Little Things Mean Everything Quotes & Sayings

I just want to tell you: the only good thing in these days is that I still believe there's something good behind all these things. I don't know what that good thing is but the idea of it keeps me smile. Stories will be finished. Money has its way to come. Admission result will be announced, and if I get rejected, it does not mean I failed (though I'm pretty sure I will cry, either a lot or a little). There will be something good down the road. There is something meaningful hidden in everything plain but stressful around me right now: A lesson to learn, friends to treasure, stories to create, new places to discover and home to go back, chances to grab, opportunities to develop. — Rio Lam

What do you mean I didn't answer your question? I told you everything about me. I told you something personal." My jaw was slack and I was openly staring at him, more than a little shocked by his response.

"I asked about you. Your first and only response was to tell me about your disorder. You aren't your disorder. You told me about all the things you don't like and none of the things you do like. I just find it hard to believe someone like you is completely comprised of dislikes and not a single like. — Nash Summers

We're done, this is over. I'm packing your shit and you're leaving." I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "Everything is fucked up, don't you get that? It's ruined, all of it is ruined and you need to fucking leave." I'm so sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "You need to get a life." I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "All those sad, pathetic letters." I'm lying, don't believe me, please don't believe me. I loved your letters, I kept them all and I cherish every one of them. "I prefer women with a little more experience." I don't mean it. I don't mean any of it. Knowing I'm the only man who has ever been inside of you makes me feel like a fucking king and the luckiest man alive. I'm sorry, I love you, please forgive me. "It doesn't get better when I come home to you. I hate this life." I'm lying! Every word is a lie. I love our life and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. I love you, I love you, I love you. — Tara Sivec

Watch everything she does. You can tell what a woman wants and needs by simply observing her. Even when you two are out spending time together, chillaxing at home, or getting ready for date night. The little things as I said mean a lot to a woman, so with that being stated; start by remembering things like her birthdays, anniversaries, or special events that's significant to you both. Those things may be small to you, but means the world to her. — Will Ag Martel

When I became a bandit, I spent a lot of time being close to the lowliest of the low: criminals, the enslaved, deserters, men who had nothing to lose. Contrary to what I had expected, I found that they had a hardscrabble beauty and grace. They were not mean in their nature, but made mean by the meanness of their rulers. The poor were willing to endure much, but the emperor had taken everything from them.

These men have simple dreams: a plot of land, a few possessions, a warm house, conversations with friends, and a happy wife and healthy children. They remember the smallest acts of kindness and think me a good man because of a few exaggerated stories. They've raised me on their shoulders and called me duke, and I have a duty to help them get a little closer to their dreams. — Ken Liu

I think the man who designed this should have committed suicide. A man who can conceive a thing as beautiful as this should never allowed it to be erected. He should not want to exist. But he will let it be built, so that women will hang out diapers on his terraces, so that men will spit on his stairways and draw dirty pictures on his walls. He's given it to them and he's made it part of them, part of everything. He shouldn't have offered it for men like you to look at. For men like you to talk about. He's defiled his own work by the first word you'll utter about it. He's made himself worse than you are. You'll be committing only a mean little indecency, but he's committed a sacrilege. A man who knows what he must have known to produce this should not have been able to remain alive. — Ayn Rand

Oh the house of denial has thick walls
and very small windows
and whoever lives there, little by little,
will turn to stone.
In those years I did everything I could do
and I did it in the dark
I mean, without understanding.
I ran away.
I ran away again
(from poem: Hum, Hum) — Mary Oliver

Where are we?" Ni asked.
"This is my work place and the center of
Universe as well." Simone said.
"Do you mean the tower is in the center of Universe?" Ni asked
"I mean that we are both in space and inside the tower at the same time."
"Why is it so dark here?" Ni asked.
"At the beginning, it is always dark." Simone replied, "Then everything comes into existence little by little.
Even Light is born out of Darkness. — Leora Cika Waldman

