Quotes & Sayings About Life Is Like A Road

Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ. — John Piper

When people talk about poetry as a project, they suggest that the road through a poem is a single line. When really the road through a poem is a series of lines, like a constellation, all interconnected. Poems take place in the realm of chance, where the self and the universal combine, where life exist. I can't suggest to you that going through a line that is more like a constellation than a road is easy - or that the blurring of the self and the universal doesn't shred a poet a little bit in the process. The terrain of a poem is unmapped (including the shapes of the trees along the constellation-road). A great poet knows never to expect sun or rain or cold or wind in the process of creating a poem. In a great poem all can come to the fore at once. It would be worse yet, if none are there at all. — Dorothea Lasky

True soul"

From the world desired by all
Down the street I walk up to a different kind of soul

Why are you looking at me like that, I feel something
I feel your love, your life, your pain,

you're from the no longer existent world whats your life goal, you're not here in vain

I'm here and alive and you rock to feel me the way you do, all I want is be whole

Several have strolled down my road but none have reached as deep into my soul

Love me truly, love me now, love me forever and I'd show you my true soul

God will give us a gift of life that will bond us from herein on into infinity

Let it be the birth of our true souls. — Mauro Lannini

I envy Johnny and at the same time I get sore as hell watching him destroy himself, misusing his gifts, and the stupid accumulation of nonsense the pressure of his life requires. I think that if Johnny could straighten out his life, not even sacrificing heroin, if he could pilot that plane better, maybe he'd end up worse, maybe go crazy altogether, or die, but not without having played it to the depth, what he's looking for in those sad a posteriori monlogues, in his retelling of great, fascinating experiences which, however, stop right there, in the middle of the road. And all this I back up with my own cowardice, and maybe basically I want Johnny to wind up all at once like a nova that explodes into a thousand pieces and turns astronomers into idiots for a whole week, and then one can go off to sleep and tomorrow is another day. — Julio Cortazar

There is something tenderly appropriate in the serene death of the old ... When the duties of life have all been nobly done; when the sun touches the horion; when the purple twilight falls upon the past, the present, and the future; when memory, with dim eyes, can scarcely spell the blurred and faded records of the vanished days-then, surrounded by kindred and by friends, death comes like a strain of music. The day has been long, the road weary, and the traveler gladly stops at the welcome inn. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Don't get me started on the whole Doctor-Amy-Rory thing. It's kind of like ... I dunno. Suppose you'd always fancied Ryan Reynolds. That's fine, yeah. You meet someone else, who is maybe not Ryan Reynolds, but perhaps he's got the same goofy smile. And you think, 'Yeah, that's it, I'm happy.' Then Ryan Reynolds himself roars up in a camper van and says 'Hey guys! Let's all go on a road trip. Bring the boyfriend! It'll be fun.' Only Ryan Reynolds doesn't save the universe. Well, not at weekends.
So I guess that's my life. Crammed in a camper van, sneaking the odd glance at Ryan, squeezing the hand of my lovely husband ... — James Goss

Life is a long road with lots of junctions and every time you chose to go one way, you may just have easily have gone the other. We don't make choices so much as choices are made like a new fashion we slip into without realising. — Chloe Thurlow

Stories have endings; that's why we tell them, for reassurance that there is meaning in our lives. But like a diagnosis, a story can become a prison, a straight road mapped out by the people who went before. Stories are not the truth. — Sarah Moss

These days, faith is a lot like Wisconsin: a series of repetitive ups and downs, the natural rise and fall of the road that stretches before you. Boring. Beautiful. Ridiculous sometimes, as when the road eases into the Wisconsin Dells and there are suddenly giant plastic animals and water slides and a huge haunted mansion tilted along the road. — Addie Zierman

The landscape started hard, sharp black mountains over my shoulder and thirsty young saguaros hugging patchy dirt. Gradually it let go, began to green on me a little. I crossed a river, watched succulents get fatter and farmland start to wave, hoarding the blue above and the few clouds it had to spare.

I knew the route somehow, knew the curves, the directions, the exact way to go. I knew it the way you know the stars are still up in the sky even though white sun obscures them. Everything that had happened before Lukeville and Sonoita began to liquify in memory, feeling more like fiction than personal history. Funerals and pain, girlfriends and mothers, roommates and priests all tumble away with the desert behind me. The only thing that's real is the road I see ahead. The only person in my life is the man sitting silently beside me. The place I'm going is the only place I've ever wanted to go. — Laurie Perez

Sometimes life is like a long road leading from one "if" to another. — Cynthia Lord

The road of life is strewn with the bodies of promising people. People who show promise, yet lack the confidence to act. People who make promises they are unable to keep. People who promise to do tomorrow what they could do today. Promising young stars, athletes, entrepreneurs who wait for promises to come true. Promise without a goal and a plan is like a barren cow. You know what she could do if she could do it, but she can't. Turn your promise into a plan. Make no promise for tomorrow if you are able to keep it today. And if someone calls you promising, know that you are not doing enough today. — Iyanla Vanzant

