Life S Patterns Quotes & Sayings

The world is God's workshop; the raw materials are His; the ideals and patterns are His; our hands are "the members of Christ," our reward His recognition. Blacksmith or banker, draughtsman or doctor, painter or preacher, servant or statesman, must work as unto the Lord, not merely making a living, but devoting a life. This makes life sacramental, turning its water into wine. This is twice blessed, blessing both the worker and the work. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

All humans at some time experience injustice, assault, disqualification, invasion and betrayal. No person is completely shielded. We need not trace our family trees very far back or study for long what life was like for our forbears to uncover humanity's abusiveness. The inherited scars of our multigenerational families exist in our family systems as we know them today. The abuse of the past often exists as the shame of today, and the shame is perpetuated through our patterns of interaction. — Merle A. Fossum

It's a complete life change when you really want to better yourself and completely change the patterns that you have had in the past. Do I think I still need work? I think everyone needs work. I just keep working on myself. — Demi Lovato

A huge amount of success in life comes from learning as a child how to make good habits. It's good to help kids understand that when they do certain things habitually, they're reinforcing patterns. — Charles Duhigg

Andreasen wanted to know why these people had deviated from their usual patterns. What he discovered has become a pillar of modern marketing theory: People's buying habits are more likely to change when they go through a major life event. When someone gets married, for example, they're more likely to start buying a new type of coffee. When they move into a new house, they're more apt to purchase a different kind of cereal. When they get divorced, there's a higher chance they'll start buying different brands of beer.7.7 Consumers going through major life events often don't notice, or care, that their shopping patterns have shifted. However, retailers notice, and they care quite a bit. — Charles Duhigg

People look for patterns in everything. It's what keeps us sane, I suppose. I struggle to see any patterns in my life. I think I can understand depression a bit because of my sister. My own feelings of ... I'm aware that, if you feel down, it can be strangely unrelated to circumstances around you. That's just the way life is. — Michael Palin

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

For every thought supported by feeling, there is a muscle change. Primary muscle patterns being the biological heritage of man, man's whole body records his emotional thinking. — Mabel Elsworth Todd

When a book's pattern and the shape of its inner life is as plain to the reader as it is to the author
then perhaps it is time to throw the book aside, as having had its day, and start again on something new. — Doris Lessing

The game created a parallel world, Sidney thought. It was drama; it was excitement; it was a metaphor for the vicissitudes of life. It was also quintessentially English: democratic (there were teams with all levels of ability), communal (the cricket 'square' was often at the centre of the village green), and convivial (the game was full of eccentric characters.) It was the representation of a nation's cuisine, with its milky tea, cucumber sandwiches, Victoria sponge and lashings of beer. It was also beautiful to watch, with fifteen men, dressed in white and moving on green, creating geometrical patterns that looked as if they had been choreographed by a divine choreographer. As — James Runcie

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes - forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique. — Neil Gaiman

The key to maturity is time and community. Discernment and godly wisdom develop in a community that spans generations. The church is called to be this place where the [God's] Spirit uses normal patterns and rhythms of the Christian life in a community, so that we may bear fruit like a well-watered tree. Despite common appearances, the church is the place where God's new creation is coming into existence and being sustained by the Spirit like a great vineyard. — Michael Horton

Things accumulated in purses. Unless they were deliberately unloaded and all contents examined for utility occasionally, one could find oneself transporting around in one's daily life three lipstick cases with just a crumb of lipstick left, an old eyebrow pencil sharpener without a blade, pieces of defunct watch, odd earrings, handkerchiefs (three crumpled, one uncrumpled), two grubby powder puffs, bent hairpins, patterns of ribbon to be matched, a cigarette lighter without fuel (and two with fuel), a spark plug, some papers of Bex and a sprinkling of loose white aspirin, eleven train tickets (the return half of which had not been given up), four tram tickets, cinema and theatre stubs, seven pence three farthings in loose change and the mandatory throat lozenge stuck to the lining. At least, those had been the extra contents of Phyrne's bag the last time Dot had turned it out. — Kerry Greenwood