Do you have to take note of every little thing I do? I mean every tiny, little thing, Dragos?"
"Yes," he said simply. "When I look at you, even when things are going to hell, somehow everything is all right. — Thea Harrison

I see myself as a student. I would never call myself a master or a maestro. If you take the path of the student, that means that you have to try a little bit of everything in the hopes that you're going to learn something or strike some kind of new note or new sound or new expression in the process. I'm not going for grades. I'm going for an education. That means I'm going to continue experimenting and trying new things to try to evolve and learn. — Nicolas Cage

Are you a good human being, Gerry? I mean good in the sense that if you put everything in the scales, they'd tip that way?" It startled her. "I don't know. I haven't thought of myself that way. I think I like the lush life a little too much. That's why I married George. I'm vain. I like men to admire me. I've got a coarse streak that comes out at the wrong times. But I do try to live up to ... some kind of a better image of myself. And I try to improve. I came from nothing, Trav, from a little raggedy-ass spread in the Panhandle with too many kids and too few rooms. — John D. MacDonald

And anyway, the truth isn't all that great. I mean, what's the truth? Planes falling out of the sky. Buses blowing up and ripping little kids into millions of pieces. Twelve-year-olds raping people and then shooting them in the head so they can't tell. I can't watch the news anymore or look at the papers. It's like whoever sits up there in Heaven has this big bag of really crappy stuff, and once or twice a day she or he reaches in and sprinkles a little bit of it over the world and makes everything crazy, like fairy dust that's past its expiration date. — Michael Thomas Ford

From the moon, the Earth is so small and so fragile, and such a precious little spot in that Universe, that you can block it out with your thumb. Then you realize that on that spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you - all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it right there on that little spot that you can cover with your thumb. And you realize from that perspective that you've changed forever, that there is something new there, that the relationship is no longer what it was. — Rusty Schweickart

If you take a particle down, past neutrinos, you get vortexes, little whirlpools of energy. This is amazing, because what it really means, is everything is the same. Everything is one of those, in various combinations. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

The carbon fee would raise the cost of the things you buy (since right now there is some carbon emitted in the production and distribution of pretty much everything). That's a little less money in your pocket. But at the end of the year, the government would take all of the money collected by the carbon fee, divide it up, and give it back to you as a dividend check. By you, of course, I mean all of you. The government wouldn't keep any of the money. All the fee would do is put a realistic price on the carbon we dump into the environment. Every factory, every company would have an incentive to reduce emissions, because then they could sell things at a lower price. Consumers, given a choice between a low-carbon pair of jeans and a high-carbon pair of jeans, would see a cost advantage in choosing the former. If you live a low-carbon lifestyle all year, when your dividend check arrives you will find that you came out ahead. — Bill Nye

Our television signals leave this planet and go out into space ... the signals spread out from the earth in spherical waves, a little like ripples in a pond. They travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second, and essentially go on forever. The better some other civilizations receivers are, the farther away they could be and still pick up our tv signals. Even we could detect a strong tv transmission from a planet going around the nearest star.' President: 'You mean everything? You mean to say all that crap on television - the car crashes, wrestling, the porno channels, the evening news? — Carl Sagan

Actually, no, but I am close to the people who are working on Chicken Little, and I'm very close to the people over at Pixar. I mean, as far as stories are concerned, almost everything we have could be told that way. — Joe Grant

I do love you." He said it suddenly, raising his head so his black eyes could meet her startled green ones. "I mean it, Shea. I do not just need you, I love you. I know everything about you, I have been in your head, shared your memories, shared your dreams and your ideas. I know you think I need you and that is why I am with you, but it is much more than that. I love you." He grinned unexpectedly, traced her lower lip with the tip of a finger. "What is more, I know you love me. You hide it from yourself, but I found it in a little corner, tucked away in your mind." Shea — Christine Feehan