We all, like Frodo, carry a Quest, a Task: our daily duties. They come to us, not from us. We are free only to accept or refuse our task- and, implicitly, our Taskmaster. None of us is a free creator or designer of his own life. "None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself" (Rom 14:7). Either God, or fate, or meaningless chance has laid upon each of us a Task, a Quest, which we would not have chosen for ourselves. We are all Hobbits who love our Shire, or security, our creature comforts, whether these are pipeweed, mushrooms, five meals a day, and local gossip, or Starbucks coffees, recreational sex, and politics. But something, some authority not named in The Lord of the Rings (but named in the Silmarillion), has decreed that a Quest should interrupt this delightful Epicurean garden and send us on an odyssey. We are plucked out of our Hobbit holes and plunked down onto a Road. — Peter Kreeft

Memory lane is not a road I like to go down. But that's the only way to remember not to forget. — Manasa Rao

Emma?" "Hmm?" "You took everything I told you really well." "I've never understood the woe-is-me thing. I mean, the hottest guy in town just told me he wants me badly enough to bite me and make me like him, and now he wants to drag me home and ravish me. I'm going to, what, run screaming into the night? Oh, no! I'm a Puma now! My life is over! Sob!" Emma rolled her eyes. "I mean, don't get me wrong, it's freaking me out a bit, and it's probably going to cost me a fortune in bikini waxing, but it's not the end of my world." Max nearly ran off the road. "You get a bikini wax?" "Wouldn't you like to know?" "Hell yes. — Dana Marie Bell

Our life is an endless journey; it is like a broad highway that extends infinitely into the distance. The practice of meditation provides a vehicle to travel on that road. Our journey consists of constant ups and downs ... — Chogyam Trungpa

Sometimes I look back and I am shocked. Everyday of my life I have prepared for success, worked for it, waited for it, and you don't notice how the days pass until nearly a lifetime is finished. Then it hits you
the thing you have been waiting for has already gone by. And it was going in the other direction. It's like I've been waiting on the wrong side of the road for a bus that was already full. p. 265 — Monica Ali

Dr. Martin Luther King put it like this: "We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside . . . but one day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved."23 — Shane Claiborne

The road is a lonely place, and that sounds like a cliche, you know, like what is my life? — Artie Lange

The little box that was given to me was by no means unique. I'd heard of prayer boxes, and I knew what they were for.
... Any scrap of paper will do, anywhere, anytime of the day or night. The important part, in a world of fractured thoughts, hurried moments, and scattershot prayers, is to take the time to think through, to write down, to clarify in your own mind the things you're asking for, the things you're grateful for, the things your're troubled about, the hopes you've been nurturing.
And then?
Put them in the box and ...
Let. Them. Go.
That's what trust is. It's letting go of the worry. It's the way of peace and also the way of God. such a hard road to travel for people like me, who are worriers. When I'm writing a story, I control the whole universe. In life ... not so much. Actually, not at all. Things happen that I hadn't anticipated and wouldn't choose and can't change. That's the tough part. — Lisa Wingate

A journey - whether it's to the corner grocery or through life - is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end, right? Well, the road is not like that at all. It's the very illogic and the juxtaposed differences of the road - combined with our search for meaning - that make travel so addictive. — Gloria Steinem

I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart -like something dead- lies buried.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world. — Constantine P. Cavafy

The three of us do not go out very often as the three of us. I think Daniel is perfect for Jed, which is the highest compliment I can give. But my friendship isn't with him, and Jed understands that. When we hit the road, we hit it together alone.
We get to the bridge, out undestined destination. Even though there's no sign, no arrow, Jed turns at the last minute and parks us in a verge right before the bridge leaves the ground.
The trunk pops open, and Jed runs round back to retrieve a bag of oranges and a sweatshirt that fits me better.
Shall we make like lizards and leap? he asks.
I never felt the urge to jump off a bridge, but there are times I have wanted to jump out of my life, out of my skin.
Would you stroll me down the promenade instead? I ask back.
Most certainly, my splendid.
There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people tho don't see each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy. — David Levithan

I'm just as ambitious as ever. Only I've changed the object of my ambitions. I'm going to be a good teacher- and I'm going to study at home here and take a little college course all by myself. Oh, I've dozens of plans Marilla. I've been thinking them out for a week and I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queens my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see ti along for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own that bind, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes - what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows - what new landscapes- what new beauties - what curves and hills and valley's further on. — L.M. Montgomery

I'll give you some life advice," I said. "The first piece is: Listen and listen intently when you're being spoken to about something. The second: Take the high road. When presented with frustration or anger or discontentment with a situation or a person, don't reduce yourself to that level. Don't get into a conflict in that moment. You'll feel better about yourself for it." Well, to my surprise, this created a near frenzy in the room. The students were aghast. I was surprised by the reaction, so I said: "Tell me more about why that seems like bad advice to you." "I believe I should stand up for myself!" said one student. "I'm not saying you shouldn't stand up for yourself," I said. "I'm just saying, in the heat of the moment, walk away from it. — Tim Gunn

