Quotes & Sayings About Leaving Life

As Linda says again and again, the simple life isn't the easy life. Each soul here is enormously courageous. The conflicts in their lives have not been trivial. It's taken most of them a great deal of time, introspection and explanation to arrive at their chosen sanity. They are intrepid explorers, leaving the security of the known for the hoped-for brighter tomorrow. — Linda Breen Pierce

Every plan in which we participate has one constant, ourselves. Not that we are always the same, but that we are always part of the plan. All else comes and goes: friends, parents, possessions, conditions, situations, and associates, leaving only us, ourselves. — Wu Wei

There are times when you see how ridiculous is this life, how ludicrous it is, you know, leaving your house every morning and being followed by paparazzi. — Johnny Depp

I'm sure we all have dreams of leaving at some time in our lives, but when we reach the bottom, most of us go running home. — Deborah Curtis

The gospel of Jesus Christ is all about people. It's about leaving the ninety and nine and going into the wilderness after those who are lost. It's about bearing one another's burdens, with the ultimate burden anyone can bear being walking through this life without light. — Sheri L. Dew

It is important to feel the anger without judging it, without attempting to find meaning in it. It may take many forms: anger at the health-care system, at life, at your loved one for leaving. Life is unfair. Death is unfair. Anger is a natural reaction to the unfairness of loss. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Jesus came to give us life without leaving out any of life in the giving. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

He shook his head in disbelief. He would cook and take her to his place. He was about to break two of his own rules. Number one was to never create the intimacy of cooking for a woman he was seeing, and the other one, to never take her to his place. They had the nasty habit of leaving personal things behind and making his house an extension of their own. He had no other alternative - she shared her place with her brother - but somehow he was enjoying doing it for Mary.
Perfect Match — Marcia Weber Martins

To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself
that is the first duty of the educator. — Maria Montessori

Consider when, on a voyage, your ship is anchored; if you go on shore to get water you may along the way amuse yourself with picking up a shellish, or an onion. However, your thoughts and continual attention ought to be bent towards the ship, waiting for the captain to call on board; you must then immediately leave all these things, otherwise you will be thrown into the ship, bound neck and feet like a sheep. So it is with life. If, instead of an onion or a shellfish, you are given a wife or child, that is fine. But if the captain calls, you must run to the ship, leaving them, and regarding none of them. But if you are old, never go far from the ship: lest, when you are called, you should be unable to come in time. — Epictetus

It's true that the hatred is still there. But it doesn't change anything. Our obligations are the same - to live and sanctify all life with our own. To participate in the world the best we know how, leaving it a better place than we found it. To raise families and teach our children to value life. What more can we do? Should we refuse to live because of the threat of death hanging over us? We've always been under sentence of death. Every generation that lives out its days in peace is a victory. Every day we live is a victory. — Ovadya Ben Malka

As we had no part of our will on our entrance into this life, we should not presume to any on our leaving it, but soberly learn to will which He wills. — William Drummond

Have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life. — Charles Dickens

She had realized something over the recent months: it didn't matter who you were or what you'd accomplished in life; none of that mattered when tragedy struck. You had no pull; no power. You had no choice. There was nothing to gamble with; nothing to do to put the odds in your favor. You were there and then you were gone, leaving those around you to realize how insignificant they all really were; leaving them to try to pick up the destroyed pieces. — Lindy Zart

There the book fell, and it seemed to Conway that an invisible hand had struck it out of his. He rose, leaving the journal lying open as it had fallen, and hurried from the room. A gloom filled the passage and the house was full of horror, resounding with the sufferings of its past inhabitants and dripping with their tears. His hand closed upon the damp balustrade, and the rotten wood exuded moisture like a sponge. A minute later the owner, but not the master, of the Strath was speeding through the garden, his being reaching out to find an affinity, as embryonic life must grope into the darkness for its promised soul. — Ernest G. Henham

15 "probable illnesses" that are afflicting the curial body, including those of feeling "indispensable;" of excessive work habits and not enough time to rest and recharge before the Lord; of a spiritual hardening of hearts; of over-planning and not leaving room for the Holy Spirit to function; of a lack of collaboration; of living autonomously while forgetting salvation history; of vanity; of living a double life; of the "terrorism of gossip"; of egotistic opportunism; of indifference; of pessimism; of materialism; of cliquishness; and of the allures of power. — Anonymous

