Life Avoided Quotes & Sayings

It seems to me that the difficult thing in life is to find what stirs you and move toward it. Mom put us first but also put us in the way of whatever moved her and, so, avoided the anxiety of the unknown, the fear of failure, the pain of opening up her heart and feeling her losses. Her selflessness was also her selfishness. — Christa Parravani

Yes, I felt guilt. Somehow I had pushed Fand to the precipice without realizing it, and had I not been so blind, perhaps she wouldn't be trying to pull us all over the edge with her now. I was sure Manannan felt it too-the crushing questions of how we got to this place and whether we could have avoided it, where we went wrong, and whether we would ever learn how not to cock up other people's lives in the course of living our own. — Kevin Hearne

Dad always told me I was good at noticing moments, at appreciating the little things in life. It struck me as an odd thing, being good at noticing moments. Moments, in and of themselves, were actually pretty boring little bits of time. For most people, they were like confetti or snowflakes; they didn't amount to much until they were in groups. I think I was the opposite. I avoided the groups, the mounds of confetti or snow that had built up in my life, because I was more frightened of what those mounds might tell me to do.
I lived in the now so I didn't have to move forward. — Kim Culbertson

They sensed somehow that she lived in the prenumbral shadows between two worlds, just beyond the grasp of their power. That a woman that they had already damned, now had little left to lose, and could therefore be dangerous. So on the days that the radio played Ammu's songs, people avoided her, making little loops around her, because everybody agreed that it was best to just Let Her Be. — Arundhati Roy

I've always avoided publicity. I've never been good copy at any stage of my life. I don't strive for it, because I don't think it's important whether I'm good copy or not. The two can go together, if that's your personality, but every person on this earth is unique. — Chuck Noll

I avoided reality for most of my life. But once you deal with it, it's kind of cool. — Roseanne Barr

No one escapes suffering. Everyone goes through tough times. Suffering is a part of our human condition and cannot be avoided. Setbacks, failures, pain, suffering, and hardships are all a part of life, but whether we are able to find peace within the storm depends on our resilience and perseverance. Whenever one of our children tells us that they don't want to fail at something, we remind them that there will be times in their life when they will fail, but it's how they come through it that matters. If we choose to focus on the negative, the failure itself, the darkness will oppress and consume us. Eventually it will destroy a person. We need to embrace the fact that we're human and our lives will be filled with suffering and hardship, but we have the ultimate hope and victory in Our Lord. — Karen Santorum

There was a listlessness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive for evermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually accumulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no. Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is our contemporary culture's tragedy to have lost any sense of suffering as a positive dimension of human existence. Beginning with the premise that life ought to be without pain, we make suffering something to be avoided at all cost. We consider the equation between evil and suffering so self-evident that we make avoiding suffering the equal of fighting evil. No wonder we are the most narcotized generation ever to inhabit the earth, searching for ever more effective addictive patterns to anaesthetize our existence. — Luke Timothy Johnson

I studiously avoided all so-called "holy men." I did so because I had to make do with my own truth, not accept from others what I could not attain on my own. I would have felt it as a theft had I attempted to learn from the holy men and to accept their truth for myself. Neither in Europe can I make any borrowings from the East, but must shape my life out of myself-out of what my inner being tells me, or what nature brings to me. — Carl Jung

You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better. — Andrew Solomon

For the better part of my adult life, I proudly avoided nerd/nimrod/goober status. I was always just cool enough. — Steve Carell

He had avoided what he regarded as some obvious errors of life, such as politics and golf. — Richard Flanagan

Whether I am believed or not, I will repeat that Vladimir Soloviov, who held that Dostoevsky was a prophet, is wrong, and that N. K. Mikhailovsky, who calls him a cruel talent and a grubber after buried treasure, is right. Dostoevsky grubs after buried treasure no doubt about that. And, therefore, it would be more becoming in the younger generation that still marches under the flag of pious idealism if, instead of choosing him as a spiritual leader, they avoided the old sorcerer, in whom only those gifted with great shortsightedness or lack of experience in life could fail to see the dangerous man. — Lev Shestov

Most of us, out of a politeness made up of faint curiosity and profound resignation, go out to meet the smiling stranger with a gesture of surrender and a fixed grin, but White has always taken to the fire escape. He has avoided the Man in the Reception Room as he has avoided the interviewer, the photographer, the microphone, the rostrum, the literary tea, and the Stork Club. His life is his own. He is the only writer of prominence I know of who could walk through the Algonquin lobby or between the tables at Jack and Charlie's and be recognized only by his friends.