We deal with so many nightmares on a regular basis. When I'm watching a horror movie, there's a pattern, a sense of control in them. I'm just an observer, not having to deal with any of the repercussions. It's a nice dream to think monsters play by the rules, that they've got a pattern you can unlock and follow. Real life's messy, and the chaos leaves you devastated in the wake. — Katherine McIntyre

Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that's still vivid in your memory. It doesn't have to be long - three pages, five pages - but it should have a beginning and an end. Put that episode in a folder and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning, do the same thing. Tuesday's episode doesn't have to be related to Monday's episode. Take whatever memory comes calling; your subconscious mind, having been put to work, will start delivering your past. Keep this up for two months, or three months, or six months. Don't be impatient to start writing your "memoir" - the one you had in mind before you began. Then, one day, take all your entries out of their folder and spread them on the floor. (The floor is often a writer's best friend.) Read them through and see what they tell you and what patterns emerge. They will tell you what your memoir is about - and what it's not about. — William Zinsser

Mathematics is about problems, and problems must be made the focus of a student's mathematical life. Painful and creatively frustrating as it may be, students and their teachers should at all times be engaged in the process - having ideas, not having ideas, discovering patterns, making conjectures, constructing examples and counterexamples, devising arguments, and critiquing each other's work. — Paul Lockhart

Build patterns on time with God into your life when your worship leading ... Never let your time leading on a public stage eclipse what's going on with you and God behind closed doors. — Vicky Beeching

I like to look for patterns in science and life. It's what I do. — Patrick Soon-Shiong

Life is a process of working out what's not working for you and disentangling yourself from it and trying then not walk into the same thing again. Watching your patterns and correcting them if you can. — Siobhan Fahey

He looked past Chin toward streams of numbers running in opposite directions. He understood how much it meant to him, the roll and flip of data on a screen. He studied the figural diagrams that brought organic patterns into play, birdwing and chambered shell. It was shallow thinking to maintain that numbers and charts were the cold compression of unruly human energies, every sort of yearning and midnight sweat reduced to lucid units in the financial markets.

"In fact data itself was soulful and glowing, a dynamic aspect of the life process. This was the eloquence of alphabets and numeric systems, now fully realized in electronic form, in the zero-oneness of the world, the digital imperative that defined every breath of the planet's living billions. Here was the heave of the biosphere. Our bodies and oceans were here, knowable and whole. — Don DeLillo

Through the Savior's Atonement and by following these basic patterns of faithfulness, we receive "power from on high" to face the challenges of life. We need this divine power today more than ever. — Robert D. Hales

If your primary focus is to get over your health problems or get past a relationship crisis so that you can return to your former life and old patterns- that is, get back to business as usual-you are not really living. The distinction is paradoxical and sometimes subtle. It's the difference between walking through your life on your way to somewhere, and walking as your life. Even if you believe that where you want to get is extremely important, that destination is secondary. Your immediate experience is what really matters. It is your life. — Richard Moss

One of Freud's most important insights is that human beings have a strong unconscious tendency to retain these patterns during their lifetime, recreating over and over again the characteristic experiences of their inner world, whether they be positive or negative. Regardless of the discomfort or dysfunction they may cause, these experiences are reassuringly familiar, having been laid down early in life. — Catherine Sandler

That's what life is: repetitive routines. It's a matter of finding the balance between deviating from those patterns and knowing when to repeat them. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Since all life's stories begin at home, the characters and plot are written over a lifetime. Children are products of their parents and their early environments. They become adults who often life out early roles, scripts, relationship patterns, unmet needs, and expectations. Early relationships plant seeds for later ones. Therefore, it is natural (at appropriate times) for both parent and child to examine their roles as family members so they can learn, grow, heal, and thrive over time. Parenting for Life holds parents accountable, helps children forge their own paths, and strengthens the parent-child bond through love, respect, and empathy. — Nina Sidell