Running isn't a sport for pretty boys ... It's about the sweat in your hair and the blisters on your feet. Its the frozen spit on your chin and the nausea in your gut. It's about throbbing calves and cramps at midnight that are strong enough to wake the dead. It's about getting out the door and running when the rest of the world is only dreaming about having the passion that you need to live each and every day with. It's about being on a lonely road and running like a champion even when there's not a single soul in sight to cheer you on. Running is all about having the desire to train and persevere until every fiber in your legs, mind, and heart is turned to steel. And when you've finally forged hard enough, you will have become the best runner you can be. And that's all that you can ask for. — Paul Maurer

I encountered a large temporary sign declaring Rough Road Ahead, and indeed it was. Had I not been warned, that experience would have been disastrous. Life is like that. It's full of rough spots. Some are tests to make us stronger. Others result from our own disobedience ... Each one of us encounters unique challenges meant for growth. — Richard G. Scott

Life is not always perfect. Like a road, it has many bends, ups and down, but that's its beauty. — Amit Ray

Can you imagine how incredibly quiet it was everywhere, when the gentlemen from this world" - he made a vague circular gesture towards the battalions of meditating Asians behind him - "were hatching and proclaiming their ideas? Anyone who now tries to follow these ideas in order to find the road back to what they were talking about, is faced with obstacles that would have driven an entire tribe of oriental ascetics into the ravine. The world from which they felt it so necessary to retreat would have seemed idyllic to us. We live in a vision of hell, and we have actually got used to it." He looked at his statues and continued, "We have become different people. We still look the same, but we have nothing in common with them any more. We are differently programmed. Anyone who now wants to become like them must acquire a big dose of madness first; otherwise he will no longer be able to bear the life of our world. We are not designed for their kind of life. — Cees Nooteboom

At one extreme of its meaning, "myth" is fable, falsehood, or superstition. But at another, "myth" is a useful and fruitful image by which we make sense of life in somewhat the same way that we can explain electrical forces by comparing them with the behavior of water or air. Yet "myth," in this second sense, is not to be taken literally, just as electricity is not to be confused with air or water. Thus in using myth one must take care not to confuse image with fact, which would be like climbing up the signpost instead of following the road. — Alan W. Watts

I came down the long road, even before I got here. Just to be where I am today is already a positive in my life. But to have something like this happen to me as well, I'm speechless. — Shawne Merriman

Guess life is really a road marked by crossroads. It's not the long and winding stretches that will hurt you the most. It's the crossroads. You make a bad choice and it's a tumble and a rumble before you get back on your feet again. But you'll get back on your feet. You'll find yourself. And then you'll be off to your next adventure (crossroads, I mean). In my case, I always had a safety net - my faith in God. But then, I'm more like the millions of simple folk who travel this world. — Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

The Wise County Bookmobile is one of the most beautiful sights in the world to me. When I see it lumbering down the mountain road like a tank ... I flag it down like an old friend. I've waited on this corner every Friday since I can remember. The Bookmobile is just a government truck, but to me it's a glittering royal coach delivering stories and knowledge and life itself. I even love the smell of books. People have often told me that one of their strongest childhood memories is the scent of their grandmother's house. I never knew my grandmothers, but I could always count on the Bookmobile. — Adriana Trigiani

With every plus there must be a minus; with every tear there must be a smile; and for every skunk there must be a fragrant flower. We live our lives in fear of dying and we overlook the simple truth that living is all we can control. Never too high, never too low will get you stuck in the middle of the road. A sense of equilibrium is needed to see life as it is, not what you would like it to be. — Phil Wohl

...[I]t doesn't take an advanced degree to figure out that this education talk is less a strategy for mitigating inequality than it is a way of rationalizing it. To attribute economic results to school years finished and SAT scores achieved is to remove matters from the realm of, well, economics and to relocate them to the provinces of personal striving and individual intelligence. From this perspective, wages aren't what they are because one party (management) has a certain amount of power over the other (workers); wages are like that because the god of the market, being surpassingly fair, rewards those who show talent and gumption. Good people are those who get a gold star from their teacher in elementary school, a fat acceptance letter from a good college, and a good life when they graduate. All because they are the best. Those who don't pay attention in high school get to spend their days picking up discarded cans by the side of the road. Both outcomes are our own doing. — Thomas Frank

My head whips back from the impact and my ribs twang like a dropped guitar. The sky spins above me like a penny. My bike has dematerialized, and my iPod is strewn about the intersection in a million glittering pieces. When I try to move, ten different parts of my body light up at once, like someone's pressing all the buttons at an anatomy exhibit. The magnolia tree blows me a kiss of perfumed air, and I can't decide if what I'm feeling is incredible bliss of excruciating pain. This might just be the greatest moment of my life. It's possible. And if it is, I don't want to waste it lying around in the middle of the road. For a single, golden second I breathe galaxies. — Hilary T. Smith

What is happiness? What is a good life? Is it a life without suffering? Something like that doesn't exist ... Life is filled with suffering and sorrow. So it's no wonder that to those who fear suffering, the world seems like a living hell! And still ... those who bravely keep going and try to push through this hell ... They'll find that it's only a small stretch of the road to happiness. The truly great are those who never lose hope, even when thrown into hell ... And as long as we have faith in ourselves, even hell itself can be a paradise! — Naoyuki Ochiai

