Lives The Balance Quotes & Sayings

Balance lives in the present. The surest way to lose your footing is to focus on what dreadful things might happen. — Oprah Winfrey

I have long believed the city, the country, indeed the world at large to be run by precisely the wrong kind of people. From the government to the great financial institutions, the peerage to the police force, our lives are controlled without exception by the stupid and greedy, the venal, the rapacious and the undeservedly rich. How much more comfortable would it be if the rulers of the world were not the cognoscenti of the bank balance, the ballot box, the offshore account, but were drawn instead from the ranks of the everyday - honest, kind, stout-hearted, commonplace folk. — Jonathan Barnes

Instead of this fruitless debate about having it all, men and women should focus on what make us happy. Instead of comparing our lives with people we don't know who are making sacrifices we don't see, we should try to find the right balance between home and work life. — LZ Granderson

We all reek of weariness. A room full of the black-soul phenomenon. All of a sudden I don't feel so alone in the recognition of my own mixed feelings mirrored in those faces. In those faces, I see that the seemingly repugnant behavior wasn't so atrocious after all. Everything is forgiv- able. Everything we said and did and felt was magnified by the pres- ence of something we couldn't control, and that fact definitely brought out the crazy. Each of us will carry a balance of regret and pride for the rest of our lives. — Angela Ricketts

The most reliable topic for small talk is the goings-on of stars whether they're rising or falling, and whether nor not a particular story is truth or fiction. This is way out of balance. It invades the privacy of men and women who didn't give up being human when they became famous, and it negates the meaning inherent in our own lives. (300) — Victoria Moran

Famine isn't unique to humans. All species are subject to it everywhere in the world. When the population of any species outstrips its food resources, that population declines until it's once again in balance with its resources. Mother Culture says that humans should be exempt from that process, so when she finds a population that has outstripped its resources, she rushes in food from the outside, thus making it a certainty that there will be even more of them to starve in the next generation. Because the population is never allowed to decline to the point at which it can be supported by its own resources, famine becomes a chronic feature of their lives. — Daniel Quinn

But what really won me over was his butt. What finally made it impossible for me not to like the man was how right out there on the Adventist basepaths, right in front of eighty or ninety of the kind of pious adult spectators who spent their every Sabbath if not their entire lives trying to forget the existence of things like butts, Beal's buns were trying to light a fire by friction inside his jeans; they were gyrating like a washing machine with its load off balance; they were thrashing against his pants like two big halibut against the bottom of a boat. And the wonderful thing, the amazing thing, was how once his older audience got over the shock of it, they began to look amused at, then fascinated by, and finally downright grateful toward his writhing reminder that yes, buns did exist, and yes, every one of us owned not one but two of the things, and yes, like the God who created them in His Image, they did indeed move in mysterious ways. — David James Duncan

The most successful people I know create superior results yet still maintain a balance among work, family, and recreation in their lives. — Jack Canfield

Stress happens when the mind resists what is. Most of us tend to either push or resist the river of our lives, to fight circumstance rather than make use of things as they are. Resistance creates turbulence, which you feel as physical, mental, and emotional tension. Tension is a subtle pain, which - like any pain - signals that something is amiss. When we are out of natural balance, we create tension; by listening to our body, we can take responsibility for releasing it. — Dan Millman

But Ashla is a perversion," he went on, "for the dark has always preceded the light. The original idea was to capture the power of the Force and make it subservient to the will of sentient life. The ancients - the Celestials, the Rakata - didn't pronounce judgment on their works. They moved planets, organized star systems, conjured dark side devices like the Star Forge as they saw fit. If millions died in the process, so be it. The lives of most beings are of small consequence. The Jedi have failed to understand this. They are so busy saving lives and striving to keep the powers of the Force in balance that they have lost sight of the fact that sentient life is meant to evolve, not simply languish in contented stasis. — James Luceno

Child, [death] is with us always," said Cadfael, patient beside him. "Last summer ninety-five men died here in the town, none of whom had done murder. For choosing the wrong side, they died. It falls upon blameless women in war, even in peace at the hands of evil men. It falls upon children who never did harm to any, upon old men, who in their lives have done good to many, and yet are brutally and senselessly slain. Never let it shake your faith that there is a balance hereafter. What you see is only a broken piece from a perfect whole."