-on his friend E.B. White — James Thurber

There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain. — R.D. Laing

Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other. — Theodore Roosevelt

Thomas," Inez interrupted with exasperation. "I'm trying to tell you I love you." "You do?" he asked, a smile spreading halfway across his face. "But then why did you tell Terri that you wanted to delay the turn?" "It wasn't you. It was because of the pain involved," she said with a grimace and then admitted, "I don't like pain, Thomas. I mean I'm practically phobic about it. My whole life, I've avoided any situation that might involve pain. My dentist even has to gas me to fill a cavity." Inez shrugged unhappily. "I probably would have delayed and put it off as long as I possibly could if you hadn't had to change me to save my life. In truth, Blondie probably did us both a favor by precipitating the events that forced you to turn me. — Lynsay Sands

Embrace those parts of yourself that you've skillfully avoided until now. That's your true adventure. — Gina Greenlee

Management gurus in general are, I think, best avoided. All too often they reduce your working life to a list of rules to be followed. Targets are aimed at. Goals kicked at. You then break the rules or forget them and, hey presto, you start beating yourself up. — Tom Hodgkinson

Blind funny little creatures they were, fumbling in the midst of a love they feared to acknowledge. To win, all they had to do was surrender but they could not perceive that. The beauty of what they could have been together made him ache. Is was a love he had been seeking all his life, a love to redeem and perfect him. That which he most desired, they feared and avoided. — Robin Hobb

The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that's why they are locked up or locked out, we are told. This feature makes the politics of responsibility particularly tempting, as it appears the system can be avoided with good behavior. But herein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world. — Michelle Alexander

Love was not a drink one tasted and then rejected. Love was not something that could be avoided or arranged. Love was a highwayman, standing by the road of life, just waiting to strike at the reckless and the few. — Celeste Bradley

It is no accident that on the whole there was more beauty and decency to be found in the life of the small peoples, and that among the large ones there was more happiness and content in proportion as they had avoided the deadly blight of centralization. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

The business of life is to go forward; he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way, and he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day may be regretted again to-morrow. — Samuel Johnson

Movies and I just equally avoided each other at certain times in my life, you know? — Summer Phoenix

Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror - on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle. — E. M. Forster

Anxiety has a purpose. Originally the purpose was to protect the existence of the caveman from wild beasts and savage neighbors. Nowadays the ocassions for anxiety are very different - we are afraid of losing out in the competition, feeling unwanted, isolated, and ostracized. But the purpose of anxiety is still to protect us from dangers that threaten the same things: our existence or values that we identify with our existence. This normal anxiety of life cannot be avoided except at the price of apathy or the numbing of one's sensibilities and imagination. — Rollo May

Donald Watson, who founded The Vegan Society in 1944 and who lived a healthy, active life until passing on in 2005, maintained that dairy products, such as milk, eggs, and cheese, were every bit as cruel and exploitive of sentient animal life as was slaughtering animals for their flesh: "The unquestionable cruelty associated with the production of dairy produce has made it clear that lactovegetarianism is but a half-way house between flesh-eating and a truly humane, civilised diet, and we think, therefore, that during our life on earth we should try to evolve sufficiently to make the 'full journey.'" He also avoided wearing leather, wool or silk and used a fork, rather than a spade in his gardening to avoid killing worms.

Let us instil in others the reverence or life that Donald Watson had and that he passed on to us. — Gary L. Francione

Recognize the call as a prime fact of human existence; (b) align life with it; (c) find the common sense to realize that accidents, including the heartache and the natural shocks the flesh is heir to, belong to the pattern of the image, are necessary to it, and help fulfill it. A calling may be postponed, avoided, intermittently missed. It may also possess you completely. Whatever; eventually it will out. It makes its claim. The daimon does not go away. — James Hillman

Whatever requires an undue amount of thought or trouble or involves a large expenditure of effort and causes our whole life to revolve, as it were, around solicitude for the flesh must be avoided by Christians. — Saint Basil