Those for whom there was, first dimly, then more bright, then dimly again, a possibility. Which, though dimly, perhaps still exists, but which they know, have somehow always known, would never come to anything. They were never, how can I put this, going to be a part of life. It is as though, going through a landscape, through the seasons, in the same general direction as everybody else, they never quite made it to the road. Through the years, humanity, like a tide of refugees or pilgrims, shoeless and in rags, or in Mercedes, station wagons, running shoes, were traveling on, joined by others, falling by the way. And we, joined though we may be, briefly, by other strays, or by road travelers on their little detours, nonetheless never quite joined the continuing procession, of life and birth, never quite found or made it to the road. Whose voice is this? Not here. Not mine. — Renata Adler

The world has so many lessons to teach you. I consider the world, our earth, to be like a school, and our life, the classrooms. Sometimes on our planet life school, the lessons often come dressed up as detours and road blocks and sometimes as full blown crises. And the secret I've learned to getting ahead is being open to the lessons. — Oprah Winfrey

For a long time I believed the opposite of passion was death. I was wrong. Passion and death are implicit, one in the other. Past the border of a fiery life lies the netherworld. I can trace this road, which took me through places so hot the very air burned the lungs. I did not turn back. I pressed on, and eventually passed over the border, beyond which lies a place that is wordless and cold, so cold that it, like mercury, burns a freezing blue flame. — Marya Hornbacher

You said, "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city will be found, better than this.
Every effort of mine is condemned by fate;
and my heart is-like a corpse-buried.
How long in this wasteland will my mind remain.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look
I see the black ruins of my life here,
where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted."
New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods;
in these same houses you will grow gray.
Always you will arrive in this city. To another land-do not hope-
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have ruined your life here
in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.2 — Constantine P. Cavafy

THE FACE IN THE TOYOTA
Suppose you see a face in a Toyota
One day, and you fall in love with that face,
And it is Her, and the world rushes by
Like dust blown down a Montana street.
And you fall upward into some deep hole,
And you can't tell God from a grain of sand.
And your life is changed, except that now you
Overlook even more than you did before;
And these ignored things come to bury you,
And you are crushed, and your parents
Can't help anymore, and the woman in the Toyota
Becomes a part of the world that you don't see.
And now the grain of sand becomes sand again,
And you stand on some mountain road weeping. — Robert Bly

I travel a lot with my students. We go on the road and even learn about things like doing your laundry and managing your time. And maybe that's not on the test at the end of the year, but it's in the test of life and that's why my classroom is successful. — Rafe Esquith

To become a monk, or a nun, or to join a House of of Mercy, is not the high road to sanctification. True holiness does not make a Christian evade difficulties, but face and overcome them. Christ would have His people show that His grace is not a mere hot-house plant, which can only thrive under shelter, but a strong, hardy thing which can flourish in every relation of life. It is doing our duty in that state to which God has called us
like salt in the midst of corruption, and light in the midst of darkness
which is a primary element in sanctification. — J.C. Ryle

In a universe whose size is beyond human imagining, where our world floats like a dust mote in the void of night, men have grown inconceivably lonely. We scan the time scale and the mechanisms of life itself for portents and signs of the invisible. As the only thinking mammals on the planet - perhaps the only thinking animals in the entire sidereal universe - the burden of consciousness has grown heavy upon us. We watch the stars, but the signs are uncertain. We uncover the bones of the past and seek for our origins. There is a path there, but it appears to wander. The vagaries of the road may have a meaning, however; it is thus we torture ourselves.... Loren Eiseley, 1946... — James Edwin Gunn

Hindsight, I think, is a useless tool. We, each of us, are at a place in our lives because of innumerable circumstances, and we, each of us, have a responsibility (if we do not like where we are) to move along life's road, to find a better path if this one does not suit, or to walk happily along this one if it is indeed our life's way. Changing even the bad things that have gone before would fundamentally change who we are, and whether or not that would be a good thing, I believe, it is impossible to predict.
So I take my past experiences ... and try to regret nothing.
-Drizzt Do'urden — R.A. Salvatore

The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life ... The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber ... Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful 'sovereign,' on account of the 'protection' he affords you. — Lysander Spooner

Living life is like walking down a road
you dont look down and count your every step,
instead you look straight forward to your destination. — Jovan Baladiang

The beginning of every writing session is like setting down a road unknown. — Rob Bignell, Editor

I started making choices based on what I wanted, and didn't feel like I needed to justify them. If I wanted to cut my hair, I did it. If I wanted to move to New York, I did it. If I wanted to take a spontaneous road trip, I did it. At 24 I decided that my life is enough for me, and I stopped looking for some other piece to complete it. — Taylor Swift

A man with a half volition goes backwards and forwards, and makes no way on the smoothest road; a man with a whole volition advances on the roughest, and will reach his purpose, if there be even a little worthiness in it. The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - a waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life and having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you. — Thomas Carlyle

