard. It requires courage and learning lessons of independence. It may even require a purposeful recklessness. — Jennifer Senior

The white-haired wonder leading what had to, by now, be a blocks-long parade must've finally turned on her hearing aid. Because she finally pulled into the United Methodist Church parking lot, praise God, leaving the rest of us free to party until some other octogenarian found it necessary to take to the streets after dark. In Ohio, old folks know better than to drive at night. Yet another reason Cleveland rocks. — Jennifer Rardin

How could the colonists starve in the midst of plenty? One reason was that the English feared leaving Jamestown to fish, because Powhatan's fighters were waiting outside the colony walls. A second reason was that a startlingly large proportion of the colonists were gentlemen, a status defined by not having to perform manual labor. — Charles C. Mann

It has been said that the only reason for leaving England is to give yourself the pleasure of coming back to it. — Patience Strong

You don't need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn't mean you're incapable of real love or that you'll never love anyone else again. It doesn't mean you're morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That's all. Be brave enough to break your own heart. — Cheryl Strayed

Why do any of us do what we don't want to do?" I don't respond, unsure what answer he's looking for.
He smiles, but it's sad. "Because we're afraid of what will happen if we don't."
I always considered fear to be a motivator or a reason not to do something, but I never considered it a reason to continue an ongoing behavior. This opens a vault full or questions about my own life. I've always assumed I'm afraid to engage in activities because I'm afraid of what might happen. But maybe I'm looking at it all wrong. Maybe I should be asking myself if I'm really afraid of leaving what makes me comfortable. — Denise Grover Swank

Under 'Reasons for Leaving Last Job', never give the real reason, unless it's money or ambition. — Anthony Bourdain

It is contrary to reason and experience to suppose that there can be any real check to brutality, consistent with leaving the victim still in the power of the executioner. — John Stuart Mill

As the Italian proverb says, 'Translators are traitors.' At some level we all are traitors to the text, saying a little less than the Greek says (thus leaving some meaning behind) or a little more (when trying to clarify). Under- and over-translation.

A good reason to learn Greek and Hebrew, and an even better reason to read more than one translation. — William D. Mounce

We ought to recognize that our greatest battle is not with one another but with our pain, our problems, and our flaws. To be hurt, yet forgive. To do wrong, but forgive yourself. To depart from this world leaving only love. This is the reason you walk. — Wab Kinew

On land I have too much time, I'm overwhelmed by a boredom that eventually paralyzes me. But this isn't really the main reason for my suicide. Even if I had another chance to go to sea, I know that for a long time I've been storing up something I can only define as a weariness with being alive, with having to choose between one thing and another, with listening to people around me talk about things that basically don't interest them, that they really know nothing about. The foolishness of our fellow humans knows no bounds, my dear Gaviero. If it didn't sound absurd, I'd say I'm leaving because I can't stand the noise the living make. — Alvaro Mutis

Do you know that pain of leaving when you look back expecting to see a face waving goodbye at you but all you see is a dark abandoned corner?
There won't be any reason to return then.
All you can do is look ahead and not to stumble and fall on the pit ahead waiting for you. — Sanhita Baruah

My best friend Linda is leaving her husband just because he is unfaithful to her. That is no reason to leave the person. I feel like after that, you should stay with them and make sure that the rest of their life is sheer hell. — Roseanne Barr

There is a middle class in America for only one reason: organized labor. If not for organized labor, where would you find a job where you had some sense that you had a shot of leaving behind something better than you inherited?. — Joe Biden

For whatever reason I just remembered being six years old and my parents leaving the house and trusting me to be alone. I had an older sister, I think she was supposed to babysit me but she immediately ran across the street to her friend's house. — Kathleen Hanna

And I wished I could believe him. I wished with all that I had. And when you're eleven, you're on the cusp between still believing wishing worked if you wanted something hard enough and understanding the world is teeth and sharp edges. I wished. I did. I promise you with all that I have that I did.
But I knew the teeth. The sharp edges. And they were bigger than wishing. I was only eleven, but I was the product of my upbringing too.
Maybe that's why I was able to be the one to leave. Maybe I'd been looking for a reason and latched on to the first one that came, no matter how hard it was. If there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that it's easier to leave someone before they leave you. Because eventually, everyone leaves.
It's inevitable. — T.J. Klune

If souls survive death for all eternity, how can the heavens hold them all? Or for that matter, how can the earth hold all the bodies that have been buried in it? The answers are the same. Just as on earth, with the passage of time, decaying and transmogrified corpses make way for the newly dead, so souls released into the heavens, after a season of flight, begin to break up, burn, and be absorbed back into the womb of reason, leaving room for souls just beginning to fly. This is the answer for those who believe that souls survive death. — Marcus Aurelius

I'm going to ask you a question," I said. "And I want an answer this time, no dodging and no playing cryptic. Is the reason you're leaving because you need to look for Nicholas, or because you want to get away from me?"
Daniel looked me square in the eye, unblinking. "The first thing accomplishes the second, now doesn't it? — Angela B. Wade