The side effect of expanding consciousness is that negativity starts to evaporate; it goes away like darkness when you turn on a light. Many students have so much torment, stress, depression, sorrow and hate in them these days, but then they get this technique and the negativity starts to go away. They start to feel good because the torment is leaving. Their health gets better and they get happier, their comprehension and their ability to focus grow, their grades go up and a joy for life grows; all of which comes from within. — David Lynch

To evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and a resurrection. That's the basic motif of the universal hero's journey - leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition. — Joseph Campbell

I say - I don't mind betting this is the most popular thing Campbell ever did. Nothing in life became him like the leaving of it, eh, what? — Dorothy L. Sayers

I know absolutely nothing about where I'm going. I'm fine with that. I'm happy about it. Before, I had nothing. I had no life, no friends, and no family really, and I didn't really care. I had nothing, and nothing to lose, and then I knew loss. What I cared about was gone; it was all lost. Now I have everything to gain; everything is a clean slate. It's all blank pages waiting to be written on. It's all about going forward. It's all about uncertainty and possibilities. — Gregory Galloway

Forgiveness is not an easy chore to undertake, nor is it for the weak. I forgive you, God, for leaving me out here to figure out all of this on my own. Yet forgiveness is the daily minimum requirement for a healthy, fulfilling, and meaningful life. I forgive my mind for believing that what was is what always has to be. — Iyanla Vanzant

Things like taking a few dollars out of a paycheck, putting it into savings, and leaving it there. Or doing a few minutes of exercise every day - and not skipping it. Or reading ten pages of an inspiring, educational, life-changing book every day. Or taking a moment to tell someone how much you appreciate them, and doing that consistently, every day, for months and years. Little things that seem insignificant in the doing, yet when compounded over time yield very big results. You could call these "little virtues" or "success habits." I call them simple daily disciplines. Simple productive actions, repeated consistently over time. That, in a nutshell, is the slight edge. — Jeff Olson

I has always thought the world was good, that everyone could find the beauty in themselves. Everyone could honor, and forgive, and live a full and gorgeous life, even when the hands they'd been dealt weren't easy.
But what Davenport had been born into had taken so much from her, leaving her with just the wickedest and the worst. Her father had given her life, and then taken every scrap of joy or freedom, and even now that he was dead, all he had left her with was a deep, abiding hatred for what she was.
Her power was tremendous, working through her, but it had gone to rot, and without someone to help her and to love her, she did not know how to take it back. — Brenna Yovanoff

I complain about my life. I used to complain about boys or not being able to drive or failing a test. Now I complain about boys, not being able to drive, and leaving home so much. — Gabourey Sidibe

But leaving is just something that happens in life. We all do it someday, one way or another. There's worse things than going away with the taste of love still fresh in our mouths. — Jenny Wingfield

Hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are. Being one place and wanting to be somewhere else ... Wanting life to be different from what it is. That's also called leaving without leaving. Dying before you die. It's as if there is a part of you that so rails against being shattered by love that you shatter yourself first. (p. 44) — Geneen Roth

War did not come like a hurricane, Rorimer realized, destroying everything in its path. It came like a tornado, touching down in patches, taking with it one life while leaving the next person unharmed. — Robert M. Edsel

No stress, no fights. I'm leaving it all behind. No tears, no time to cry. Just making the most of life. — Mariah Carey

Never confuse being righteous vs. being arrogant. An arrogant person will see a person lashing out because they were hurt by them and they will not try to mend the situation or even understand their point of view. They take the superior viewpoint that others are not worthy of their time because they believe they are right and those angry with them are wrong. A righteous person doesn't care who is right or wrong. God asked them to love everyone. They make their life about leaving people in peace, not pain. — Shannon L. Alder

Know this ... she does not want to become the shadow of her husband, but the moon of his life, for when she appears, her presence is powerful in all her mysterious ways ... she comes and goes so discreetly, waning and waxing whilst forever leaving her presence behind, reminding you that you cannot survive life without her ... — Jemina Akhtar

