Quotes & Sayings About Leaving Good Things Behind

Finn told me once, as we sat on the porch watching the sun go down, that one thing he remembered our mom telling him was that life sometimes gives you a tiny moment of peace when you need it most. And that you had to be careful and look out for it or you'd miss it. He'd said it just as the last sliver of the sun dipped below the horizon, leaving a flaming pick summer sky behind. We sat quiet in the still heat, and I'd thought I understood what he meant then, because it felt so good and safe to be sitting there with him next to me. Now though, I understood it with a depth that made me want to laugh and cry at the same time, and I wished more than anything I could tell him. — Jessi Kirby

I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and I'm breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed in my life. — Lauren Oliver

Thoughts Are Things I hold it true that thoughts are things; They're endowed with bodies and breath and wings: And that we send them forth to fill The world with good results, or ill. That which we call our secret thought Speeds forth to earth's remotest spot, Leaving its blessings or its woes Like tracks behind it as it goes. We build our future, thought by thought, For good or ill, yet know it not. Yet so the universe was wrought. Thought is another name for fate; Choose then thy destiny and wait, For love brings love and hate brings hate. Henry Van Dyke — Bob Proctor

I Was Always Leaving"

I was always leaving, I was
about to get up and go, I was
on my way, not sure where.
Somewhere else. Not here.
Nothing here was good enough.

It would be better there, where I
was going. Not sure how or why.
The dome I cowered under
would be raised, and I would be released
into my true life. I would meet there

the ones I was destined to meet.
They would make an opening for me
among the flutes and boulders,
and I would be taken up. That this
might be a form of death

did not occur to me. I only know
that something held me back,
a doubt, a debt, a face I could not
leave behind. When the door
fell open, I did not go through. — Jean Nordhaus

And then we're kissing. His lips are soft and leave mine tingling. I close my eyes, and in the darkness behind them I see beautiful blooming things, flowers spinning like snowflakes, and hummingbirds beating the same rhythm as my heart. I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free. His other hand pushes my hair from my face, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and Im breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed. — Lauren Oliver

I love the word 'fantasy' ... but I love it for the almost infinite room it gives an author to play: an infinite playroom, of a sort, in which the only boundaries are those of the imagination. I do not love it for the idea of commercial fantasy. Commercial fantasy, for good or for ill, tends to drag itself through already existing furrows, furrows dug by J. R. R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard, leaving a world of stories behind it, excluding so much. There was so much fine fiction, fiction allowing free reign to the imagination of the author, beyond the shelves of genre. That was what we wanted to read. — Neil Gaiman

He knows I have a soft spot for RLS and not just because he was sick or because we have the same initials but because there's something impossibly romantic about him and because before he started writing Treasure Island he first drew a map of an unknown island and because he believed in invisible places and was one of the last writers to know what the word adventure means. I could give you a hundred reasons why RLS is The Man. Look in his The Art of Writing (Book 683, Chatto & Windus, London) where he says that no living people have had the influence on him as strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. Or when he says his greatest friend is D'Artagnan from The Three Musketeers (Book 5, Regent Classics, London). RLS said: 'When I suffer in mind, stories are my refuge, I take them like opium.' And when you read Treasure Island you feel you are casting off. That's the thing. You are casting off and leaving behind the ordinary dullness of the world. — Niall Williams

But see, the incredible thing about people is that we forget," Ray continued. "Time passes and somehow the hope creeps back and sooner or later someone else comes along all over again. We go through our lives like that, and either we just accept the lesser relationship
it may not be total understanding, but it's pretty good
or we keep trying for the perfect union, trying and failing, leaving behind us a trail of broken hearts, our own included. In the end, we die as alone as we were born, having struggled to understand others, to make ourselves understood, but having failed in what we once imagined was possible. — Nicole Krauss

The children nodded in agreement, and rose from the table. Leaving their dirty breakfast dishes behind, which is not a good thing to do in general but perfectly acceptable in the face of an emergency. — Lemony Snicket

Immortality is to live your life doing good things, and leaving your mark behind. — Brandon Lee

Red seeped into Nick's face. "Elizabeth and I were married two weeks ago, " he explained to Samantha.
Laughter crinkled the skin around Wyatt's eyes. "Nick built her a house before the wedding. I never saw one go up so fast in my life."
Nick's flush deepened. "It's not completely finished yet. Elizabeth just refused to wait any longer."
There was a touch of wonder in his tone.
Emotion welled into Samantha's throat and she swallowed. She remembered how Juan Carlos had acted those first weeks they were married. Proud, happy as not quite believing his good fortune. What a special time that had been. How she missed him.
"I wish you happiness in your marriage, Mr. Sanders," she said.
"Call me, Nick, Ma'am." The red receded from his cheeks, leaving behind a glow. "Thank you, I'll pass your good wishes to Elizabeth. — Debra Holland

She must have already forgiven him for leaving her behind. Girls were good at coloring in those disappointing blank spots. I thought of the night before, her exaggerated moans. Poor Sasha. She — Emma Cline

I've never been very good at leaving things behind. I tried, but I have always left fragments of myself there too, like seeds awaiting their chance to grow. — Joanne Harris

Life is smoke, plain and simple; we just fool ourselves that it's otherwise. All it takes is one good gust and we float away and disappear, leaving behind only the scent of our passing in the form of memories. — Cody McFadyen