Zarathustra, the first to recognize that the optimist is just as degenerate as the pessimist though perhaps more detrimental says: "Good men never speak the truth. The Good preach of false shores and false security. You were born and bred in the lies of the good. Through the good everything has become false and twisted down to the very roots". Fortunately the world is not built solely to serve good natured herd animals their little happiness ; to desire everybody to become a "good man", "a herd animal", blue-eyed, benevolent, "a beautiful soul" - or, as Herbert Spencer wished - altruistic, would mean robbing existence of its great character, to castrate mankind and reduce humanity to a sort of wretched Chinadom. And this some have tried to do! It is precisely this that men have called morality. — Friedrich Nietzsche

These women lived their lives happily. They had been taught, probably by loving parents, not to exceed the boundaries of their happiness regardless of what they were doing. But therefore they could never know real joy. Which is better? Who can say? Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by 'their happiness' is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That's not a bad thing. Dressed in their aprons, their smiling faces like flowers, leaning to cook, absorbed in their little troubles and perplexities, they fall in love and marry. I think that's great. I wouldn't mind that kind of life. Me, when I'm utterly exhausted by it all, my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody's home, then I despise my own life - my birth, my upbringing, everything. I feel only regret for the whole thing. — Banana Yoshimoto

And loving someone doesn't mean you have to love everything they do. But it does mean you forgive them a little more often, a little more easily. — Melanie Harlow

Helen, don't."
"I thought it was only a misunderstanding. I thought if I spoke to you directly, everything would be s-sorted out, and - " Another sob choked her. She was so consumed by emotion that she was only vaguely aware of Rhys hovering around her, reaching for her and snatching his hands back.
"No. Don't cry. For God's sake, Helen - "
"I didn't mean to push you away. I didn't know what to do. How can I make you want me again?"
She expected a jeering reply, or perhaps even a pitying one. The last thing she expected was his shaken murmur.
"I do want you, cariad. I want you too damned much."
She blinked at him through a bewildered blur, breathing in mortifying hiccups, like a child. In the next moment, he had hauled her firmly against him.
"Hush, now." His voice dropped to a deeper octave, a brush of dark velvet against her ears. "Hush, bychan, little one, my dove. Nothing is worth your tears."
"You are. — Lisa Kleypas

And one more thing. You can cal them cute little songs, but that doesn't mean they're not honest. Those cute little songs are my way of dealing with everything you won't let me say to you. I have to be around you every single day, but I can't do anything about it. If I didn't channel it into somewhere, I'd be going crazy, alone on my tour bus thinking about you. And another thing... — Emery Lord

I mean, clearly no one would vote for volts until everything else had failed. It's reserved for those languishing in the suicidal ideation lounge, and I had never been truly suicidal. Not that I haven't, on occasion, thought it might be an improvement over the all-too-painful present if I could be deadish for maybe just a teeny little bit of it. You know, like a really good sleep, after which I'd wake refreshed and equal to whatever the problem had been, that problem would have now vanished. — Carrie Fisher

Everyone has stories of the small coincidence by which their parents met or their grandmother was saved from fire or their grandfather from the grenade, of the choice made by the most whimsical means that led to everything else, whether you're blessed or cursed or both. Trace it back far enough and this very moment in your life becomes a rare species, the result of a strange evolution, a butterfly that should already be extinct and survives by the inexplicabilities we call coincidence. The word is often used to mean the accidental but literally means to fall together. The patterns of our lives come from those things that do not drift apart but move together for a little while, like dancers. — Rebecca Solnit

Devoting a little of yourself to everything means committing a great deal of yourself to nothing. — Andy Stanley

You know, as long as you do everything in moderation, you don't go overboard, you don't, you know, turn your lips into guppy lips - I mean, a little zip or a little zap, that is not a big deal. — Suzanne Somers

Everything was fine with the Zen Lunatics, the nut wagon was too far away to hear us. But there was a wisdom in it all, as you'll see if you take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of on wheels. You'll see what I mean, when it begins to appear like everybody in the world is soon going to be thinking the same way and the Zen Lunatics have long joined dust, laughter on their dust lips. — Jack Kerouac