Perhaps there is more understanding and beauty in life when the glaring sunlight is softened by the patterns of shadows. Perhaps there is more depth in a relationship that has weathered some storms. Experience that never disappoints or saddens or stirs up feeling is a bland experience with little challenge or variation of color. Perhaps it's when we experience confidence and faith and hope that we see materialize before our eyes this builds up within us a feeling of inner strength, courage, and security. We are all personalities that grow and develop as a result of our experiences, relationships, thoughts, and emotions. We are the sum total of all the parts that go into the making of a life. — Virginia Mae Axline

We live in a world convinced that security is the most reliable context for freedom. The bitter irony of this conviction is that the havens of security we create are unable to provide the freedom we seek. The quest for national, economic, or personal security too often generates compulsive patterns of life at the expense of genuine freedom. Christian tradition offers an alternative. In biblical perspective, it is obedience rather than security that forms the proper context for freedom. Thus, the Christian vision of freedom is focused through the lens of a paradox: "Whoever cares for his own safety is lost; but if a man will let himself be lost for my sake, he will find his true self" (Matt. 16:25, NEB). - John S. Mogabgab, "Editor's Introduction," Weavings (May/June 1988) — Rueben P. Job

When confronted with suffering that won't go away or with even a minor problem, we instinctively focus on what is missing, ... not on the Master's hand. Often when you think everything has gone wrong, it's just that you're in the middle of a story. If you watch the stories God is weaving in your life, you ... will begin to see the patterns. You'll become a poet, sensitive to your Father's voice. — Paul E. Miller

If life has given us no more than a prison cell, let's at least decorate it as best we can-with the shadows of our dreams, their colourful patterns engraving our oblivion on the static surface of the walls. — Fernando Pessoa

Healing ... is an active and internal process that includes investigating one's attitudes, memories and beliefs with the desire to release all negative patterns that prevent one's full emotional and spiritual recovery. This internal review inevitably leads one to review one's external circumstances in an effort to recreate one's life in a way that serves activation of will - the will to see and accept truths about one's life and how one has used one's energies; and the will to begin to use energy for the creation of love, self-esteem, and health. — Caroline Myss

One a' them rules is don't go trusting another man's path...People do it, they do what their mommies and daddies did, they make them same mistakes, they have them same joys and hurts, they just repeating. Trees don't grow exactly where their momma is; ain't no room...I weren't following no one up through life. — Beth Lewis

The woman who undergoes this operation can sense the morphogenetic field at work in her face. She can feel the lines of force as they guide the embryonic cells into the patterns they must form. Why should a woman let her life be determined by tired collagens or by a shortage of zinc which weakens her electromagnetic field, the matrix of life? The goal of life is living. Life is a field of opportunity, guiding the individual forward along paths created by the meshed forces or objective possibilities as they interweave with a person's own potentialities. And this philosophy of life is now bodied forth in the faces of beautiful women. (Motherhood — William S. Wilson

It's a compulsive need to wreck everything. You might notice there's a pattern of stripping down and building back up again throughout my life. But I guess that's how some of us conduct our lives. — David Bowie

I believe in all human societies there is a desire to love and be loved, to experience the full fierceness of human emotion, and to make a measure of the sacred part of one's life. Wherever I've traveled
Kenya, Chile, Australia, Japan
I've found the most dependable way to preserve these possibilities is to be reminded of them in stories. Stories do not give instruction, they do not explain how to love a companion or how to find God. They offer, instead, patterns of sound and association, of event and image. Suspended as listeners and readers in these patterns,we might reimagine our lives. It is through story that we embrace the great breadth of memory, that we can distinguish what is true, and that we may glimpse, at least occasionally, how to live without despair in the midst of the horror that dogs and unhinges us. — Barry Lopez

Fr. Michael Scanlon, in his book Inner Healing, states that, "We have an attitudinal life which operates from the very core of our being. . . . This life determines broad general patterns of relating to others and to God." He then speaks of five different problem patterns that alert him to a need to pray for what he calls a "heart healing." These are: 1) A judgmental spirit that is harsh and demanding on self and others. 2) A strong perfectionist attitude demanding the impossible from self and others. 3) A strong pattern of fearing future events. 4) A sense of aloneness and abandonment in times of decision. 5) A preoccupation with one's own guilt and a compulsion to compete for position and success.[4] — Leanne Payne