The effects of MFA programs, and the rise of creative writing instruction more generally, are far more diffuse than people think. Even if you're a writer who has avoided institutions your whole life, you're still going to be reading a lot of writers who have MFAs, and are affiliated with universities. — Chad Harbach

Horses have taught us about the transfiguring effect of reducing anger. We have repeatedly observed that they rarely show offense at a handler who reprimands them legitimately for something they have done wrong, if the handler is devoid of rage or vengeance. Howeve, if reprimanded in a fury, horses will counterattack because they feel challenged. Many power struggles can be avoided by learning not to meet anger with anger. This is an invaluable lesson in life. Developing patience and being unemotional is the key. — Adele Von Rust McCormick

There have been only two taboos in the world: sex and death. It is very strange why sex and death have been the two taboos not to be talked about, to be avoided. They are deeply connected. Sex represents life because all life arises out of sex, and death represents the end. And both have been taboo - don't talk about sex and don't talk about death. — Rajneesh

I have, I must admit, despised the English countryside for much of my life - despised it and avoided it for its want of danger and adventure. — Jim Crace

This was exactly what the girl had most dreaded all her life and had scrupulously avoided until now: lovemaking without emotion or love. She knew that she had crossed the forbidden boundary, but she proceeded across it without objections and as a full participant; only somewhere, far off in a corner of her consciousness, did she feel horror at the thought that she had never known such pleasure, never so much pleasure as at this moment
beyond that boundary. — Milan Kundera

If it is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, as it had no willing association with the body in life, but avoided it and gathered itself together by itself and always practiced this, which is no other than practicing philosophy in the right way, in fact, training to die easily. Or is this not training for death? — Plato

Being an artist doesn't take much. Just everything you got. Which means of course that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it's no big deal. They are one in the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it completely, I transcend all this gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission. — Hubert Selby Jr.

I mean, in the last few months alone, I've been pinned in a big set of white-water rapids, been bitten by an angry snake in a jungle, had a close escapewith a big mountain rockfall, narrowly avoided being eaten by a huge croc in the Australian swamps, and had to cut away from my main parachute and come down on my reserve, some five thousand feet above the Arctic plateau.
When did all this craziness become my world?
It's as if - almost accidentally - this madness had become my life. And don't get me wrong - I love it all.
The game, though, now, is to hang on to that life.
Every day is the most wonderful of blessings, and a gift that I never, ever take for granted.
Oh, and as for the scars, broken bones, aching limbs and sore back?
I consider them just gentle reminders that life is precious - and that maybe, just maybe, I am more fragile than I dare to admit. — Bear Grylls

He knew taht many of his compatriots avoided marriage at all costs. They saw matrimony as an annoyance, a wife as another person who would nag and prod. But when he repeated his vows, he heard "as long as we both shall life" and he hoped. — Courtney Milan

One of the few certainties in life is that persons of certainty should certainly be avoided. — Willy Russell

At the time I was only twenty-four. My life was even then gloomy, ill-regulated, and as solitary as that of a savage. I made friends with no one and positively avoided talking, and buried myself more and more in my hole. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My life has been devoted to arms, yet I look upon war at all times, and under all circumstances, as a national calamity to be avoided if compatible with national honor. — Zachary Taylor

There is little character or loveliness in the face of someone who has shunned risk, avoided suffering and rejected life — Madeleine L'Engle

Losing your family ... .it puts fear in a different perspective," he said. "Besides, I got by all right. I stayed on the fringe around Chicago, hoped around tent cities and Red Cross camps. Worked for some people who didn't ask questions. Avoided case-workers and foster care. And thought about you."
"Me?" I huffed, completely unsettled. In awe at how vanilla my life seemed. In awe of what he'd endured, He turned then, meeting my eyes for the first time. When he spoke, his voice was gentle, and unashamed.
"You. The only thing in my life that doesn't change. When everything went to hell, you were all I had. — Kristen Simmons

Movies that are consciously life-affirming are to be consciously avoided ... — Pauline Kael