For now, he wanted to help Ena escape the dragon fae king's wrath. As soon as Prince Grotto learned what she was about to do in the worst way. The reason she was in this mess was because Brett had helped take Princess Alicia prisoner. As Alicia's reward for saving the Princess, Alicia's grandfather had declared that Ena would wed Alicia's cousin. He was a dangerous dragon fae. Sure Ena would become a Princess if she were to wed Prince Grotto. Brett also knew that the fae intended to use her for her special skills and terminate her when she proved useless. Brett wasn't sure how to help Ena move her gold and staff to somewhere safe. Hopefully, in the Hawk Fae kingdom. They didn't have U-Haul trucks in the fae world. She was a dragon and that meant she wasn't leaving without her horde of treasure. — Terry Spear

If I died now," he said, "you would hardly remember me when you are my age."
He said it for no apparent reason, and the angel of death hovered for a moment in the cool shadows of the office and flew out again through the window, leaving a trail of feathers fluttering in his wake, but the boy did not see them. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Leaving him and going out into the paint-fuming air I had the feeling that I had been talking beyond myself, had used words and expressed attitudes not my own, that I was in the grip of some alien personality lodged deep within me. Like the servant about whom I'd read in psychology class who, during a trance, had recited pages of Greek philosophy which she had overheard one day while she worked. It was as though I were acting out a scene from some crazy movie. Or perhaps I was catching up with myself and had put into words feelings which I had hitherto suppressed. Or was it, I thought, starting up the walk, that I was no longer afraid? I stopped, looking at the buildings down the bright street slanting with sun and shade. I was no longer afraid. Not of important men, not of trustees and such; for knowing now that there was nothing which I could expect from them, there was no reason to be afraid. Was that it? I felt light-headed, my ears were ringing. I went on. — Ralph Ellison

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
Almost everything
all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure
these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. — Steve Jobs

His principle can be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world. For this reason he fires bullets at his best friends; for this reason he arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own property; for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to his own home; and for this reason he has been in the habit of taking the woman whom he loved with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak) at schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic elopement. He seriously sought by a perpetual recapture of his bride to keep alive the sense of her perpetual value, and the perils that should be run for her sake. — G.K. Chesterton

Mammy was soon asleep, leaving Laila with dueling emotions: reassured that Mammy meant to live on, stung that she was not the reason. She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed. — Khaled Hosseini

The behaviour of the English people I had run into was making it very difficult to nail down a theory that the reason my trip so far had been such a bizarre success, was that Irish people were crazy. One Englishman had spent a morning on the telephone trying to organise a helicopter to take me out to an island, when a boat was leaving only a few yards away, and here was another, making a two-hour round trip for no reason other than to lend a helping hand. Two of the more eccentric pieces of behaviour hadn't been performed by the Irish, but by my fellow countrymen. However, both Andy and Tony had embraced wholeheartedly a love of the Irish way of living life. — Tony Hawks

I once left Istanbul in the purse of a preacher from Edirne who was going to Manisa. On the way, we happened to be attacked by thieves. One of them shouted, "Your money or your life!" Panicking, the miserable preacher hid us in his asshole. This spot, which he assumed was the safest, smelled worse than the mouth of the garlic lover and was much less comfortable. But the situation quickly grew worse when instead of "Your money or your life!" the thieves began to shout "Your honor or your life!" Lining up, they took him by turns. I don't dare describe the agony we suffered in that cramped hole. It's for this reason that I dislike leaving Istanbul.

(~I am a gold coin) — Orhan Pamuk

Haven't we all heard some irritating person saying that if so-and-so is elected, then he/she is absolutely definitely leaving the country? There must be some reason why it is mainly liberals who tend to say this, but the chief thing to note about the promise is that it is usually an empty one. — Christopher Hitchens

There is a sense of danger in leaving what you know, even if what you know isn't much. These mill towns with their narrow lanes and often narrow minds were all I really knew and I feared that if I left it behind, I would lose it and not find anything to replace it. The other reason I didn't want to go was because I wanted to be the kind of person who stays, who builds a stable and predictable life. But I wasn't one of the people, nor would I ever be.
I had a vision for my life. It wasn't clear, but it was beautiful and involved leaving my history and my poverty behind me. I wasn't happy about who I was or where I was, but I didn't worry about it. It didn't define me. We're always in the making. God always has us on his anvil, melting, bending and shaping us for another purpose.
It was time to change, to find a new purpose. — John William Tuohy

The reason for leaving sometimes is to return. Simply to return. — Yrsa Daley-Ward

Dhikr is the reason for the life of the heart and leaving it is the reason for its death. — Ahmad Ibn ?Ajiba

There is no wrong suffering. There is imaginary, sham, feigned, simulated, pretended suffering. But the assertion that someone suffers for the right or wrong reason presupposes a divine, all-penetrating judgment able to distinguish historically obsolete forms of suffering from those in our time, instead of leaving this decision to the sufferers themselves. — Dorothee Solle

If heaven is the reason and dieing is the door, than why aren't we all leaving what's the drama for? — Ralston Bowles