The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the treas and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. — F Scott Fitzgerald

She had insisted on keeping the doors and windows shut, as if a sealed chamber could prevent death from entering, or life from leaving her. — Peter Cameron

To move foward, you have to leave the past behind — Susannah Cahalan

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live. — Alain De Botton

In the darkest hour of winter, when the starlings had all flown away, Gretel Samuelson fell in love. It happened the way things are never supposed to happen in real life, like a sledgehammer, like a bolt from out of the blue. One minute she was a seventeen year-old senior in high school waiting for a Sicilian pizza to go; the next one she was someone whose whole world had exploded, leaving her adrift in the Milky Way, so far from earth she was walking on stars. — Alice Hoffman

William to Paris: "I always figured you for the in and out type. Kinda stealthy, leaving the girl wondering whether you'd been there or not. But I didn't know you were quite this stealthy."
(Paris) "Nice to know you've considered my sex life"
"Hasn't everyone?"
"Screw you"
"Again, hasn't everyone? — Gena Showalter

But I was strong enough. I made it through the misery, until misery became normality. I find it ironic that when I finally became okay with the life I created inside 6E - that is when I ended up leaving it. — Alessandra Torre

I stood on the old ferry dock and watched the icy sludge slide by. Patches of white ice slipped through, but mostly it was grey slush, sluggish and heavy looking. The air was sharp and clear, one of the few benefits of the evacuation and reducing temperature, the centuries-old odour of industry and modern life frozen and discarded, leaving a crispness previously only found among the peaks of mountain ranges. On the far bank stood the ruins of Birkenhead, where the riots had been particularly bad and the fires that followed were allowed to rage out of control. It had taken weeks for the conflagration to finally die, leaving behind soot-blackened husks of buildings, grotesque sculptures of melted glass and metal and more dead than anyone ever cared to count. — Neil Davies

Leaving things behind and starting again is a way of coping with difficulties. I learnt very early in my life that I was able to leave a place and still remain myself. — Rachel Cusk

Whether the teacher is authoritarian, undisciplined, competent, incompetent, serious, irresponsible, involved, a lover of people and of life, cold, angry with the world, bureaucratic, excessively rational, or whatever else, he/she will not pass through the classroom without leaving his or her mark on the students. — Paulo Freire

Anyone who's lived in Manhattan all his life always feels torn whenever he leaves it. There's the satisfaction of breaking free, for a time. But that's balanced heavily by the feeling of leaving your whole life behind, and to see it from a distance. — Rachel Cohn

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

Form the habit early in life of leaving your business at the store or wherever you may be employed. Never carry it home to mar the peace of your family; if you do, you will soon drive out the sunshine. — Orison Swett Marden

What will life be like without her? I am dreadfully sad she is leaving. What if she just disappears; gets tired of all this trouble at home? What if she leaves me too? How heavy is a dresser when you're the only one pushing it against the door? I feel truly on my own. — Mira Bartok

The simpler explanation,' Emerson with a distinct uvular component in his Sigh, 'may be that none of you people has ever known a moment of Transcendence in his life, nor would recognize one did it walk up and bit yese in the Arse, - and in the long sorry Silence, grows the suspicion that Jesuits are but the latest instance of a true Christian passion evaporated away, leaving no more than the usual hollow desires for Authority and mindless O-bedience. — Thomas Pynchon

If I die tonight it will be with every single thing unfinished (like, I suppose, any other night), and yet, what a gift to die on the verge of tears. I have spent my life trying to understand the way this rock and this ache go together, why a granite peak is more dramatic half dressed in clouds ... ,why sunlight under fog is better than the sum of its parts, why my best days and my worst days are always the same days, why (often) leaving seems like the only solution to the predicament of loving (each other) the world. — Pam Houston

In theory, sure, Gregor could still go home. Pack up his three-year-old sister, Boots, get his mom out of the hospital, where she was recovering from the plague, and have his bat, Ares, fly them back up to the laudry room of their appartment building in New York City. Ares, his bond, who saved his life numerous times and who had had nothing but suffering since he had met Gregor. He tried to imagine the parting. "Well, Ares, it's been great. I'm heading home now. I know by leaving I'm completely dooming to annihilation everbody who's helped me down here, but I'm really not up for this whole war thing anymore. So, fly you high, you know?" Like that would ever happen. — Suzanne Collins