A Nasrudin 'joke' may at first seem unfunny, or pointless, but will after study change and begin to reveal itself: you have uncovered the first level of meaning, and will soon observe your thought patterns shift as you watch them; you will have made the first crack in the wall of assumptions, the conditioned thinking (designated 'The Old Villain') which imprisons each and every one of us, the worst of which is to think that the visible world is all there is, that a man's or a mouse's view of life is the true one. — Doris Lessing

I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe
but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry
poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs
is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song. — David Byrne

It's possible to find order in chaos, and it's equally possible to find chaos underlying apparent order. Order and chaos are slippery concepts. They're like a set of twins who like to swap clothing from time to time. Order and chaos frequently intermingle and overlap, the same as beginnings and endings. Things are often more complicated, or more simple, than they seem. Often it depends on your angle. I think that telling a story is a way of trying to make life's complexity more comprehensible. It's a way of trying to separate order from chaos, patterns from pandemonium. — Gavin Extence

I believe that we will see a lot of destruction, but I believe that if we can see the right patterns and draw the right lessons from that destruction, we might be able to rebuild before it's too late. And then I have that ultimate optimism that even if we can't, life will rebuild itself. In a way, the global economy might collapse, but Gaia won't, and people's ingenuity won't. We will rebuild society, we will rebuild local economies, we will rebuild human aspirations. — Vandana Shiva

The sentences still form in my mind, and thoughts still do their little show-off dance, but I know my thought patterns so well now that they don't bother me anymore. My thoughts have become like old neighbors, kind of bothersome but ultimately rather endearing - Mr. and Mrs. Yakkity-Yak and their three dumb children, Blah, Blah and Blah. But they don't agitate my home. There's room for all of us in this neighborhood. — Elizabeth Gilbert

It shouldn't be difficult, then, to make the transposition at this point into the early Christian vision of Jesus and the Spirit and the way in which the material world is both celebrated and renewed through their work. The Jewish basis for the early Christian patterns of belief and behavior is clear. It is important that God's people are embodied, because God made this world and has no intention of abandoning it. The material of creation is a vessel made to be filled with God's new life and glory, even though the transformation may involve suffering, persecution, and martyrdom. — N. T. Wright

New Year's cards from friends -
colored patterns
of my life — Mitsu Suzuki

In a world of alternative lifestyle options, strategic life planning becomes of special importance. Like lifestyle patterns, life plans of one kind or another are something of an inevitable concomitant of post-traditional social forms. Life plans are the substantial content of the reflexively organised trajectory of the self. Life-planning is a means of preparing a course of future actions mobilised in terms of the self's biography. We may also speak here of the existence of personal calendars or life-plan calendars, in relation to which the personal time of the lifespan is handled. — Anthony Giddens

So many stories lived behind my eyes. I carried the people I hurt, the lies I told, my sick relationship with food, wherever I went. My mind was rarely grounded in the moment. My past was heavy and constant; my thoughts wouldn't leave me alone. But when I was with the shelter dogs, I didn't have anything to hide. Sometimes what existed behind my eyes fell away. I wasn't bulimic or unlovable or fat or a liar. I was a part of life again. I was an observer, and to more than just the dark cyclical patterns of the mind - here was the strong, sturdy presence of another - the breath moving in and out of Angel's chest, the beating of her heart, the force of life moving through her and through me. — Shannon Kopp

One of the most profound changes in my life happened when I got my head around the relationship between gratitude and joy. I always thought that joyful people were grateful people. I mean, why wouldn't they be? They have all of that goodness to be grateful for. But after spending countless hours collecting stories about joy and gratitude, three powerful patterns emerged: Without exception, every person I interviewed who described living a joyful life or who described themselves as joyful, actively practiced gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to their gratitude practice. Both joy and gratitude were described as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human interconnectedness and a power greater than us. People were quick to point out the differences between happiness and joy as the difference between a human emotion that's connected to circumstances and a spiritual way of engaging with the world that's connected to practicing gratitude. — Brene Brown