Are you okay, Maggie?" Logan asked, rousing me out of my mind-numbing speculations.
Heaving a big sigh, I turned to him and said, "I guess so."
"Are you still worried about visiting your mother?" he asked softly.
Nodding, I said, "A little. I'm just so confused about this whole time-space-brain twister thing. And I'm afraid I might say the wrong thing and mess everything up." I shook my head, trying to make sense of my thoughts. "I mean - what if my younger self should call my mother while I'm there visiting her? Is there really another version of me? Or by coming here from the future, did the younger me cease to exist? — Sharon Ricklin Jones

You've been silent your whole life. You were silent when we met, silent when you suffered. Silent when life kept hitting you. I was like that too, a little. But not like you. You are a stillness. And I tried to move you. It didn't work. But that doesn't mean you didn't move me. I heard everything you didn't say. I heard it so loudly that I couldn't shut it off. Your silence, Senna, I hear it so loudly. — Tarryn Fisher

Whenever Ingrid and I got out of the suburbs, into Berkeley or San Francisco, and saw how other people lived, Ingrid would cry at the smallest of things- a little boy walking home by himself, a discarded cardboard sign saying HUNGRY PLEASE HELP. She would snap a picture, and by the time she lowered her camera, tears would already be falling. I always felt kind of guilty that I didn't feel as sad as she did, but now, watching Dylan, I think that's probably a good thing. I mean, you see a million terrible things every day, on the news and in the paper, and in real life. I'm not saying that it's stupid to feel sad, just that it would be impossible to let everything get to you and still get some sleep at night. — Nina LaCour

I just told them that dear Uncle Silas has gone away on a long journey," she said. "They're such mites, you know, and I've never let them hear about Death, or have ugly toys or stories about ogres and things. I mean, I do frightfully believe in keeping their little minds free from everything but happy, beautiful things, don't you? — Georgette Heyer

I don't know; I haven't heard from Uncle Stuart since the day we drove out to Brooklyn together to talk to Mirav Mendelsohn. I miss him, in a way. He meant so much more to me than I could ever mean to him. You don't get too many people like that. Roy Belisle and Bob Santacroce and Stuart Plotz- any one of them could have been something that was almost everything, if things had worked out just a little differently. — Joshua Ferris

You know the best thing about aeroplanes? Apart from the peanuts in the little silver bags, I mean.
It's looking out of the windows at the clouds, and thinking, maybe I could go walking in there. Maybe it's a special place where everything's okay.
Sometimes I do go walking in the clouds, but it's just cold and wet and empty. But when you look out of a plane it's a special world ... and I like that. — Neil Gaiman

And if I failed to mention this detail in its proper place, it is because you cannot mention everything in its proper place, you much choose, between the things not worth mentioning and those even less so. For if you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are, you do not get done either, I know, I know. But it's a change of muck. And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another a little further on, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral. And if you are wrong, and you are wrong, I mean when you record circumstances better left unspoken, and leave unspoken others, rightly, if you like, but how shall I say, for no good reason, yes, rightly, but for no good reason, as for example that new moon, it is often in good faith, excellent faith. — Samuel Beckett

What do you mean, what's the matter with him? Nothing's the matter with him, everything's the matter with him, the same as it is with everybody else. He's just fine. He gets overwhelmed now and then, and he doesn't know how to say what he feels or means, so he cries and runs off a little, trying to find out where to go, for God's sake. Where can you go? — William, Saroyan

His guilt is why Acheron went out of his way to make sure that all of you had servants and pay for your work. The Dark-Hunters owe that man everything, and I do mean everything. He pays in blood every time one of you wants to go free, and he suffers every day so that you can all live your cushy little lives of wealth and privilege."
...
"And I have to say that every time one of your turns on him, it seriously pisses me off. Acheron asks nothing from any of you and that's exactly what he receives. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

This dead man is bound up with my life, therefore I must do everything, promise everything in order to save myself; I swear blindly that I mean to live only for his sake and his family, with wet lips I try to placate him--and deep down in me lies the hope that I may buy myself off in this way and perhaps even get out of this; it is a little stratagem: if only I am allowed to escape, then I will see to it. So I open the book and read slowly:--Gerard Duval, compositor.