Not being able to dance anymore [was the hardest obstacle]. But, at the same time, I feel like that was one of the very first things that did give me that opportunity to say, "Are you gonna crumble here? Or maybe God has another destiny for your life and it's a different road than what you think it is?" — Brooke Burns

But the airplane is a wonderful thing. You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart. You arrive quickly and you leave quickly. You don't grieve too much. And there is something else about the airplane. You can go back many times to the same place. And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn't exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to live now. The past is here." He touched his heart. "It isn't there." And he pointed at the dusty road. — V.S. Naipaul

Now we see it, lying in the middle of the road. A swan, a mute swan. It looks like an offcut of organza, crumpled around the edges, twitching. As we pass we see its long neck has buckled into its body like a folding chair. We see its wings are tucked back as if the tar is liquid and the swan is swimming.
There are two men and a woman in the road. One man is standing on the tar, the other is directing the traffic. The woman is kneeling down beside the swan. I think she is crying, she seems to be crying, and this makes me suddenly angry. I think of all the other creatures we've seen since we set out. I think of the rat, the fox, the kitten, the badger. I think of the jackdaw, did you see the jackdaw? We passed it in the queue to pass the swan. Its beak was cracked open, its brains squeeged out. Why didn't anybody stop for the jackdaw? Because the swan looks like a wedding dress, that's why. Whereas the jackdaw looks like a bin bag. Because this is how people measure life. — Sara Baume

That lame man you saw
is he grateful now? Is it worth it to get on his feet and spend the rest of his life dragging burdens like a mule? ... It's not much of a world, is it? Is it worth trying to bring Leah back into it?"
Thacia stood still in the road. "Oh, Daniel
yes! If only I could make you see, somehow, that it is!"
"All this
" she exclaimed, the sweep of her arm including the deepening blue of the sky, the shining lake in the distance, the snow-covered mountain far to the north. "So much! You must look at it all, Daniel, not just at the unhappy things. — Elizabeth George Speare

A single name of a multitude of practices centered about the auto-driven auto. Flashing across the country in the sure hands of an invisible chauffeur, windows all opaque, night dark, sky high, tires assailing the road below like four phantom buzzsaws - and starting from scratch and ending in the same place, and never knowing where you are going or where you have been - it is possible, for a moment, to kindle some feeling of individuality in the coldest brainpan, to produce a momentary awareness of self by virtue of an apartness from all but a sense of motion. This is because movement through darkness is the ultimate abstraction of life itself - at least that's what one of the Vital Comedians said, and everybody in the place laughed. — Roger Zelazny

The new situation must be created, in which it is possible to believe on Jesus as God incarnate; that is the impossible situation in which everything is staked solely on the word of Jesus. Peter had to leave the ship and risk his life on the sea, in order to learn both his own weakness and the almighty power of his Lord. If Peter had not taken the risk, he would never have learnt the meaning of faith. Before he can believe, the utterly impossible and ethically irresponsible situation on the waves of the sea must be displayed. The road to faith passes through obedience to the call of Jesus. Unless a definite step is demanded, the call vanishes into thin air, and if men imagine that they can follow Jesus without taking this step, they are deluding themselves like fanatics. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Annie, who up until this very day had always felt like a child--which is why she could not marry, she could not be a wife--now felt quietly ancient. She thought how for years onstage she had used the image of walking up the dirt road holding her father's hand, the snow-covered fields spread around them, the woods in the distance, joy spilling through her--how she had used this scene to have tears immediately come to her eyes, for the happiness of it, and the loss of it. And now she wondered if it had even happened, if the road had ever been narrow and dirt, if her father had ever held her hand and said that his family was the most important thing to him. — Elizabeth Strout

A woman or man of value doesn't love you because of what he or she wants you to be or do for them. He or she loves you because your combined souls understand one another, complements each other, and make sense above any other person in this world. You each share a part of their soul's mirror and see each other's light reflected in it clearly. You can easily speak from the heart and feel safe doing so. Both of you have been traveling a parallel road your entire life. Without each other's presence, you feel like an old friend or family member was lost. It bothers you, not because you have given it too much meaning, but because God did. This is the type of person you don't have to fight for because you can't get rid of them and your heart doesn't want them to leave anyways. — Shannon L. Alder

We have nothing against playing video games; they have many good features and benefits. Our concern is that when they are played to excess, especially in social isolation, they can hinder a young man's ability and interest in developing his face-to-face social skills. Multiple problems, including obesity, violence, anxiety, lower school performance, social phobia and shyness, greater impulsivity and depression, have all been associated with excessive gaming. The variety and intensity of video game action makes other parts of life, like school, seem comparatively boring, and that creates a problem with their academic performance, which in turn might require medication to deal with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which then leads to other problems down the road in a disastrous negative cycle ... — Philip G. Zimbardo

But I've noticed, too, that prayer for some other people is less like a spare tire and more like a road map. It is not something tucked away in small compartment and rarely used. It is used constantly. These people understand how necessary a road map is if they are to ever get where they want to go. For them, prayer isn't just for emergency use, but it guides them through the intricacies of life. — Steve Goodier

One's home is like a delicious piece of pie you order in a restaurant on a country road one cozy evening - the best piece of pie you have ever eaten in your life - and can never find again. After you leave home, you may find yourself feeling homesick, even if you have a new home that has nicer wallpaper and a more efficient dishwasher than the home in which you grew up. — Daniel Handler

I change the channel to another movie. An old one, but new to me. And, ironically, a thin, gorgeous blonde - Meg Ryan, maybe - rides her bike on a country road. She smiles like she has no cares in the world. Like no one ever judges her. Like her life is perfect. Wind through her hair and sunshine on her face. The only thing missing are the rainbows and butterflies and cartoon birds singing on her shoulder.