Life's unpredictable patterns had a strange way of forming a connected web. — D.A. Pupa

To any situation the reaction may be different. That's why it's useless - in a way - to memorize patterns, because the possibilities in life are endless, and you cannot be prepared for every single thing. Therefore it's better to be able to move in a natural way, and not even physically but intuitively. — Vladimir Vasiliev

When all the normal patterns and routines of a person's life fell apart - and with such shocking suddenness - you had to find something you could hold onto, something that was both sane and predictable. — Stephen King

Nature is not personal. She is the compound of all these processes which move through the universe to effect the results we know as Life and of all the ordinances which govern that universe and that make Life continuous. She is no more the Hebrew's Jehovah than she is the Physicist's Force; she is as much Providence as she is Electricity; she is not the Great Pattern any more than she is the Blind Chance. — Luther Burbank

People tend to set themselves up in patterns; something happens, it hurts them, then something similar happens, and - it's happened again! It seems much bigger then, and they get worried and go through life looking for that thing, and because they're so concerned and looking for it, when anything that happens resembles that thing, they're sure it's happening again. So sometimes people think things are repeating even when they're not. — Mary Gaitskill

If I were a pattern, I would be the pattern of paint that a bird would make if you dipped a bird's wings in watercolour and then set the bird loose inside a paper lantern. I'm pretty sure that's it! — C. JoyBell C.

Man's unconscious ... contains all the patterns of life and behaviour inherited from his ancestors, so that every human child, prior to consciousness, is possessed of a potential system of adapted psychic functioning. — Carl Jung

We may view it as our responsibility to control something that is not in fact within our control and yet fail to exercise the power and authority that we do have over our own behavior. Mothers cannot make children think, feel, or be a certain way, but we can be firm, consistent, and clear about what behavior we will and will not tolerate, and what the consequences are for misbehavior. We can also change our part in patterns that keep family members stuck. At the same time we are doomed to failure with any self-help venture if we view the problem as existing within ourselves - or within the child or the child's father, for that matter. There is never one villain in family life, although it may appear that way on the surface. — Harriet Lerner

There is indeed no such thing in life as absolute darkness; one's eyes revolt and hasten to fill the vacuum by floating in sparks, dream patterns, figures whimsical and figures grotesque, shifting and clad in complementary colors, to appease the indignant cups and rods of the retina. — Gelett Burgess

Reflecting on various aspects of our lives is essential for a person to grow and adjust to changing phases in their life. Self-analysis entails examining a person's existing level of self-esteem and documenting the inner voice that speaks to a person, which is frequently either affirming of self-defeating. Failure to periodically engage in self-analysis, make crucial revisions in our personas, and modify our thinking patterns when we encounter transformative events in life can lead to mood disorders, burnout, and other emotional maladies. — Kilroy J. Oldster

[Writing about themselves] gives them wings, so that they can rise above the confounding maze of their lives and, from that perspective, begin to see the patterns and dead ends of their pasts, and a way out. That's the funny thing about mazes; what's baffling on the ground begins to make sense when you can begin to rise above it, the better to understand your history and fix yourself. — Wally Lamb

There's an internally recognized beauty of motion and balance on any man-healthy planet," Kynes said. "You see in this beauty a dynamic stabilizing effect essential to all life. Its aim is simple: to maintain and produce coordinated patterns of greater and greater diversity. Life improves the closed system's capacity to sustain life. Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships." This — Frank Herbert

Hurt people hurt people. That's how pain patterns gets passed on, generation after generation after generation. Break the chain today. Meet anger with sympathy, contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. Greet grimaces with smiles. Forgive and forget about finding fault. Love is the weapon of the future. — Yehuda Berg