High Pasture
Come up
come up: in the dim vale below
The autumn mist muffles the fading trees,
But on this keen hill-pasture, though the breeze
Has stretched the thwart boughs bare to meet the snow,
Night is not, autumn is not
but the flow
Of vast, ethereal and irradiate seas,
Poured from the far world's flaming boundaries
In waxing tides of unimagined glow.
And to that height illumined of the mind
he calls us still by the familiar way,
Leaving the sodden tracks of life behind,
Befogged in failure, chilled with love's decay
Showing us, as the night-mists upward wind,
How on the heights is day and still more day. — Edith Wharton

When the life of the nation was attempted, when the cause of liberty and human rights called for their aid, they rushed forth to rally under the banner they loved, with grand singleness of purpose and heroic devotion
leaving all behind them, to meet toil and danger, hunger, sickness, wounds, and death, for nothing but the sublime satisfaction of doing their duty to their country and to mankind. — Carl Schurz

I suppose the first big shift in my life was when, at the age of 8, my father left my mother, leaving her alone with two daughters to bring up. That taught me the importance of women being financially independent. You never know what might happen. — Cherie Blair

In a feast of fame and talks,
Scandal flashing, raising tongue and brows.
In a blast of bombing and power play,
Fear and death dig more revenge.

In a forgotten continent,
Famine and drought devour lives.
In an unfortunate eye of a rebelling weather,
Crashing homes, leaving many in devastation and desperation.

In a country shaking with violence,
Innocent victims cry for justice and peace.
In a home shaking with turmoil,
Humble patient, hiding voice wants to be heard.

In a tick of a second,
A new breathe of life beats!
To belong in this world.
Constantly changing, decaying or improving?

In a snap of innovation:
Life goes big leap!
Regression somewhere unseen,
But felt in a slow, long run. — Angelica Hopes

If ... God highly exalted Christ because He humbled Himself, suffered dishonour, was tempted and endured a shameful cross and death for our sake, how will He save, glorify and raise us up if we neither choose humility, nor show love to our fellows, nor gain our souls by enduring temptation (cf. Lk. 21:19), nor follow the saving Guide through the 'strait gate' and along the 'narrow way' leading to eternal life (Mt. 7:14)? To this end we were called, says Peter, the chief Apostle, ' Because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps' (I Pet. 2:21). — Gregory Palamas

The job has its grandeurs, yes. There is the exultation of arriving safely after a storm, the joy of gliding down out of the darkness of night or tempest toward a sun-drenched Alicante or Santiago; there is the swelling sense of returning to repossess one's place in life, in the miraculous garden of earth, where are trees and women and, down by the harbor, friendly little bars. When he has throttled his engine and is banking into the airport, leaving the somber cloud masses behind, what pilot does not break into song? — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

An emigres artistic problem: the numerically equal blocks of a lifetime are unequal in weight, depending on whether they comprise young or adult years. The adult years may be richer and more important for life and for creative activity both, but the subconscious, memory, language, all the understructure of creativity, are formed very early; for a doctor, that won't make problems, but for a novelist or a composer, leaving the place to which his imagination, his obsessions, and thus his fundamental themes are bound could make for a kind of ripping apart. He must mobilize all his powers, all his artists wiles, to turn the disadvantages of that situation to benefits.
[ ... ] Only returning to the native land after a long absence can reveal the substantial strangeness of the world and of existence. — Milan Kundera

[A]dventures befall the unadventurous as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result - and have been since at least the time of Odysseus - of the fatal act of leaving one's home, or trying to return to it again. All adventures happen in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one's home. As soon as you have crossed your doorstep or the county line, into that place where the structures, laws, and conventions of your upbringing no longer apply, where the support and approval (but also the disapproval and repression) of your family and neighbors are not to be had: then you have entered into adventure, a place of sorrow, marvels, and regret. — Michael Chabon