Maybe I should grab my bike and try to catch up with Mom, Mike, and the kids. They can't be going very fast. I would love to feel like that, even if it's just for a second - free and peaceful and normal.
Suddenly, there's a truck. It can't be headed toward Meg Ryan. Could it? Yes. Oh my God. No! Meg Ryan just got hit by that truck.

Figures. See what happens when you exercise? — K.A. Barson

The road to Epidaurus is like the road to creation. One stops searching. One grows silent, stilled by the hush of mysterious beginnings. If one could speak one would become melodious. There is nothing to be seized or reassured or cornered off here: there is only a breaking down of the walls which lock the spirit in. The landscape does not recede, it installs itself in the open places of the heart j it crowds in, accumulates, dispossesses. You are no longer riding through something - call it Nature, if you will - but participating in a rout, a rout of the forces of greed, malevolence, envy, selfishness, spite, intolerance, pride, arrogance, cunning, duplicity and so on.
It is the morning of the first day of the great peace, the peace of the heart, which comes with surrender, I never knew the meaning of peace until I arrived at Epidaurus. Like everybody I had used the word all my life, without once realizing that I was using a counterfeit. — Henry Miller

For most of my life I have thought of grace as a hope of a bright tomorrow in spite of the darkness of today
and this is true. In this way we are all like Pamela, walking a road to grace
hoping for mercy. What we fail to realize is that grace is more than our destination, it is the journey itself, manifested in each breath and with each step we take. Grace surrounds us, whirls about us like the wind, falls on us like rain. Grace sustains us on our journeys, no matter how perilous they may be and, make no mistake, they are all perilous. We need not hope for grace, we merely need to open our eyes to its abundance. Grace is all around us, not just in the hopeful future but in the miracle of now. — Richard Paul Evans

A peril of the night road is that flecks of dust and streaks of bug blood on the windshield look to me like old admirals in uniform, or crippled apple women, or the front edge of barges, and I whirl out of their way, thus going into ditches and fields and up on front lawns, endangering the life of authentic admirals and apple women who may be out on the roads for a breath of air before retiring. — James Thurber

It never occurred to me before, but I always thought of time like it was a road, or an empty plane. I could see it and mark it and claim it as mine, but the reason I couldn't travel my own speed was because I was waiting on the present to catch up, I had to wait to get to my destination.
But really, there is no road, or flat plane or anything ... there's just this very dangerous edge ... cliff that we're dangling off of, there isn't a future really, I mean sure we can plan and prepare, but tomorrow may not come.
I'm not saying base your life on that- if tomorrow does come, what you do today will influence it!
But anything can push you off that cliff.
So start living. — Melanie Kay Taylor

He laughs like, what can you do? Laughs and spreads his palms as if revealing himself, Cortez the thief, as he is and always was, the person I always knew was there but never wanted to see. I am surprised, but why am I surprised? I decided at some point that he had made my road his road, given over to me the last two months of preimpact existence, because I was on my cockamamie hero's quest and required an able and agile sidekick - I reached that conclusion without thinking about it much and put the question aside. But everybody does everything for a reason. That's lesson number one of police work; it's lesson number one of life. — Ben H. Winters

It's always been you, Troy. Always." Always is such a bullshit word, a lie, a farce, a road that promises to go on forever. But roads, like life, branch off, and merge and meander. And they both always, always end. — Leylah Attar

If TV sitcoms idealized the American suburbs of the 1960s, the works of the artistic elite disparaged them ceaselessly, then and now. The songs of Pete Seeger, novels like Revolutionary Road, the stories of John Cheever, movies like Pleasantville and American Beauty, television series like Mad Men: in all of them, that long-ago land of lawns and houses is depicted as a country of stultifying conformity and cultural emptiness, sexual hypocrisy, alcoholism, and spiritual despair. Privilege murders the senses there, the creatives tell us. Gender roles strangle freedom. Family life turns the heart of adventure to ashes. There's bigotry and gossip and dangerous liaisons behind every closed door. Oh, the soul, the human soul! In the suburbs of fiction, she is forever dying. But — Andrew Klavan

Even earthquakes are the consequence of tensions built up over long spans of time, imperceptibly, incrementally. You don't notice the buildup, just the release. You see a sick person, an old person, a dying person, the sight sinks in, and somewhere down the road you change your life. In movies and novels, people change suddenly and permanently, which is convenient and dramatic but not much like life, where you gain distance on something, relapse, resolve, try again, and move along in stops, starts, and stutters. Change is mostly slow. In my life, there had been transformative events, and I'd had a few sudden illuminations and crises, crossed a rubicon or two, but mostly I'd had the incremental. — Rebecca Solnit