Dying for the world is not noble in anyway but a disgrace for the rest of the world itself, for those that don't do absolutely anything to support, help or even bleed. It's like going to war alone, while our friends cheer and applaud from the distance. It's not fun and doesn't make me proud in any way. Most so-called spiritual people in this world, are not spiritual, they think they are but they're braindead, they are living their own fantasies, their own Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings Stories, but not truly bleeding for life. And so, it's quite interesting when my friends do all they can to stop me from leaving them, from changing country, while at the same time, they give me no reason to justify being attached to them. — Robin Sacredfire

You see how I live: shadows and silence, leaving things as I find them because I have no reason to disturb them. But there are things that I have known, even though I never wished to know them and cannot give them a name. — Thomas Ligotti

Eric, I'm going to pay you back for leaving me." She smoothed her dress. "You understand?" "Yes," he said, and walked into the kitchen. "I'll devote my life to it," Kathy said, from the bedroom. "Now I have a reason for living. It's wonderful to have a purpose at last; it's thrilling. After all these pointless ugly years with you. God, it's like being born all over again." "Lots of luck," he said. — Philip K. Dick

I don't believe in leaving a scene in because it was really hard to shoot, or because it's the reason you took the movie, or because you always wanted to work with an actor ... If it's not making the movie work, get rid of it. — Barry Sonnenfeld

Any considerable number of the people believe the Constitution to be good, why do they not sign it themselves, and make laws for, and administer them upon, each other; leaving all other persons (who do not interfere with them) in peace? Until they have tried the experiment for themselves, how can they have the face to impose the Constitution upon, or even to recommend it to, others? Plainly the reason for absurd and inconsistent conduct is that they want the Constitution, not solely for any honest or legitimate use it can be of to themselves or others, but for the dishonest and illegitimate power it gives them over the persons and properties of others. But for this latter reason, all their eulogiums on the Constitution, all their exhortations, and all their expenditures of money and blood to sustain it, would be wanting. — Lysander Spooner

I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Immediately, I amended the thought. Watching my mother die and having to live without her, that was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Leaving Paul and destroying our marriage and life as I knew it for the simple and inexplicable reason that I felt I had to - that had been hard as well. But hiking the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard. — Cheryl Strayed

That's exactly the reason I'm leaving RCR because you've got those punk-ass kids coming up. They've got no respect for what they do in this sport and they've had everything fed to them with a spoon. — Kevin Harvick

I have had the following conversation on innumerable occasions with young men of about 20 who have been unemployed since leaving school, and whose general educational level is outlined above: 'Have you thought of improving your education?' 'No.' 'Why not?' 'There's no point. There are no jobs.' 'Could there be any other reason to get educated?' 'No. — Theodore Dalrymple

In every country where man is free to think and to speak, difference of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason; but these differences, when permitted, as in this happy country, to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing clouds overspreading our land transiently, and leaving our horizon more bright and serene. — Thomas Jefferson

The reason I can't follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everyone blind. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Ian!" she cried, afraid to believe it. "I don't want you to ever regret that you married me."
He smiled, and his fingertips caressed her cheeks. "Regret it? How could I?" You are my passionate
Italian wife. You are the woman who is going to give me children and whose bed I intend to sleep in
every night. You're the reason I'll wake up every morning with a smile on my face. I love you, I will be in
love with you every day of my life, and the only day I'm leaving you is the day they put me in the ground. — Laura Lee Guhrke

He always maintained that we fear something because we recognize it as fearsome through rational inferences, and that only the reason had any power; the heart had none. While I ate well and drank well, he kept demonstrating to me the advantages of reason... In striving after the positive, the poor man had argued away all life's splendour, all the sunbeams, all the faith and all the flowers, leaving nothing but the cold, positive grave. — Heinrich Heine

Librarians are serious people, seldomgiven to idle jocularity. The reason for this, I believe, is because we are overwhelmed by the enormous number of good books waiting to be read, leaving little time for frivolity. My personal list of must-read books presents a daunting challenge; I can't even imagine the pressure our head librarian must be under. — Lynn Austin

To drown a river beneath its own impounded water, by damming, is to kill what it was and to settle for something else. When the damming happens without good reason ... then it's a tragedy of diminishment for the whole planet, a loss of one more wild thing, leaving Earth just a little flatter and tamer and simpler and uglier than before. — David Quammen

We can't all leave this country, Bijan had told me-this is our home. The world is a large place, my magician had said when I went to him with my woes. You can write and teach wherever you are. You will be read more and heard better, in fact, once you are over there. To go or not to go? In the long run, it's all very personal, my magician reasoned. I always admired your former colleague's honesty, he said. Which former colleague? Dr. A, the one who said his only reason for leaving was because he liked to drink beer freely. I am getting sick of people who cloak their personal flaws and desires in the guise of patriotic fervor. They stay because they have no means of living anywhere else, because if they leave, they won't be the big shots they are over here; but they talk about sacrifice for the homeland. And then those who do leave claim they've gone in order to criticize and expose the regime. Why all these justifications? — Azar Nafisi