Why even live? If that's your goal, if you're just clamoring your way to the top, I mean, why even have a life? Somebody was telling me the other day about the lives of investment bankers who work ninety hours a week and how it affects their patterns of consumption. — Larkin Grimm

Inertia, when first encountered, appears to be an immovable force. We are creatures who like comfort, patterns, and repetition ... Yet change is life's only constant. — Laurie Beth Jones

Mental stories can literally spoil a human life. It took me a long time to become aware of my mental commentary, such as: "Everything always goes wrong", "I won't be accepted", "I'm a failure" or "What's the point?" Those fears were deep-rooted and triggered many upsetting addictive patterns of behaviour — Christopher Dines

Marijuana enhances our mind in a way that enables us to take a different perspective from 'high up', to see and evaluate our own lives and the lives of others in a privileged way. Maybe this euphoric and elevating feeling of the ability to step outside
the box and to look at life's patterns from this high perspective is the inspiration behind the slang term "high" itself. — Sebastian Marincolo

I've spent my life capturing beautiful images. And whether in wilderness or in the downtown of a giant city, I find connections, universal rhythms, patterns and beauty that I recognize as a part of me, a part of all of us that celebrates life. It's my great pleasure to share with you that energy which inspires me; this great visual beauty of our world. — Louis Schwartzberg

My life has certainly had its share of remarkable patterns, symmetries and asymmetries, coincidences that have left me wondering on the ground just what my life looks like from a distance - seen from the air, does it reveal a scheme? I have heard myself mulling over this question many times while growing up. But now that I'm well into middle age and have reached the age my mother was when one son's illness ensnared a second one, I look down from the air and am astonished at the landscape. — Yarrott Benz

Dr. Kunkel's teacher, Dr. Jung, believed that archetypes are blueprints of the basic human qualities we all share. The archetypes themselves are undefinable natural patterns or forces that shape life in all ages and places. They cannot be known directly, but archetypal themes and images appear in myth, fairy tales, dreams, and fantasies. We tend to think of ourselves as unique individuals, and to a great extent we are. But just as there are shared patterns that shape our physical existence, such as having two arms and legs, two eyes, ten fingers and toes, so there are underlying patterns that shape our psychic existence. — Robert A. Johnson

It is certainly not true that the population can be easily divided into those who lead healthy lifestyles, and those who do not: most people's patterns are mixed, with both good and bad areas of life. — Mildred Blaxter

I hope you all find yourselves sleeping with someone you love, maybe not all of the time, but a lot of the time. The touch of a foot in the night is sincere. I hope you like your work, I hope there's mystery and poetry in your life - not even poems, but patterns. I hope you can see them. Often these patterns will wake you up, and you will know that you are alive, again and again. — Eileen Myles

The Numerati too, are grappling with towering complexity. They're looking for patterns in data that describe something almost hopelessly complex: human life and behavior. The audacity of their mission is almost maddening. They're going to figure out who we're likely to vote for, who we want to work with, perhaps even who we're best suited to love, all from the statistical patterns of data? It's the height of presumption, and it leads to humbling disappointments. Like the trees growing in the forests of Minnesota, we confound those who try to categorize us, and we do it most of the time without even trying. Life is complex. — Stephen Baker

I see the possibility of being 'made new' again and the gift of rebirth is all that lets anyone really live ... The great secret ... is never to get stuck, imprisoned in common social patterns. They always paralyse the real quality of life - the 'going onward' is all that matters, and the dead moments in one's life through trying to be a unit in any society or social concept are terrifying really. — Marsden Hartley

A kaleidoscope consists of a tube (or container), mirrors, pieces of glass (or beads or precious stones), sunlight, and someone to turn it and observe and enjoy the forms. Metaphorically, perhaps the sun represents the divine light, or spark of life, within all of us. The mirrors represent our ability to serve as mirrors for one another and each other's alignment, reflecting sides of ourselves that we may not have been aware of. The tube (or container) is the practice of community yoga. We, as human beings, are the glass, the beads, the precious stones. The facilitator is the person turning the Kaleidoscope, initiating the changing patterns. And the resulting beauty of the shapes? Well, that's for everyone to enjoy... — Lo Nathamundi