Now comes the picture of mass defeat, the most awesome spectacle of the war. It is in the bent bodies of old women who poke among ruins seeking some miserable object that will link their lives with the old days. It is in the shamed darting eyes of the defeated. It is in the faces of the little boys who regard our triumphant columns with fear and fascination. And above all it is in the thousands of beaten, dusty soldiers who stream along the roads towards the stockades. Their feet clump wearily, mechanically, hopelessly on the still endless road of war. They move as haggard, gray masses, in which the individual had neither life nor meaning. It is impossible to see in these men the quality that made them stand up and fight like demons out of hell a few shorts months ago. — Audie Murphy

Why is it so important for me to forgive that son-of-a-bitch? I'm not the one at fault here. It shouldn't be about me. He's the one that did wrong. Screw his feelings. He should feel like he's hated for what he did." Lisa added another used tissue to the growing pile on the table.
Lyn warmly smiled. "Forgiving Byron isn't for his sake, it's for yours. The block in your life's road can only be removed if you forgive him for what he did. If you don't, you'll just keep bumping into that block again and again. The life you live will be miserable. You'll never be able to break the chains of the past."
Lisa listened and let the words sink into her subconscious. She realized the only way to get to the end of the road was to take the first step. There was a block preventing her from moving forward in life. She had to find a way past it. — Dane Hatchell

Never mind that I hadn't a clue which path to follow or whether, to echo Robert Frost, the one I took would make all the difference. The truth is, I'd bailed out of the right choice-wrong choice mentality a long time ago. It seemed so clear to me
since I'd wised up to the idea that life is not a straight road with no exit ramps
that life presented opportunities all along the way for a person to change directions. Besides, over the last ten years, I'd grown to like the idea of not knowing where a choice might lead me. — Alice Steinbach

There is no situation like the open road, and seeing things completely afresh. I'm used to traveling. It's not a question of meeting or seeing new faces particularly, or hearing new stories, but of looking at life in a different way. It's the curtain coming up on another act. — James Salter

At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It's you the hearse is taking away. I don't want to be there for your cremation; I don't want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, 'Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr'* and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushed over you. Neither of us wants to outlive the other. We've often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we'd like to spend it together.
*The world is empty. I don't want to go on living. — Andre Gorz

When I look out [the window] at the big houses on either side of the road, it's obvious we've entered the rich side of town. Poor people don't post signs like NO TRESPASSING, PRIVATE DRIVE, PRIVATE PROPERTY, MONITORED BY CAMERA SURVEILLANCE. I should know because I've been poor my entire life, and the only person I know who ever posted a sign like these is my friend ... and he actually stole the sign off a rich guy's yard. — Simone Elkeles

I live completely without regret. Sure there are plenty of things that someone could second guess, but I see the path of life like driving down the road without a map. The thing is, some dark alleys open up in majestic places, and some bright and shiny highways to the top end in cliffs to the bottom. You never know until you get there. What I know for sure is that if many years ago I actually had a map to the path of life, the destination that I would have chosen is right here, with this family, in this place, and with these smiles. That makes anything that could have been regretful, the best decision in the world. — Michael A. Wood Jr.

Even when life hits you like a Mack truck that's come out of nowhere, there is still a chance that you will survive, and although the road to recover may be slow, long, and even permanent, this doesn't mean you can't enjoy the rest of your life and be happy again. — Shania Twain

Not the first time. I didn't think my heart could stand it. But the airplane is a wonderful thing. You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart. You arrive quickly and you leave quickly. You don't grieve too much. And there is something else about the airplane. You can go back many times to the same place. And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn't exist in real life. You trample on the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground. That is the way we have to learn to live now. The past is here." He touched his heart. "It isn't there." And he pointed at the dusty road. I — V.S. Naipaul

but here I am, in this study that looks across a road well travelled in the rushing mornings to work, and hardly travelled with such anxiety and intent during the hours that come before the rush to work, walked on, and peed on, by the homeless, and the prostitutes and the pimps, and the men and women going home to apartments in the sky, surrounding and overlooking Moss Park park, as I like to call it. Moss Park park is where life stretches out itself on its back, prostrate in filthy, hopeless, bouts of heroism and stardom, for these men who lie on the benches and the dying grass, are heroes to themselves and to one another, — Austin Clarke

Nor was that all. Had I simply understood that life had no meaning I could have borne it quietly, knowing that that was my lot. But I could not satisfy myself with that. Had I been like a man living in a wood from which he knows there is no exit, I could have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who, horrified at having lost his way, rushes about wishing to find the road. He knows that each step he takes confuses him more and more, but still he cannot help rushing about. — Leo Tolstoy

It seems there is always a road with bends and forks to choose, and taking one path means you can never take another one. There's no starting over nor undoing the steps I've taken. It isn't like I'd want to not have my little ones and Jack and that ranch, it is part of life to have to support yourself. It's just that I want everything, my insides are not just hungry, but greedy. I want to find out all the things in the world and still have a family and a ranch. Maybe part of passing that test was a marker for where I've been, but it feels more like a pointer for something I'll never reach. (November 29, 1887 entry, pg 309) — Nancy E. Turner