With the dead man's pencil write the address on an envelope, then swiftly thrust everything back into his tunic.

I have killed the printer, Gerard Duval. I must be a printer, I think confusedly, be a printer, printer... — Erich Maria Remarque

A good decision is our will to do everything we can within our power. It means to serve God with all we've got, be it little or much. Every person can do that. — Soren Kierkegaard

IT IS SAID that time is unrelated to everything else. It goes on and on, unnoticing of our actions, our falls, our triumphs. Who's to care then, if time does not remember us? It flies by, fleeting, inattentive and disinterested in any occupants of this earth. What are we, then, if time thinks so little of everyone it passes? Time is truly apathetic to the many to whom a little empathy would mean so much.
~April~
Disarming Reign of Blood — Alexia Purdy

She blew a stream of smoke up at the empty clotheslines. 'These silly dreams you have when you're young. I mean, what, Katie and Brendan Harris were going ot make a life in Las Vegas? How long would that little Eden have lasted? Maybe they'd be on their second trailer park, second kid, but it would have hit them sooner or later - life isn't happily ever after and golden sunsets and shit like that. It's work. The person you love is rarely worthy of how big your love is. Because no one is worthy of that and maybe no one deserves the burden of it, either. You'll be let down. You'll be disappointed and have your trust broken and have a lot of real sucky days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But, shit, you roll up your sleeves and work - at everything -because that's what growing older is. — Dennis Lehane

I had heard everything, Larry gonna knock me out, he gonna beat me, this and that. I got so sick of that. I had a little talk with myself in my bedroom and I said, Don't think about getting in the ring with Larry Holmes, I mean, Don't forget Larry Holmes is getting in the ring with you. You're champ for so many years. And just do what you're best at. What I am best at was not letting anybody have their way with me in the ring. — Michael Spinks

I don't want to make a big deal about this or anything, but I think it's kind of cool how you do everything you do."
I squinted at him.
"I mean, you use sign language, and it's hard to communicate. But you're into art and you can seriously cook and, for goodness' sakes, you can even jitterbug. By the way, I told my mom, and she wants a video. Totally doesn't believe me. But, yeah, I think it's nice that you don't let a little hitch in life slow you down. I admire that."
I smiled. For a minute, I admired myself, too. He didn't know how deep my problems ran, but he was right all the same. It was no small thing to try, to find out what you cared about in life. Even this moment, with this wonderful, temporary boy beside me, was a tiny miracle. I ought to give myself some credit. — Kiera Cass

I got the idea in my head - and I could not get it out - that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? I think that knowledge - when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake, anyway - is the worst of all. The least excusable certainly. I don't think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while - just once in a while - there was some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! — J.D. Salinger

Well, this is only a story, isn't it? I mean, our patrons, anyone who comes to this park, are they going to take this to heart, Mister Shake?'

They'll take what pieces they want, and everything gets a little skewed. That's how these things work, Freddy. Who knows? In ten years' time, Elijah Zallman Ickack may see through walls. Once in the park, they're locked into some idea of what made it, and that's the thing. In the meantime, the long-lost-nephew must have something to say. — Pam Jones

I want to let you in on a little secret. There are no problems. There are no problems. There never were any problems, there are no problems today, and there will never be any problems. Problems just mean that the world isn't turning the way you want it to. But in truth, there are no problems. Everything is unfolding as it should. Everything is right. You have to forget about yourself and expand your consciousness until you become the whole universe. The Reality in back of the universe is Pure Awareness. It has no problems. And you are That. — Robert Adams