When I was a boy, playing at the beach, I remember a game I loved, which was an omen of my future life. I would dig a channel with high sides in the sand for the sea to fill. But when the water flooded the path I created for it with such violence that it destroyed everything in its way: my castles made of pebbles, my dikes of sand. It swept away everything, destroying it all, then disappeared, leaving me with a heavy heart, yet not daring to ask for pity, since the sea had only responded to my call. It's the same with love. You call out for it, you plan its course. The wave crashes into your heart, but it's so different from how you imagined it, so bitter and icy. — Irene Nemirovsky

Danny begins to walk fast and it strikes me that I don't know where we're ultimately headed. This bothers me. I'm calibrated for destination. It's partly why I've been imagining divinity as some sort of beam-me-up-Scotty experience. But maybe transcendence isn't about leaving. It's about being present. Life is a performance piece. Like dance and song, the art is in the process. Like hula and oli, the process is the prayer. — Leigh Ann Henion

Life a series of paths. To helping people. To hurting people. To leaving certain places and certain people behind. For better or worse. — Aaron Starmer

Goodbyes are on of the hardest things about life. One way or another people were always leaving ... Always moving on. — Karen Kingsbury

I am very sure that my children thrive on structure and need boundaries. I know my children need to know what time they are going to bed or how many more minutes until they are leaving for school, and so I have imposed a structure that allows them to know where they are all day long, every day in life. — Jessica Seinfeld

The absence of life is not the same as material privation: we will never again see the same soul occupying the same space. The world refers to them as pets, but that is what we do, not really what they are. Affection pays for itself in proportion to the love we offer, and if the love we lavished on him was any indication, we are inconsolable. The suffering is more on our side now, for he led an enormously happy and productive life, and we are left to remember and agonize. It is all wretchedness now. Grief is the currency for death, leaving us in emotional debt perhaps forever, but love is the tax we happily pay toward the investment of another's company, and we would all rather pay it and be happy and poor than be rich in a friendless life. He is gone, and we are now beholden to him, but we are so much happier for his having been here than we deserve to be.
On the death of Ted, beloved cat — Michelle Franklin

And in time, I must meet the same fate. Love, family, accomplishments - they are all torn away, leaving nothing. What is the worth of anything we do? The worth is in the act. Your worth halts when you surrender the will to change and experience life. But options are before you; choose one and dedicate yourself to it. — Christopher Paolini

Each soul or entity will and does return, or cycle, as does nature in its manifestations about man; thus leaving, making or presenting-as it were-those infallible, indelible truths that it -Life-is continuous. — Edgar Cayce

There are books which we read early in life, which sink into our consciousness and seem to disappear without leaving a trace. And then one day we find, in some summing-up of our life and put attitudes towards experience, that their influence has been enormous. — Anais Nin

As long as she is near or within his power to reach, he will be drawn to her, leaving less of him for others and that's why she had to leave. She knew, despite her own great desire, that there are consequences and responsibilities that are more important and life-altering than personal feelings. — Donna Lynn Hope

Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days - whatever there may be for the dust - the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence. — Lord Byron

Addiction" might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society. Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests in "the distant country," leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled. In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father's home. The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in "a distant country." It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Consumptive patients, with lungs incompetent to perform the duties of lungs, people with defective hearts that break down under excitement of the circulation, people with any constitutional flaw preventing the due fulfillment of the conditions of life are continually dying out and leaving behind those fit for the climate, food, and habits to which they are born ... And thus is the race kept free from vitiation. — Herbert Spencer

Those who have played a big part in one's life very rarely disappear from it suddenly for good. They return to it at odd moments ... before leaving it for good. — Marcel Proust

Life changes, people come and go and seasons never last.
Karen kingsbury # Leaving — Karen Kingsbury

The keys to the life of the heart lie in reflecting upon the Quran, being humble before Allah in secret, and leaving sins. — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

Then I started crying for it seemed to me then that life is nothing but people leaving. — Lee Smith