"Such justice as we see is also but a broken shred. But it is our duty to preserve what we may, and fit together such fragments as we find, and take the rest on trust. — Ellis Peters

If broken lives and souls are to be healed, it must begin with teaching the practice of the presence ... To abide in the presence of the Lord is to begin to hear Him. To follow through on that hearing is to find healing, self-acceptance, and growth into psychological and spiritual balance and maturity. — Leanne Payne

Mature readers consider reading an integral part of life. It is not something they do only to relax or to escape or if there is nothing good on television. It is something they plan for in each day, and if the day develops so that they have no time for it, they may become restless, rather like joggers who miss their run. Some - busy parents, for example - stay up late at night to read their daily quota after the house is quiet, acknowledging that having balance in their lives is more dependent on reading time than on sleep. — Judith Wynn Halsted

Why do people kill themselves?
I think they do it when they can no longer find a reason to keep going. When nothing in heir lives is good enough to balance out the bad. And they do it when they no longer have the courage to carry on past some recent painful experience. They commit what is, in the end, a desperate, final call for help, that is hopefully heard in time by someone else.
And what if it's not heard in time? I ask although I know the answer.
Then they die. — Mary Beth Miller

The answer is, of course, to simplify, to prioritize, and in some cases, to use a well-known phrase, "Just say no!" But actually doing it may prove to be one of the real challenges in our complicated, overheated lives. — M. Russell Ballard

Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

A society that could heal the dismembered world would recognize the inherent value of each person and of the plant, animal and elemental life that makes up the earth's living body; it would offer real protection, encourage free expression, and reestablish an ecological balance to be biologically and economically sustainable. Its underlying metaphor would be mystery, the sense of wonder at all that is beyond us and around us, at the forces that sustain our lives and the intricate complexity and beauty of their dance. — Starhawk

As our kids are drawn into, you know, Facebook and twittering and having their own cell phone and iPod and all those things , all of those things will take up as much time as you give them. What our goal is is to help them find that natural balance so that the things of our culture don't just steal their hearts and their minds and just consume their lives. — Alex Kendrick

That's the great, enduring challenge of our modern times, is it not, to marry faith and reason? So hard--so unreasonable--to root our lives upon a distant wisp of holiness. Faith is grand but impractical: How does one live an eternal idea in a daily way? It's so much easier to be reasonable. Reason is practical, its rewards are immediate, its workings are clear. But alas, reason is blind. Reason, on its own, leads us nowhere, especially in the face of adversity. How do we balance the two, how do we live with both faith and reason? — Yann Martel

Our bodies know that they belong; it is our minds that make our lives so homeless. Guided by longing, belonging is the wisdom of rhythm. When we are in rhythm with our own nature, things flow and balance naturally. Every fragment does not have to be relocated, reordered; things cohere and fit according to their deeper impulse and instinct. Our modern hunger to belong is particularly intense. An increasing majority of people feel no belonging. We have fallen out of rhythm with life. The art of belonging is the recovery of the wisdom of rhythm. — John O'Donohue

I am inspired by working moms. Mothers who somehow balance the demands of their many lives - professional, familial, personal, and interior - and still manage to make time to have fun and invest in themselves! This is a huge challenge that I look forward to taking on. — Daphne Oz

While ants exist in just the right numbers for the rest of the living world, humans have become too numerous. If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plants and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere. — E. O. Wilson

Food is not the problem. It's what we do with food that becomes the problem. That's why we need to learn to keep everything in our lives - especially our eating - in proper balance. — Joyce Meyer

My role models are Madhuri Dixit and Kajol. Both actresses have done a wide variety of roles. That is something I wish to do. On the other hand, I also want to be like a Hugh Jackman or an Angelina Jolie because of the lives they have outside movies. Because of the kind of balance they strike between their work and life outside of it. — Tena Desae

As a Cambion, balance is paramount.
Never lose control, never allow emotions to run wild, and never, ever forget who you are and what lives within you. Such discipline requires a sound mind, a thick skin, and a high tolerance for all things weird, because one wrong move and it's over. No matter how tempting it is at first, in the end, there's nothing more tragic, more excruciating than losing yourself.
Well, except maybe high school. — S.A.M.