Be flexible. Be compassionate. Rules can never cure insecurity. Integrity matters. Never try to script what your relationships will look like. Love is abundant. Compatibility matters. You cannot sacrifice your happiness for that of another. Own your own shit. Admit when you fuck up. Forgive when others fuck up. Don't try to find people to stuff into the empty spaces in your life; instead, make spaces for the people in your life. If you need a relationship to complete you, get a dog. It is almost impossible to be loving or compassionate when all you feel is fear of loss. Trust that your partners want to be with you, and that if given the freedom to do anything they please, they will choose to cherish and support you. Most relationship problems can be avoided by good partner selection. Nobody can give you security or self-esteem; you have to build that yourself. — Franklin Veaux

The extreme inequalities in the manner of living of the several classes of mankind, the excess of idleness in some, and of labour in others, the facility of irritating and satisfying our sensuality and our appetites, the too exquisite and out of the way aliments of the rich, which fill them with fiery juices, and bring on indigestions, the unwholesome food of the poor, of which even, bad as it is, they very often fall short, and the want of which tempts them, every opportunity that offers, to eat greedily and overload their stomachs; watchings, excesses of every kind, immoderate transports of all the passions, fatigues, waste of spirits, in a word, the numberless pains and anxieties annexed to every condition, and which the mind of man is constantly a prey to; these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have avoided them all by adhering to the simple, uniform and solitary way of life prescribed to us by nature. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

People who have experienced war have learned to accept the trials and sufferings of life. Among many wise, older citizens in American society, there is no desperate flight from suffering. Instead, there is a recognition that it is a part of life that can have some benefit. Yet among those in the post-World War II generation, a wisp of happiness is the goal, and suffering must be avoided at all costs. If there are hardships in a relationship, end it. If there is an unpleasant emotion, medicate it. It is a generation that perceives no value to any hardship. Like a pampered child who never experienced the regular storms of life, we lack the skill of growing through our trials. — Edward T. Welch

Extremes should be avoided. — Billy Graham

Obviously, the problem of the shadow plays a great role in all political conflicts. If the man who had this dream had not been sensible about his shadow problem, he could easily have identified the desperate Frenchman with the "dangerous Communists" of outer life, or the official plus the prosperous man with the "grasping capitalists." In this way he would have avoided seeing that he had within him such warring elements. If people observe their own unconscious tendencies in other people, this is called a "projection." Political agitation in all countries is full of such projections, just as much as the backyard gossip of little groups and individuals. Projections of all kinds obscure our view of our fellow men, spoiling its objectivity, and thus spoiling all possibility of genuine human relationships. — C. G. Jung

Then let's use this incredible tool God has given us to assess the risks that we face every day. We have the means to analyze risks and decide which are worth taking and which should be avoided. Do you have a brain? Then use it. That's the secret. That's my simple but powerful prescription for life, love, and success in a dangerous world. — Ben Carson

This is what's happening: together we are descending the stairs of the heart, which lead to the sources. (It is a secret staircase. I knew it existed. Which is why I avoided it. Because it leads to the other-life, deep, underground, the fluvial, the painful.)
We are in the process of descending into the depths of the heart. To where bodies communicate with each other. — Helene Cixous

Well, we're afeared. And what of it? Do we sit down and weep and tremble? Life must go on. And what will be, will be. What is destined can't be avoided, in any case. — Andrzej Sapkowski

But when it has been shown by the researches of Pasteur that the septic property of the atmosphere depended not on the oxygen, or any gaseous constituent, but on minute organisms suspended in it, which owed their energy to their vitality, it occurred to me that decomposition in the injured part might be avoided without excluding the air, by applying as a dressing some material capable of destroying the life of the floating particles. Upon this principle I have based a practice. — Joseph Lister

The extreme inequality of our ways of life, the excess of idleness among some and the excess of toil among others, the ease of stimulating and gratifying our appetites and our senses, the over-elaborate foods of the rich, which inflame and overwhelm them with indigestion, the bad food of the poor, which they often go withotu altogether, so hat they over-eat greedily when they have the opportunity; those late nights, excesses of all kinds, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, exhaustion of mind, the innumerable sorrows and anxieties that people in all classes suffer, and by which the human soul is constantly tormented: these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have avoided nearly all of them if only we had adhered to the simple, unchanging and solitary way of life that nature ordained for us. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When you look back at your own life, you see ... the sufferings you went through, each time you would have avoided it if you possibly could. And yet, when you look at the depth of your character now, isn't a part of that a product of those experiences? Weren't those experiences part of what created the depth of your inner being? — Ram Dass