The climbing of earths heights, in itself, means little. That men and women want and try to climb them means everything. For it is the ultimate wisdom of the mountains that we are never so much human as when we are striving for what is beyond our grasp, and that there is no battle worth the winning save that against our own ignorance and fear. — James Ramsey Ullman

Food safety oversight is largely, but not exclusively, divided between two agencies, the FDA and the USDA. The USDA mostly oversees meat and poultry; the FDA mostly handles everything else, including pet food and animal feed. Although this division of responsibility means that the FDA is responsible for 80% of the food supply, it only gets 20% of the federal budget for this purpose. In contrast, the USDA gets 80% of the budget for 20% of the foods. This uneven distribution is the result of a little history and a lot of politics. — Marion Nestle

In real life, I swear by Edge Control by Olive Oil. My hairstylist hates it, but it's everything to me. And I mean everything! It's like a perm in a little jar of gel. — Tasha Smith

That was the worst. What happened was, I got the idea in my head - and I could not get it out - that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping - and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge - when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake, anyway - is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly ...
I don't think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while - just once in a while - there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! — J.D. Salinger

Punishment? You don't have any right to punish me. And I can curse. I choose not to most of the time, but don't think it doesn't go through my head, asshole. I was trying to give you something. I was trying to give you my body."
"That's where you fucked up, little girl. I don't want your body. I want your soul. I want your everything. And I definitely want your orgasms. I want them all. I'll be a greedy bastard, savoring them and hoarding them all for myself. You wanted to give me your body? I can buy that on a street corner, sweetheart. You're the one who's being selfish now."
"How is it selfish to offer to have sex? I don't understand what you want."
"First off, I want you to stop hiding yourself from me. You're the one making this tawdry by pretending it's dirty and not worthy of the light of day."
"I didn't mean it that way."
"We're going to do this my way. We tried yours and it didn't work, so I'm taking control. I should have done it in the first place. — Lexi Blake

I cannot have a man who is afraid of everything, I don't have the time to soothe insecurities and fears, I cannot have a man who is standing on a stone by a creek, watching for the fish to swim by and every time he sees a fish he says "Oh look, this fish scares me, I wonder what this fish means, this fish might mean- this, or this fish might mean- that" for God's sake, they are just fish, and they don't mean anything! Such a sad thing, so many fine, strong men standing on top of little stones, pointing at fish all the time! Such a waste! Such a waste of time! I can only have a man who will leap into the water, not minding the damn fish and whatever other little things that scare him. I need to have someone who is braver than me; if I am a pirate, he has to be the pirate Captain, if I am a pirate Captain he has to be the flying dragon. — C. JoyBell C.

Hey, comrade," Dima said, tone, choice of words, everything exactly as it would have been in the eighties, in that forsaken country.
Vadim peered at him in the mirror. "Yes?"
"Are you guys in trouble?" Dima moved closer, stood within touching distance. "I don't mean your little crusade a while back. I mean the rest."
Vadim inhaled and lowered his gaze for a few moments. "Life isn't easy, Dima. That's our set of rules."
"You know you can change them. If he's fucking around ... ."
"So am I."
"But you're not happy with it?"
"It's just sex, Dima."
Dima looked at him for a long time. "It's never just sex for you, though. Am I wrong?"
"No. You're right." Vadim shook his head. "Rules, Dima. We're a different case."
Dima reached out and took him by the shoulders, pulling him up and back against him, which made Vadim look at himself in the mirror.
"It's not easy. I wish it was. — Aleksandr Voinov

Not in the least," I said. "I understand everything you've said. But - oh, Simon, I feel so resentful! Why should father make things so difficult? Why can't he say what he means plainly?" "Because there's so much that just can't be said plainly. Try describing what beauty is - plainly - and you'll see what I mean." Then he said that art could state very little - that its whole business was to evoke responses. And that without innovations and experiments - such as father's - all art would stagnate. "That's why one ought not to let oneself resent them - though I believe it's a normal instinct, probably due to subconscious fear of what we don't understand. — Dodie Smith