The assignment was a two-page essay, in Greek, on any epigram of Callimachus that we chose. I'd done only a page and I started to hurry through the rest in impatient and slightly dishonest fashion, writing out the English and translating word by word. It was something Julian asked us not to do. The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. — Donna Tartt

I'm not a woman you bring home to Mother, pick out china patterns with, or Mary forefend, breed. I've seen a chunk of the universe, true, but there's still so much more to see. I doubt I'll ever cure this wanderlust, and I'm content with dedicating my life to failing to sate it ... He's never going to sit at my feet and write me poems, which is good because I hate poetry, except dirty ones that rhyme. — Ann Aguirre

Sometimes when we're feeling sad, it's important just to feel the sadness. Like a snake shedding its skin, old feelings of remorse and regret and hurt and anger often have to come up in order to be released. On the other side we're a better person, capable of a happier life ... who we are when we're no longer burdened by the buried feelings that weighed us down, or the self - defeating patterns that the pain produced. — Marianne Williamson

There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence - or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them. — Arthur C. Clarke

You see, proteins, as I probably needn't tell you, are immensely complicated groupings of amino acids and certain other specialized compounds, arranged in intricate three-dimensional patterns that are as unstable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. It is this instability that is life, since it is forever changing its position in an effort to maintain its identity
in the manner of a long rod balanced on an acrobat's nose. — Isaac Asimov

Positivity is like harmonics and patterns. Create positivity in your life, and allow it to interfere with more positivity. Allow that positivity to vibrate alongside more paths. The end result, is a beautiful day. However, why stop there? There is a reason that positivity parallels harmonics and patterns, so keep it going towards dream's end. If you feel like there isn't enough positivity in your life to get your day started, don't worry, I have plenty, so you can take some of mine. Infinity minus 1 is still infinity, so take some positivity from me, bathe in it, sing with it, and know that today, there is success within your value
for you were able to wake up and treasure another day. — Lionel Suggs

People are often asking me if the things in my short stories really happened to me. I always think this is the same question to ask of a life - did this really happen to me? The body doesn't lie. But when we bring language to the body, isn't it always already an act of fiction? With its delightfully designed composition and color saturations and graphic patterns? Its style and vantage point? Its insistence on the mind's powerful force of recollection in the face of the raw and brutal fact that the only witness was the body? — Lidia Yuknavitch

That feeling in your heart: it's called mono no aware. It is a sense of the transience of all things in life. The sun, the dandelion, the cicada, the Hammer, and all of us: we are all subject to the equations of James Clerk Maxwell, and we are all ephemeral patterns destined to eventually fade, whether in a second or an eon. — Ken Liu

By the time they passed Malindi in the early-afternoon hours, Munroe could feel the syntax, the grammar, the resonance of patterns of the country's lingua franca beginning to form, could feel the tension relaxing now that the key to the aural lock had been handed over, and soon enough, over time and of its own accord, her ability to speak would grow and she would rapidly become more and more fluent.

This same poisonous gift - this savant like ability to visualize the way the words configured into shapes - had defined her life and turned her into what she was now. Without language, there would have been no gunrunning, without gunrunning no nights in the jungle fighting off the worst of human predators, without the nights, no instinct of self-preservation and the speed and the need to kill that had marked her every moment, waking and sleeping, since. — Taylor Stevens

Funny . . . humanity's great at the tiny patterns. We can find quarks in an atom and Jesus's face in a tortilla. But that big picture is so elusive, so overwhelming, people refuse to believe something as obvious as their life in Des Moines affects lives in Delhi. — P.J. Manney

Once a new social stage appears in a culture, it will spread its instructional codes and life-priority messages throughout that culture's surface-level expressions: religion, economic and political arrangements, psychological and anthro-pological theories, and views of human nature, our future destiny, globalization, and even architectural patterns and sports preferences. We all live in flow states; there is always new wine, always old wineskins. We, indeed, find ourselves pursuing a neverending quest. — Don Edward Beck