I don't believe we return to haunt or comfort the living or anything, but I think something becomes of us." "But you fear oblivion." "Sure, I fear earthly oblivion. But, I mean, not to sound like my parents, but I believe humans have souls, and I believe in the conservation of souls. The oblivion fear is something else, fear that I won't be able to give anything in exchange for my life. If you don't live a life in service of a greater good, you've gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won't get either a life or a death that means anything." I just shook my head. "What?" he asked. "Your obsession with, like, dying for something or leaving behind some great sign of your heroism or whatever. It's just weird." "Everyone wants to lead an extraordinary life. — John Green

The critical spirit rises up against itself and consumes its form. But instead of coming out of this process greater and purified, it devours itself in a kind of self-cannibalism and takes a morose pleasure in annihilating itself. Hyper-criticism eventuates in self-hatred, leaving behind it only ruins. A new dogma of demolition is born out of the rejection of dogmas. Thus we euro-americans are supposed to have only one obligation: endlessly atoning for what we have inflicted on other parts of humanity. How can we fail to see that this leads us to live off self-denunciation while taking a strange pride in being the worst? Self-denigration is all too clearly a form of indirect self-glorification. Evil can come only from us; other people are motivated by sympathy, good will, candor. This is the paternalism of the guilty conscience: seeing ourselves as the kings of infamy is still a way of staying on the crest of history. — Pascal Bruckner

Each time I say good-bye to a place I like, I feel like I am leaving a part of me behind. I guess whether we choose to travel as much as Marco Polo did or stay in the same spot from cradle to grave, life is a sequence of births and deaths. Moments are born and moments die. For new experiences to come to light, old ones need to wither away. — Elif Shafak

When you die, you want to die a beautiful death. But what makes for a beautiful death is not always clear. To die without suffering, to die without causing trouble to others, to die leaving behind a beautiful corpse, to die looking good -- it's not clear what is meant by a beautiful death. Does a beautiful death refer to the way you die or the condition of your corpse after death? This distinction is not clear. And when you start to stretch the image of death to the method of how to dispose of your corpse as befitting your image of death, everything grows completely out of hand. — Shinmon Aoki

No, I don't have any problems leaving disappointments behind. I've had lots of good days at golf and a few disappointments, so you never know what's around the corner. — Lee Westwood

Those who could - generally the well educated, wealthy, or well connected - left, leaving behind communities of poor people. These remaining folks were the "truly disadvantaged" - unable to find good jobs on their own and surrounded by communities that offered little in the way of connections or social support. Wilson's — J.D. Vance

Rumors. I'll not say more on the subject. Cheese in your eggs?" "Yes, please." * * * With Kendra gone, Seth got out the equipment he had bundled in his towel, including his emergency kit and the jar he had smuggled from the pantry. The jar was now empty, washed clean in the bathroom sink. Taking out his pocket knife, Seth used the awl to punch holes in the lid. Unscrewing the top, he gathered bits of grass, flower petals, a twig, and a pebble, and placed them in the jar. Then he wandered across the garden from the pool, leaving the skimmer behind. If skill failed, he would resort to cunning. He found a good spot not far from a fountain, then took the small mirror from his — Brandon Mull

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

An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind ... Something incredibly important - .. - had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence — Haruki Murakami

All my life I have been trained by that siren. Before I could walk I knew the siren meant death. It meant somehow the fences had been breached and the Unconsecrated were shuffling among us. It meant grab weapons, move to the platforms and pull up the ladders - even if it necessitated leaving the living behind.
Growing up, my mother used to tell me about how in the beginning, when her own great-great-great-grandmother was a child, that siren would wail almost constantly as the village was bombarded with the Unconsecrated. But then the fences has been fortified, the Guardians had formed and time had passed with the Unconsecrated dwindling to the point that I couldn't remember a time in the past few years when that siren had wailed and it had not been a drill. I know that in my life there have been breaches but I also know that I am very good at blocking out the memories that serve me no purpose. I can fear the Unconsecrated well enough without them. — Carrie Ryan

Leaving America means renouncing your citizenship, moving out of the country and leaving family and friends behind. You can retain your citizenship if you like, but you'll still be away from loved ones and still be paying taxes. You lose all the good stuff about America and have to keep all the bad stuff. — Michael Arrington

I believe that good investors are successful not because of their IQ, but because they have an investing discipline. But, what is more disciplined than a machine? A well-researched machine can make many average investors redundant, leaving behind only the really good human investors with exceptional intuition and skill. — Stanley Druckenmiller

It was dusk when I drove back into downtown Detroit. I was annoyed by how much traffic there was at that hour of the day. Being a guy with two good legs who doesn't mind ankling, I hadn't realized the car situation had gotten so bad in the city. I almost had two smack-ups with people who refused to yield to me. Then I bumped someone from behind, intentionally, at the new flashing traffic light on Jefferson. The guy in the car had refused to move - he just sat there waiting because the light was red. After I bumped him (not that hard), the squirt hopped out of his car red in the face, and I must admit the sight of him gave me my first laugh in two days. He said, "Can't you see it's a red light?" I told him a red light is just a suggestion. Then I pressed the gas lightly and started pushing his car further out into the intersection whilst he stood there in disbelief. "Better get back in, your car is leaving without you," I said. — W.K. Berger

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