I arrived in Dallas two days before the party and planned on leaving the day after. I hated the city as much as I thought I would. All anyone could talk about were the Cowboys and their chances in the playoffs. Charlene was happy. Joe was not, or so it seemed to me, in spite of the fact that he had finally gotten exactly what he thought he wanted from a wife: she gave him an adorable boy, she did everything in their home including laundry, and most important, she did not embarrass him. Whenever I was alone with Joe during the two days I was there, Charlene would send her son into the room with us. The first time I carried him, Charlene made sure to mention how surprised she was that I had motherly instincts. She probably used the pronoun we more in one day than I have in my whole life. I did not blame her. Most plain women stake their claims clumsily. — Rabih Alameddine

Why do people fall in love if it means there is a chance of feeling this way? What the fuck is wrong with humans?! HUMANS ARE FUCKING SICK AND TWISTED! I mean, I get it - it feels good, you know? Being in love, being happy." Her body trembled as the tears fell faster than she could take breaths. "But when that magical rug is ripped out from under you, it takes all the happy and good feelings with it. And your heart? It just breaks. It breaks and it's unapologetic. It shatters into a million pieces, leaving you numb, blankly staring at the pieces because all your free will, all the common sense you once had in your life is gone. You gave up everything for this bullshit thing called love, and now you're just destroyed." I — Brittainy C. Cherry

In any situation in life, you only have three options. You always have three options. You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It's that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery. The phrase that I probably use the most to myself in my head is just one word: accept. — Timothy Ferriss

If young people had love, hope, true education, the arts, full and meaningful lives they won't join gangs. My life since leaving the gang and drugs has been directed to making positive what it means to be Chicano, human, man, woman, and on how to draw out the imagination and creativity that all people have. — Luis J. Rodriguez

Lord, if Thou knowest that I shall find, on leaving the house, even through obedience, an occasion of offending Thee, I conjure Thee to take away my life here, where Thou are really present, for Thou solely art my life, and I prefer a thousand deaths to causing Thee the slightest displeasure. — Alphonsus Rodriguez

Or else she stayed in and nursed a mood with which she was becoming too familiar for her own comfort and peace of mind. It was not despair; but it seemed to her as if life were passing by, leaving its promise broken and unfulfilled. — Kate Chopin

It means leaving behind your physical body. Leaving the cage of your physical flesh, breaking free of the chains, and letting pure logic soar. Giving a natural life to logic. That's the core of free thought. — Haruki Murakami

Something else emerges from this discussion about us as human individuals: we're not fixed, stable intellects riding along peering at the world through the lenses of our eyes like the pilots of people-shaped spacecraft. We are affected constantly by what's going on around us. Whether our flexibility is based in neuroplasticity or in less dramatic aspects of the brain, we have to start acknowledging that we are mutable, persuadable and vulnerable to clever distortions, and that very often what we want to be is a matter of constant effort rather than attaining a given state and then forgetting about it. Being human isn't like hanging your hat on a hook and leaving it there, it's like walking in a high wind: you have to keep paying attention. You have to be engaged with the world. — Nick Harkaway

I know this is going to come as a shock to me, but I am leaving me. Perhaps I'll say I could not have seen this coming, but truthfully things have been wrong between me for some time. Time heals and I'm sure in time I'll build a new life without me — Catherine Ryan Hyde

The saddest thing of all was that their party represented a deviation from the conditions of the time. It was impossible to imagine that in the houses across the lane people were eating and drinking in the same way at such an hour. Beyond the window lay mute, dark, hungry Moscow. Her food stores were empty, and people had even forgotten to think of such things as game and vodka.
And thus it turned out that the only true life is one that resembles the life around us and drowns in it without leaving a trace, that isolated happiness is not happiness, so that duck and alcohol, when they seem to be the only ones in town, are not alcohol and a duck at all. — Boris Pasternak

The energy of life entering and leaving your body flows evenly throughout the universe. With that current, the mind of the cosmos communicates with all things. — Ilchi Lee

Was i leaving a life that, if snuffed out in a plane crash, would leave a sweet aroma representative of what matters most? — Andrew Palau

There. That is the answer to this riddle. The promises I can make, and the one I can't. Gwen. I will never leave you willingly. Life is a risk, and so love is, as well. But I swear to God, you will not regret the gamble. — Meredith Duran