The reader will probably think it very strange that Clare Arden should not have been utterly revolted by the thought that it was possible her kinsman could mean to make a speculation of her, and a mere stepping-stone to fortune. But she was not revolted. She had that personal objection to being married for her money which every woman has; but had not she herself been the heroine of the story, she would rather have felt approval than otherwise for Arthur Arden. What else could he do? she would have said to herself. He could not dig, and begging, even when one is little troubled with shame, is an unsatisfactory maintenance. And if everything could be put right by a suitable marriage, why should not he marry? It was the most natural, the most legitimate way of arranging everything. For the idea itself she had no horror. All she felt was a natural prejudice against being herself the subject of the transaction.{250} — Margaret Oliphant

He took another swallow of beer. "Are things as bad as they seem? Or have I just gotten old like my da, and now everything tastes a little bitter compared to when I was a boy?" Kote wiped at the bar for a long moment, as if reluctant to speak. "I think things are usually bad one way or another," he said. "It might be that only us older folk can see it." Graham began to nod, then frowned. "Except you're not old, are you? I forget that most times." He looked the red-haired man up and down. "I mean, you move around old, and you talk old, but you're not, are you? I'll bet you're half my age." He squinted at the innkeeper. "How old are you, anyway?" The innkeeper gave a tired smile. "Old enough to feel old. — Patrick Rothfuss

Since every evil is found in sin, either as a consequence or as the sin itself, when we want to pray wholeheartedly to get rid of evil, we should say, think, or mean this little word - sin, nothing else. No other words are needed. On the other hand, if we pray intently to get anything good, we should cry out in word, thought, or longing nothing but this word - God, nothing else. No other words are needed; for God's very nature is goodness, and he's the source of everything good. Don't spend time wondering why I chose these two words over all of the others. I looked into it and found none better. If I had, or if God had taught me different ones, I would have chosen them over these, but I can think of no shorter words that so well represent everything good or everything evil. Follow my example. Don't analyze words at length because studying them isn't the same as doing the work of contemplative prayer. Only grace gives this gift. — Anonymous

Listen, he said vehemently. Somebody's going to have to say what they really mean and then do what they say they will. All this lying. All this bullshit and pretending. It's just wasting lives, wasting time, everything's just a waste.
She was looking at him curiously. That's just the way people are. The way the world is. What are you trying to do, fix the world?
I don't want to fix the world. Fuck the world. Just the little part of it that I have to live on. You and that old man. Folks starting babies andd walking off like that's got nothing to do with them. People walking off while you're asleep and never coming back. Leaving a note. A Goddamned note. Old people living a half mile apart and wanting to see each other and dying without doing it. Now that's crazy for you. That's what's crazy. — William Gay

I am not suggesting that everything bad that happens to us is sent directly by a knowing hand - cooked up specially for our personal development. Nor do I mean that by using the stuff of life as grist for the mill you will learn what you need to learn and move on into a problem-free world. And I also don't recommend courting drama and disaster so that you can be broken open to the truth. A catastrophe is not a sign that God has singled you out for greatness. What I do mean is that you can use anything - everything - as a wake-up call; you can find a treasure trove of information about yourself and the world in the big trials and the little annoyances of daily life. If you turn around and face yourself in times of loss and pain, you will be given the key to a more truthful - and therefore a more joyful - life. — Elizabeth Lesser

Older than I look, younger than I ought to be. My skin is a riddle not to be solved, and even letting go of everything I love won't offer me the answer. My window is closing, if that's what you're asking. Every day I wake up a little more linear, a little less lost, and one day I'll be one of the women who says 'I had the most charming dream,' and I'll mean it. Old enough to know what I'm losing in the process of being found. — Seanan McGuire