Our lives are a mixture of different roles. Most of us are doing the best we can to find whatever the right balance is ... For me, that balance is family, work, and service. — Hillary Clinton

I have found that the many imbalances within our individual lives result in an overall more worldly balance. What I mean is that no matter how unfair I think something is, I need only look at the bigger picture to see how, in a way, it fits ... however impossible it is to understand it or see it at the time. — Cecelia Ahern

Good and evil," Nick said. "Yin and yang. Male and female. Life and death. The dualities that make us human. As though our lives play out on an immense balance scale - move one way, the scale tips to the left, but move the other, and it swings around to the right. — Abramelin Keldor

A revolutionary marriage ... [is] one in which both partners have work at the center of their lives and must find a delicate balance that can support both together and each individually. — Carolyn Heilbrun

I have great respect for actors like Jodie Foster and Natalie Portman who went to school the entire time they were acting. All I did was one small little independent film, and I realised I couldn't balance both lives. — Nikki Reed

It is not the balance in your check book that makes life count. It is the investment one makes in the lives of others. — John Paul Warren

Most people live in fear of some terrible event changing their lives, the death of a loved one or a serious illness. For the chronically ill, this terrible event has already happened, and we have been let in on an amazing secret: You survive. You adapt, and your life changes, but in the end you go on, with whatever compromises you have been forced to make, whatever losses you have been forced to endure. You learn to balance your fears with the simple truth that you must go on living. — Jamie Weisman

Over commitment in business is usually due to a lack of faith, which results in fear - specifically, the fear of failure. But if we really believe God is in control, then we also should believe He's able to make us successful while we are keeping our lives in balance. — Larry Burkett

Though teenagers are generally very interested in sports, they must realise that education is the most important thing in their lives. They must find the right balance. — Kapil Dev

Those who insist that a Church program exist for every contingency and need are as much in error as their counterparts who demand that government intervene in every aspect of our lives. In both instances the ideal balance is destroyed with a resultant detriment to human progress. — Dean L. Larsen

I do not trust technology. I mean, I don't think we're in any danger of kids, you know, doing without video games in the future, but I am saying that their lives are largely out of balance. — Richard Louv

The early parent-child environment, the balance between being and doing, lives on in the mind. Mindfulness offers an opportunity to see these patterns clearly. In seeing them, in bringing them into the domain of reflective self-awareness, there is a possibility of emerging from their constraints. Choice emerges where before there was only blind and conditioned behavior. — Mark Epstein

It indicates a person who has not only good manners but who possesses a sense of balance, a sure mastery of himself, a moral discipline that permits him to subordinate voluntarily his own selfish interest to the wider interests of the society in which he lives. The gentleman, therefore is a cultural person in the noblest sense of the word, if by culture we mean not simply wealth of intellectual knowledge but also the ability to fulfil one's duty and understand one's fellow man by respecting / every principle, every opinion, every faith that is sincerely professed. — Antonio Gramsci

In our lives we have known hell and heaven; the final balance, however, is that we helped pave the way to dynamic harmony in this earthly house. That, I believe, is the meaning of this live. — Reinout Willem Van Bemmelen

Some spiritual traditions view the moment of birth as a passage from a state of wholeness and knowledge to a state of forgetting. In this view of the world, we spend the rest of our lives searching for wholeness and knowledge, wellness and health-the balance and harmony we lost when we were born. If our wholeness is interrupted, then our health suffers, and we need to find a way to restore our sense of meaning. When we move in the direction of that meaning, we're healing. — Bernie Siegel

What happens if you lose?" Jeremy pressed.
"I don't see it as winning or losing. I'm just looking for a middle ground," he [Justin] said. "I get that technology is convenient and has its benefits. We definitely can't live without it. We can't go back to living in caves. But most people are so plugged in, they're not even living in the real world. Our lives aren't grounded by anything. Being too dependent on something makes you a slave to it. And I sure as hell won't worship a digital screen. So I'm looking for a halfway point. A balance. It's not just about ending digital school. It's about having a choice. — Katie Kacvinsky