My life is full of mistakes. They're like pebbles that make a good road. — Beatrice Wood

I'd like my life to be like a Bruce Springsteen song. Just once. I know I'm not born to run, I know that Seven Sisters' Road is nothing like Thunder Road, but feelings can't be different, can they? — Nick Hornby

Misery is a no U-turns, no stopping road. Travel down it pushed by those behind, tripped by those in front. Travel down it at furious speed though the days are mummified in lead. It happens so fast once you get started, there's no anchor from the real world to slow you down, nothing to hold on to. Misery pulls away the brackets of life leaving you to free fall. Whatever your private hell, you'll find millions like it in Misery. This is the town where everyone's nightmares come true. — Jeanette Winterson

Being molded into something God wants you to be is such a moving force that your whole personality would change. Joy, peace, strength, compassion, the light, the road ... all would touch your life like a moving orchestra. Breathing life into your soul. — Phil Mitchell

My life had been like a painter who climbs up a road overhanging a lake that is hidden from view by a screen of rocks and trees. Through a gap he glimpses it, he has it all there in front of him, he takes up his brushes. — Marcel Proust

The Happy Trinity is her home: nothing can trouble her joy.
She is the bird that evades every net: the wild deer that leaps every pitfall.
Like the mother bird to its chickens or a shield to the armed knight: so is the Lord to her mind, in His unchanging lucidity.
Bogies will not scare her in the dark: bullets will not frighten her in the day.
Falsehoods tricked out as truths assail her in vain: she sees through the lie as if it were glass.
The invisible germ will not harm her: nor yet the glittering sunstroke.
A thousand fail to solve the problem, ten thousand choose the wrong turning: but she passes safely through.
He details immortal gods to attend her: upon every road where she must travel.
They take her hand at hard places: she will not stub her toes in the dark.
She may walk among lions and rattlesnakes: among dinosaurs and nurseries of lionettes.
He fills her brim full with immensity of life: he leads her to see the world's desire. — C.S. Lewis

People often think the question of non-resistance to evil by force
is a theoretical one, which can be neglected. Yet this question
is presented by life itself to all men, and calls for some answer
from every thinking man. Ever since Christianity has been
outwardly professed, this question is for men in their social life
like the question which presents itself to a traveler when the
road on which he has been journeying divides into two branches.
He must go on and he cannot say: I will not think about it, but
will go on just as I did before. There was one road, now there
are two, and he must make his choice. — Leo Tolstoy

I feel like we have to keep our eyes on the road. Being nostalgic is like taking an offramp and getting a sandwich - and then you get back on the highway. I don't want to be spending the rest of my life at the gas station. — Eddie Vedder

Life is like a road.
With turnings and shortcuts.
Then one day ...
just ends. — Myself

It's impossible to plan things past a certain point, and even before that point your plans aren't guaranteed. But if you can keep steady, drive down that road and get over those humps that are inevitably going to pop up, chances are there'll be a nice stretch of paved concrete in between and you can enjoy the scenery...Or there might not be, who knows. The whole goddamn road could look like the surface of the moon and send you flying into a fucking tree. Doesn't really matter, because the point is you have to keep driving anyways. Just keep driving and eventually you'll reach a point where the scenery will be so beautiful, it'll take your mind off how long you've been on that road.
Which is really all you can ask for. — Patrick Anderson Jr.

When you get to the end of the road and feel like you've arrived at a place where you don't want to be, for pity sakes, turn around, back up and move in a different direction. There's no road in life that is a dead end unless you stop there permanently. — Toni Sorenson

It almost feels like at some point life whacks you on top of the head and hands you a list of all the things you can keep. The list is surprisingly long. You can keep letters. You can keep trying. You can keep secrets and you can try your hardest to keep promises. You can keep your eyes on the road. You can keep his sweatshirt, the one he left on the living room floor. You can keep photos and you can keep the memories. But you cannot keep people. People are not things - you can't keep them. — Hannah Brencher

Traditional (Hawaiian Saying): A road goes down, up and level. In other words. life is like a road. — John Richard Stephens

Life, just like the stars, the planets and the galaxies, is just a temporary structure on the long road from order to disorder. But that doesn't make us insignificant, because we are the Cosmos made conscious. Life is the means by which the universe understands itself. And for me, our true significance lies in our ability to understand and explore this beautiful universe. — Brian Cox

The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can't see this house. You'd never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn't see but a few feet ahead. I didn't meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted - to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost. — Eugene O'Neill

The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn't matter what they do, because everything works out in the end. They'll beat the bad guys and put things right and everything ends up cool.
In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a car. If you fall from a tree, you break some bones.
Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.
I just wanted to make that clear before I begun. — Darren Shan

Finally, after a lot of searching and digging, it was simply the love of family that gave me a road into the character. Once I got into that, and we delved into what it would be like to survive cancer and the ability to see how precious life is, it became easier to play her. — Jeanne Tripplehorn