Life Has Two Faces Quotes & Sayings

Two boys who looked to be seven years old had been picked up while sweeping floors in a cheap hotel. They reminded Abdul of his little brothers, and he felt emotional being around them. He couldn't see why the state had taken them from their parents. Being so poor that you had to work so young seemed like punishment enough.

Abdul had kept to himself in his first days at Dongri, aware of his inadequacy in the conversational arts, but the incarceration of the seven-year-olds inflamed him. "What's the use, keeping them here?" he blurted out one day. "You see their faces? So much enthusiasm for life, they are going to break the walls of this jail. The government people should let them work, let them be free. — Katherine Boo

The faces stood out, separate, lonely, no two alike. Behind each, there were the years of a life lived or half over, effort, hope and an attempt, honest or dishonest, but an attempt. It had left on all a single mark in common: on lips smiling with malice, on lips loose with renunciation, on lips tight with uncertain dignity - on all - the mark of suffering. — Ayn Rand

The seventh reader interrupts you: "Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could only end in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and heroine married, or else they died. The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death."
You stop for a moment to reflect on these words. Then, in a flash, you decide you want to marry Ludmilla. — Italo Calvino

You told me a love story. I honestly believe your parents wanted the best for you, but their love almost destroyed your life. If Our Lady, as she appeared in my grandmother's painting, was treading on a snake, that indicates that love has two faces. — Paulo Coelho

Along the rough cobbled streets that had served so well in surprise attacks and buccaneer landings, weeds hung from the balconies and opened cracks in the whitewashed walls of even the best-kept mansions, and the only signs of life at two o'clock in the afternoon were languid piano exercises played in the dim light of siesta. Indoors, in the cool bedrooms saturated with incense, women protected themselves from the sun as if it were a shameful infection, and even at early Mass they hid their faces in their mantillas. Their love affairs were slow and difficult and were often disturbed by sinister omens, and life seemed interminable. At nightfall, at the oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes rose out of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirred the certainty of death in the depths of one's soul. And — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Thanks to my mother, I was raised to have a morbid imagination. When I was a child, she often talked about death as warning, as an unavoidable matter of fact. Little Debbie's mom down the block might say, 'Honey, look both ways before crossing the street.' My mother's version: 'You don't look, you get smash flat like sand dab.' (Sand dabs were the cheap fish we bought live in the market, distinguished in my mind by their two eyes affixed on one side of their woebegone cartoon faces.)
The warnings grew worse, depending on the danger at hand. Sex education, for example, consisted of the following advice: 'Don't ever let boy kiss you. You do, you can't stop. Then you have baby. You put baby in garbage can. Police find you, put you in jail, then you life over, better just kill youself. — Amy Tan

Who's the clown in life, the one with the two faces and characters or the persons who Laugh about them? — Jan Jansen

Everybody faces obstacles. And I looked to people who had been through many to succeed in life. Abraham Lincoln, born to a poor family, faced defeat through most of his life. Lost eight elections, failed two businesses, had a nervous breakdown, and still became president. — Dave Winfield

You know how you secretly worry that this is it, that it's all downhill from here? I know you do. You worry that the children will turn into hulking criminals; their scalps will turn odorless. You lie in bed now during a thunderstorm, two sleeping, moonlit faces pressed against you, fragrant scalps intoxicating you, the rain on the roof like hoofbeats, heartbeats - and the calamity of raising young children falls away because this is all you ever wanted. Now you boo-hoo noiselessly into the kids' hair because life is so beautiful and you don't want it to change. Enjoy it. But let me tell you - you won't believe it, but let me tell you anyway - you will watch them sleeping still and always: the illuminated down of their cheeks, their dark puffs of lips and dear, dark wedges of eyelashes, and you will feel exactly the way you feel now. Only better. — Catherine Newman

You claim you want to be heard.

So you write your hollow words.

You fill your life with deception.

Because it's all about perception.

The world sees you one way.

And they listen to all you say.

You crave their attention.

To feed your addiction.

You have two sides.

Two faces.

You're trying to hide.

In two places. — Kasie West

Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease. — William Osler

It's hard not to be impatient with the absurdity of the young; they tell us that two and two make four as though it had never occurred to us, and they're disappointed if we can't share their surprise when they have discovered that a hen lays an egg. There's a lot of nonsense in their ranting and raving, but it's not all nonsense. One ought to sympathize with them; one ought to do one's best to understand. One has to remember how much has to be forgotten and how much has to be learnt when for the first time one faces life. It's not very easy to give up one's ideals, and the brute facts of every day are bitter pills to swallow. The spiritual conflicts of adolescence can be very severe and one can do little to resolve them. — W. Somerset Maugham