My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint. Because they have been such a little time with us, they seem to hold to life but weakly. I used to wonder if it was so because the memory of Heaven still lived within them, so that in leaving here they do not fear death as we do, who no longer know with certainty where it is our spirits go. This, I thought, must be the kindness that God does for them and for us, since He gives so many infants such a little while to bide with us. — Geraldine Brooks

Despair is not for the living
but for those unable to rise and continue;
they are the only souls with a right to it.
It is an end where breath and strength and will
have vanished, leaving no way to persevere.
To sink into the abyss that is despair
is to suffer an existence far worse than death;
therefore, cling to its enemy, our ally - hope.
For life goes on,
and we must not live in despair.
We must not. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I saw leaving college as an opportunity to do something different with my life. I always thought that becoming an academic was going to be my path. — Jodie Foster

Nobody in my life has ever known me the way you do. Nobody in my life has ever made me feel as good as you do. You know me, you know everything about me, and when you leave me, you're going to be leaving the real me, the me nobody else has ever seen, that's who you're going to be rejecting. — Jennifer Crusie

It's a shame you left without a word, you know. She was just beginning to trust you before that. Before you got angry. Before you ran off. Just like every other man in her life. Lusting after her, full of sweet words, then just walking away. Leaving her alone. Good thing she's used to it by now, isn't it? Otherwise you might have hurt her. Otherwise you just might have broken that poor girl's heart — Patrick Rothfuss

I stand still for a long time, holding the note, and let it all sink in. Her leaving is almost palpable like a gale-force wind that's rolled into my life in the span of a single evening and left behind all this incalculable destruction, both inside and out. Yes, the tempest has passed, but the air around me feels different. I can hardly breathe. Nothing is the same without her. As the lone survivor of her particular storm, I begin to wonder just exactly what I'm supposed to do now. — Katherine Owen

Funny, how we try to plan for things, and anticipate perfect moments, but then life comes and punches our plans in the mouth, leaving us with big fat lips. — Lauren Blakely

There are times when we can feel destiny close around us like a fist around a doorknob. Sure, we can resist. But a knob that won't turn, a door that sticks and never budges, is a nuisance to the gods. The gods may kick in the jamb. Worse, they may walk away in disgust, leaving us to hang dumbly from our tight hinges, deprived of any other chance in life to swing open into unnecessary risk and thus into enchantment. — Tom Robbins

Life has a way of setting things in order and leaving them be. Very tidy, is life. — Jean Anouilh

It is inevitable that I will leave a legacy simply because I cannot walk through life without leaving footprints as I walk. Therefore, I would be wise to consider the path before I make the prints. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Well I think after leaving prison, and having written three diaries about life in prison, it became a sort of a new challenge to write another novel, to write a new novel. — Jeffrey Archer

A mother's body against a child's body makes a place. It says you are here. Without this body against your body there is no place. I envy people who miss their mother. Or miss a place or know something called home. The absence of a body against my body created a gap, a hole, a hunger. This hunger determined my life ... The absence of a body against my body made attachment abstract. Made my own body dislocated and unable to rest or settle. A body pressed against your body is the beginning of nest. I grew up not in a home but in a kind of free fall of anger and violence that led to a life of constant movement, of leaving and falling. It is why at one point I couldn't stop drinking and fucking. Why I needed people to touch me all the time. It had less to do with sex than location. When you press against me, or put yourself inside me. When you hold me down or lift me up, when you lie on top of me and I can feel your weight, I exist. I am here. — Eve Ensler

The man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was his to administer during his life, will pass away unwept, unhonoured and insung no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him. — Andrew Carnegie

If my life were a corny horror movie, and the heroine was lost and alone, trapped in an underwater cave, what would happen next? If you guessed, "She drops her flashlight, and it hits a rock and breaks, leaving her in utter darkness," you would be right. But I bet you didn't guess the part about an attack by a giant octopus. — James Patterson

I didn't want the lyrics to be about specific things in my life, I wanted them to be about generalised experiences I'd had. So when I'm writing about relationships or somebody leaving you or something, a lot of lyrics are partly about failed relationships I'd had, but they were also about my Dad, and being abandoned as a kid. — Zachary Cole Smith