Much which is unworthy in human life might be avoided if people would only accustom themselves to talking in verse — Karen Blixen

I quickly realized that friendships without tomorrows, and the little anguishes of parting, were part of the pleasures of traveling. I resolutely avoided bores, saw only those who amused me. We spent afternoons taking long walks, nights drinking and talking, and then we would leave each other, never to meet again, and there were no regrets. How simple life was. No regrets, no obligations, my acts and gestures counted for nothing, no one asked my advice, and I knew no other rule but my whims. — Simone De Beauvoir

Problems may only be avoided by exercising good judgment. Good judgment may only be gained by experiencing life's problems. — Jim Stovall

Everyday life is a life lived on the level of surging affects, impacts suffered or barely avoided. It takes everything we have. But it also spawns a series of little somethings dreamed up in the course of things. — Kathleen Stewart

Every life is a mystery. And every story of every life is a mystery. But it is not what happens that is the mystery. It is whether it has to happen no matter what, whether it is ordered and ordained, fixed and fated, or whether it can be missed, avoided, circumvented, passed by; that is the mystery.
If she had not come along the Via Piemonte that day, would it still have happened? If she had come along the Via Piemonte that day, but ten minutes later than she did, would it still have happened? Therein lies the real mystery. And no one ever knows, and no one ever will.
("For The Rest Of Her Life") — Cornell Woolrich

there is no life free of pain, loss, despair, confusion, violence, and, yes, even death. To make it a goal to think you could ever live a life that avoided all these things is pure folly, and you can only fall short. What there is, however, is the ability to manage one's way through these things so that, in addressing them, you remain as whole as possible, as present as possible, as undaunted as possible. For that is the closest you are ever gonna get to real, real contentment. — Ron Perlman

This is exactly the way others argue from predestination: "If I am predestined, I cannot perish, whatever I do." These are voices of Satan which should be avoided. It is, indeed, true that whatever is foreordained will come to pass, but it should be added that this is unknown to you. You do not know, for example, whether you will die tomorrow or live, and it is God's will that you do not know this. It is therefore foolish for you to search out what God by His special counsel has concealed from you. But because you do not know how long you will survive, you should use the things necessary for life. If it is foreordained that you should die after a month, nevertheless, God should not be tempted since, indeed, you are uncertain about that, but you should use the things necessary to sustain life. Therefore, — Martin Luther

In avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations. For the time being the world, life itself, could be his chosen field. — Richard Yates

I was worried that being in a relationship would add to my responsibilities. That's why I've avoided them my whole life. I already have enough on my plate, and seeing the stress my parents' marriage seemed to cause them, and the failed marriages of some of my friends, I wanted no part in something like that. But after tonight, I realized that maybe a lot of people are just doing it wrong. Because what's happening between us doesn't feel like a responsibility. It feels like a reward. And I'll fall asleep wondering what I did to deserve it. — Colleen Hoover

The sensual experiences in life are not to be avoided. This is the philosophy of Tantric Buddhism - nor are they particularly to be sought after. — Frederick Lenz

I've avoided work all my life, you see. So, I'm like a bee. I go from flower to flower. — Malachy McCourt

The idea that we could have avoided many of life's difficulties if we had taken things more cautiously is too foolish to be entertained for a moment. As I look back on your past I am so convinced that what has happened hitherto has been right, that I feel that what is happening now is right too. To renounce a full life and its real joys in order to avoid pain is neither Christian nor human. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I mean, I was just one of the ones who got exposed, and because of the position I was in, where I was in my life, it went mainstream. A lot of people got out of it after my situation, not because I went to prison but because it was sad for them to see me go through something that was so pointless, that could have been avoided. — Michael Vick

There are many things that you can avoid by just knowing something. Knowledge of self is the most notable knowledge I pursue. By knowing myself, I avoided dead dreams and a meaningless life. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Nothing is more creative than death, since it has the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that 'I' cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting go he finds it. — Alan Watts

Was life measured by the trouble you avoided, or by the obstacles you overcame? God had made her for trouble, equipped her for hardship. She'd do her share and then some. Most of all, she'd buttress the man who faced the dangers for all of them. He wouldn't do it alone. Not while she had blood pumping in her veins. — Regina Jennings

He loved to smile. He avoided anger. He was never haunted by "Why am I here?" He knew why he was here, he said: to give to others, to celebrate God, and to enjoy and honour the world he was put in. His morning prayers began with "Thank you, Lord, for returning my soul to me."