[Poem: Slates of Grey]
Sullen faces like slates of grey
What I'd seen on a walk today.
Bodies rushing bodies bolting
Time for life a disregarding.
Money to make and to grow old
What about the hands to hold?
Deadlines, projects, people to meet
What about our own two feet.
Sullen faces like slates of grey ...
What I'd see most anyday. — Jess C. Scott

The Wanderer in every moment spent awake faces two alternatives: a choice is to be made between the ambitions stretching between past and future, or the quiet, simplicity, purity and emptiness, full of vibrating life, of the present. It is, however, only the latter that brings to the life of the Wanderer the Witnessing Presence! — Frank M. Wanderer

The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death. — Italo Calvino

The print was an old one made from a negative taken in the 1960's of her parents in Sydney Mines, dancing with thrilled, excited expressions on their faces, in front of a classic car that had been a wedding gift at the time. Her mother's hair, red back then, was held back by a blue handkerchief, and she was dressed in a billowing skirt and white blouse. Her father's denim jeans and faded t-shirt were streaked with coal dust as he held her hands and spun her around in the front yard of their old clapboard house, yellow grass under their feet and a cobalt-blue sky with white clouds drifting above. Mandy could almost feel the late summer breeze as she gazed deeply into the print, watching the flamboyant colors come to life. She hung it up to dry on two wooden clothespins hanging from a string above her. — Rebecca McNutt

Everything in the world has its two faces, however. Weeds sometimes blossom into artful flowers. Beauty walks hand in hand with ugliness, sickness with health, and life tiptoes around in the horned shadow of death. The trick is to recognize which is which and to recognize what you're dealing with at the time. — Tiffany Baker

The world has two faces :
The day or the bright moment when
we naturally stay alive (awake).
The night or the dark moment when
we naturally remain dead (sleep). — Rohan Nath

The man journeyed far, and he heard and saw many strange things on his travels. He learned that - that the friend and the enemy are but two faces of the same self. That the path one believes chosen long since, constant and unchangeable, straight and wide, can alter in an instant. Can branch, and twist and lead the traveler to places far beyond his wildest imaginings. That there are mysteries beyond the mind of mortal man, and that to deny their existence is to spend a life of half-consciousness. — Juliet Marillier

Seven Rules Formulated for Teaching Arithmetic:
1) Consider the situation the pupils faces.
2) Consider the response you wish to connect with.
3) Form the bond; do not expect it to come by miracle.
4) Other things being equal, form no bond that will have to be broken.
5) Other things being equal, do not form two or three bonds when one will serve.
6) Other things being equal, form bonds in the way that they are required later to act.
7) Favor, therefore, the situations which life itself will offer, and the responses which life itself will demand. (p. 101) — Edward Lee Thorndike

Each and every one of us, at the end of the journey of life, will come face to face with either one or the other of two faces ... And one of them, either the merciful face of Christ or the miserable face of Satan, will say, "Mine, mine." May we be Christ's! — Fulton J. Sheen

How often it happens in life that a man has one thing in his heart and another upon his lips, and wears two faces at one and the same time! — John Of Kronstadt

Paul Works like a Farmer

When Silas and Timothy arrived in Corinth, Paul was very busy. He was always talking about the Scriptures with the Jews. He assured them that Jesus was the Christ. They argued and snubbed him. Paul shook the dust out of his cloak into their faces. "This means I'm through with you. You must answer to God for refusing the truth. I'm not to blame. Now I'm going to pay attention to the Gentiles."
One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision. "Don't be afraid," he said. "Speak and don't be silent. I'm with you and no one will harm you. Many people in Corinth belong to me."
Paul worked like a farmer among the people of Corinth. He planted the seeds of God's gospel for eighteen months. During that time, Paul wrote two letters to the believers in Thessalonica. He wanted them to live a holy, hard-working life. "Look forward to the day Jesus comes again," he wrote. — Daniel Partner

We ate in fret-filled silence until Ophie said, "Okay, enough of that feeling down in the dumps. We are going to put on our best clothes and go to church. We will sing. We will praise the Lord. We will celebrate Miss Delia's life. So you two put a smile on your faces. Well-mannered ladies know that a funeral provides us the opportunity to comfort the living. There'll be plenty of time to mourn the dead for years to come." I — Terrie Farley Moran

But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression was in vivid life, there were two groups of faces - each seven in number - so fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never did sea roll which bore more memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had burst their tomb, were carried high overhead: all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as if the Last Day were come, and those who rejoiced around them were lost spirits. Other seven faces there were, carried higher, seven dead faces, whose drooping eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassive faces, yet with a suspended - not an abolished - expression on them; faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the dropped lids of the eyes, and bear witness with the bloodless lips, "THOU DIDST IT!" Seven — Charles Dickens

According to history, he wrote of humans originally having four arms, four legs, and a single head made up of two faces." I stared awkwardly at him. "But, in fear of their power, Zeus split them all in half, condemning them to a life of searching for their other half... — K.A. Poe