Life is fragmentary, and the pattern that creativity can offer is not one that is imposed, not something rigid, but rather something which can reveal the intrinsic patterns of that fragmentation. Things are in a perpetual dance, but there is an order. It's not really random at all. — Jeanette Winterson

More often than not, focusing on stress, pain and chaos in our lives creates even more stress, pain and chaos for us. Here's what I've experienced, and my guess is that it's happened to you as well: Whenever I am focused on how difficult my life is, I begin to feel overwhelmed, stressed, depressed, and worried. These emotions, in turn, influence my productivity, actions and choices. They may even change my sleeping patterns and compromise my immune system. Sooner or later they begin to interfere with my relationships with family and friends. They even hinder the way I worship or approach God. As these emotions continue to influence how I live, cope, function, and relate to those around me, they can even impact my finances and long-term security. — Gaylyn Williams

Part of the puzzle, surely, lies in the disconnect between official rhetoric and lived realities. Americans are constantly extolling "traditions"; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician's discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as "identities" that fit in the larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation. — Susan Sontag

There are patterns which emerge in one's life, circling and returning anew, an endless variation of a theme — Jacqueline Carey

When you are filled with inner clutter, the chaos reflects in your personality as obsessiveness, confusion, disorganisation, broken speech patterns, insomnia, indecisiveness, and lack of direction. When your home and world are in disrray, you can't relax. It takes more energy to be in chaos because you have to keep track of all the junk. Eventually exhaustion sets in. When you honestly look at clutter and ask if it's necessary in your life, buried emotions come to the surface.... Toss what's unnecessary so that you can finally relax, and your remaining possessions will have a clear place to land. — Brooks Palmer

It used to be that rebels were the type who wore leather jackets, rode motorcycles, smoked cigarettes and drank cheap domestic beer. Today's rebels are people who look at their world critically and observe the ensnaring patterns of the consumeristic lifestyle." (Life Hacks, p.50 — Jon Morrison

A good therapy helps you develop a sense of irony about your life so that when you start to repeat old and unhelpful patterns, something within you says, "There you go again; let's call this to a halt. You can do something different." Often the first step toward doing something different is developing the capacity to not act, to stay still and reflect. — Sherry Turkle

Because of reasons they were just beginning to understand, that one small shift in Lisa's perception that day in Cairo -the conviction that she had to give up smoking to accomplish her goal- had touched off a series of changes that would ultimately radiate out to every part of her life.
When researchers began examining images of Lisa's brain, they saw something remarkable: One set of neurological patterns -her old habits- have been overridden by new patterns. They could still see the neural activity of her old behaviors, but those impulses were crowded out by new urges. As Lisa's habits changed, so had her brain. — Charles Duhigg

AN EXQUISITELY SHARPENED HATRED FOR the white man is of course an emotion not difficult for Negroes to harbor. Yet if truth be known, this hatred does not abound in every Negro's soul; it relies upon too many mysterious and hidden patterns of life and chance to flourish luxuriantly everywhere. Real hatred of the sort of which I speak - hatred so pure and obdurate that no sympathy, no human warmth, no flicker of compassion can make the faintest nick or scratch upon the stony surface of its being - is not common to all Negroes. — William Styron

I have a theory that life is gathering the raw materials, and when we die, we get to make patterns out of our lives and relive them in whatever order we want. That way I can spend forever repeating the days when I was really happy, and never have to experience any of the sad days. So that's how you live a really great life. You make sure you have enough good days that you want to go back to. — Robyn Schneider

Coca-Cola remains emblematic of the best and worst of America and Western civilization. The history of Coca-Cola is the often funny story of a group of men obsessed with putting a trivial soft drink "within an arm's reach of desire." But at the same time, it is a microcosm of American history. Coca-Cola grew up with the country, shaping and shaped by the times. The drink not only helped to alter consumption patterns, but attitudes toward leisure, work, advertising, sex, family life, and patriotism. — Mark Pendergrast