When you start that way, the rest of the day is a bonus. — Mitch Albom

My little donkey, if I hadn't shown up, your fate would have been sealed. Love has saved you. Is there anything else that could erase the innate fears of a donkey and send him to rescue you from certain death? No. That is the only one. With a call to arms, I, Ximen Donkey, charged down the ridge and headed straight for the wolf that was tailing my beloved. My hooves kicked up sand and dust as I raced down from my commanding position; no wolf, not even a tiger, could have avoided the spearhead aimed at it. It saw me too late to move out of the way, and I thudded into it, sending it head over heels. Then I turned around and said to my donkey, Do not fear my dear, I am here! — Mo Yan

We may not be responsible for another's addiction or the life history that preceded it, but many painful situations could be avoided if we recognized that we are responsible for the way we ourselves enter into the interaction. And that, to put it most simply, means dealing with our own stuff. — Gabor Mate

We say, "It wasn't that bad. It was all my fault. I'm making all this stuff up. "
All my life, I spoke bitterly of my mother's treatment of me as a child.
Friends asked, "What did she do to you?" I couldn't really describe it, and in frustration would say, "Well, she didn't lock us up in closets." in fact, my mother behaved much worse than that, but by focusing on the empty closet, I avoided looking at what waited beyond it. — Sarah E. Olson

The person who takes no chances generally must take whatever is left over after others have finished choosing. Overcaution is as bad, if not worse, than lack of caution. Both should be avoided. Life will always contain an element of chance. Not to win is not a sin. But not to try is a tragedy. — Venita VanCaspel

Resentful of her own repressive Catholic upbringing, she'd avoided church altogether in her adult life, and now she was dying and I didn't even have God. — Cheryl Strayed

Miss someone until they come back, or until you come back, until their absence in your life becomes something to be avoided at all costs. Miss them until you don't have to anymore, until you're reunited in your favorite booth in your favorite restaurant ordering your favorite meal, miss them until it feels like you never left. Or miss them until you can't anymore, until the things you miss are identified and cataloged as things and not a person, until you figure out that easy company and long talks and unblinking, all-knowing eye contact will find you again the way they found you the first time. Miss someone until you don't. — Stephanie Georgopulus

Unexpected and pleasant surprises occur every day...random kindnesses from a stranger; would-be tragic accidents narrowly avoided; sicknesses healed.... We will notice if we look. We will see good sprinkled liberally over every day if we are open. — Steve Goodier

When religion does not move people to the mystical or non-dual level of consciousness9 it is more a part of the problem than any solution whatsoever. It solidifies angers, creates enemies, and is almost always exclusionary of the most recent definition of "sinner." At this level, it is largely incapable of its supreme task of healing, reconciling, forgiving, and peacemaking. When religion does not give people an inner life or a real prayer life, it is missing its primary vocation. Let me sum up, then, the foundational ways that I believe Jesus and the Twelve Steps of A.A. are saying the same thing but with different vocabulary: We suffer to get well. We surrender to win. We die to live. We give it away to keep it. This counterintuitive wisdom will forever be resisted as true, denied, and avoided, until it is forced upon us - by some reality over which we are powerless - and if we are honest, we are all powerless in the presence of full Reality. — Richard Rohr

By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations of petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An authour cannot obtrude his advice unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent. — Samuel Johnson

I lent only half an ear to those well-intentioned folk who say that happiness is enervating, liberty too relaxing, and that kindness is a corruption for those upon whom it is practiced. That may be; but in the world as it is, such reasoning amounts to a refusal to nourish a starving man decently, for fear that in a few years he may suffer from overfeeding. When useless servitude has been alleviated as far as possible, and unnecessary misfortune avoided, there will remain as a test of man's fortitude that long series of veritable ills, death, old age, and incurable sickness, love unrequited and friendship rejected or betrayed, the mediocrity of a life less vast than our projects and duller than our dreams; in short, all the woes caused by the divine nature of things. — Marguerite Yourcenar

When you stop viewing chaos as an end state to be avoided and start viewing it as the beginning and ongoing default state of most things in life then that becomes something that is either terrifying or incredibly liberating. — Christian Cook

If we can sleep without dreaming, it is well that painful dreams are avoided. If, while we sleep, we can have any pleasing dreams, it is as the French say, tant gagne, so much added to the pleasure of life. — Benjamin Franklin

They don't understand it. They're not old enough to know the first instinct of irritation should be avoided in order to keep an open mind. — Amelia Gray

All his life he has avoided permanent intimacy. Till this war he has been a better lover than husband. He has been a man who slips away, in the way lovers leave chaos, the way thieves leave reduced houses. — Michael Ondaatje

Eternal recurrence means that every time you choose an action you must be willing to choose it for all eternity. And it is the same for every action not made, every stillborn thought, every choice avoided. And all unlived life will remain bulging inside you, unlived through all eternity. And the unheeded voice of your conscience will cry out to you forever. — Irvin D. Yalom

The Jedi Order was more than an unpaid police force, more than just an exercise club that was into metaphysics. It was a way of life, based on the Jedi Code - and a lot of rules for living that weren't in the Code, that had been tacked on later. One was that Jedi avoided becoming involved in romantic relationships. Once on the run, Kanan Jarrus had found that rule pretty easy to forget about. — John Jackson Miller

I'd like to add that negotiating is not something to be avoided or feared - it's an everyday part of life. — Leigh Steinberg

This connection had the potential to be too special to ruin it with the hurt of misfired romantic intentions. And while half of me wanted to tear his shirt off with my teeth, I also wanted him to be in my life for the duration. I didn't want him to be the one I avoided because he'd hurt me. If I was just his friend, then I would still be blessed. If it meant swallowing my pride and being his shoulder when he got hurt, or being the one he ranted at when he was angry, I was prepared to do it with dignity. — Jessica Thompson

Did my dad fool the medical professionals or were we involved with a system that avoided end-of-life discussions? Those conversations might have given my dad the opportunity to focus on last wishes, meaningful conversations, and clarify his needs. — Lisa J. Shultz

In diplomacy, as in life itself, one often learns more from failures than from successes. Triumphs will seem, in retrospect, to be foreordained, a series of brilliant actions and decisions that may in fact have been lucky or inadvertent, whereas failures illuminate paths and pitfalls to be avoided. — Richard Holbrooke

Before you were born, you were nothing more than an indistinguishable lump of unformed matter. After death, you simply will return to that nebulous state. You are going to become the raw material out of which new beings will be fashioned. Will there be pain in this natural process? No! Pleasure? No! Now, is there anything frightening in this? Certainly not! And yet, people sacrifice pleasure on earth in the hope that pain will be avoided in an after-life. The fools don't realize that, after death, pain and pleasure cannot exist: there is only the sensationless state of cosmic anonymity: therefore, the rule of life should be ... to enjoy oneself! — Marquis De Sade

With just about every script, in almost every corner of the set, I was faced with the truth: This was my parents' life. My mother had sat in handcuffs; my father had once worn an orange jumpsuit like the dozens that sat folded in our wardrobe department. For the other actors and me on our show, this was all fantasy, the re-creation of a world we knew little about; for Mami and Papi, it could not have been any more real or painful...I've had so many scenes in which Flaca & I are doing the dirty work, like cleaning the kitchen or mopping the floors, which is when I think of my parents most. Long before they ended up in prison, they'd spent years handling the nastiest jobs, the ones often avoided by others. Manual labor. Low pay. No respect. They must've felt so trapped. It must've been so hard for them to maintain their dignity when others looked down on them or, worse, didn't see them at all. — Diane Guerrero

They avoided one another's faces, for fear of what they might see mirrored there. Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I'm not stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard ...
No one said anything. The cowards, thought each man. — Terry Pratchett

Samurai are born to die.
Death is not a curse to be avoided
but the natural end of all life. Death is not eternal ... dishonor is. — Rick Remender

Things, the word she used when whatever it stood for was too distasteful or filthy or horrible to pass her lips. A successful life for her was one that avoided things, excluded things. Such things do not happen to nice women. — Margaret Atwood

Part of me is drawn to the nature of sadness because I think life is sad, and sadness is not something that should be avoided or denied. It's a fact of life, like contradictions are. — Robert Redford