Because destiny had a different plan. They were supposed to meet later. People come into our lives at certain times for various reasons having to do with lessons to be learned. It is not a coincidence that they didn't meet at a much earlier age when they did not have other commitments. I think the reason people meet later is to learn about love in many different ways and about how to balance this with responsibility and commitment. They'll meet again in a different lifetime. They must be patient. — Brian L. Weiss

So for me the essence of life is very simple. It is just this, awareness that allows us to trust in our own truths (without feeling any need to convince others), living gracefully amidst the chaos, maintaining a sense of balance (not being pulled around by the supposed opposites or false paradoxes), and being able to choose how we direct our lives. — Julia Woodman

[Clayton] Christensen had seen dozens of companies falter by going for immediate payoffs rather than long-term growth, and he saw people do the same thing. In three hours at work, you could get something substantial accomplished, and if you failed to accomplish it you felt the pain right away. If you spent three hours at home with your family, it felt like you hadn't done a thing, and if you skipped it nothing happened. So you spent more and more time at the office, on high-margin, quick-yield tasks, and you even believed that you were staying away from home for the sake of your family. He had seen many people tell themselves that they could divide their lives into stages, spending the first part pushing forward their careers, and imagining that at some future point they would spend time with their families
only to find that by then their families were gone. — Larissa MacFarquhar

All of us face hard choices in our lives. Some face more than their share. We have to decide how to balance the demands of work and family. Caring for a sick child or an aging parent. Figuring out how to pay for college. Finding a good job, and what to do if you lose it. Whether to get married - or stay married. How to give our kids the opportunities they dream about and deserve. Life is about making such choices. Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become. For leaders and nations, they can mean the difference between war and peace, poverty and prosperity. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

We need to remember that the separation of church and state must never mean the separation of religious values from the lives of public servants ... If we who serve free men today are to differ from the tyrants of this age, we must balance the powers in our hands with God in our hearts. — Lyndon B. Johnson

I'm no online whiz, but I'm not a Luddite, either. I love that we have these laptops and tablets and smart phones; they're awesome and convenient and all that. It's more about maintaining balance. Technology should always be a predicate of the true subject: our individual humanity, our examined lives. — Paul Harding

The richest and fullest lives attempt to achieve an inner balance between three realms: work, love and play. — Erik Erikson

There is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives? — George Eliot

We've had a nice time, haven't we? It has been very special here, talking every day. It was that much-overburdened and worn phrase referred to as a 'meeting of the minds. ' "She turned the blue envelope in her hands. "I've always known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. It's essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intellect? I don't know. I only know there has been your mind here and my mind here, and the afternoons have been like none I can remember. There is still so much to talk about, but we must save it for another time. — Ray Bradbury

I think it will help people have a better work-life balance, that's really important - that's the centre ground for me, it's the issues people care about in their lives. — David Cameron

Law-abiding Americans deserve to know that their government will not secretly tap their phones, read their medical records, access their library accounts or otherwise invade their personal lives, with no oversight or accountability. Law-abiding Americans also deserve to know that when law enforcement can show an impartial judge clear evidence of criminal activity or a threat to national security, swift and decisive action will be taken to protect the public. That is the balance we must achieve. — Ralph Neas

Sometimes we forget to, or feel guilty when, we take time to nourish our own souls. It is not selfish to spiritually fill ourselves because we need that time to find the delicate balance in our lives. Only then can we truly be of service to others.
Debra Siegrist — Arin Murphy-Hiscock

If humanity is to survive, happiness and inner balance are crucial. Otherwise the lives of our children and their children are more likely to be unhappy, desperate and short. Material development certainly contributes to happiness - to some extent - and a comfortable way of life. But this is not sufficient. To achieve a deeper level of happiness we cannot neglect our inner development. — Dalai Lama

As long as the mind and ego control the direction of creating, there will always be problems in the outer world, for the ego thinks only of itself and lives in duality. But when the heart is in control, everything comes back to balance, for the heart feels and knows only the oneness of life. — Drunvalo Melchizedek

We are handed the balance of our blood and the shape of our lives and told to do something with them. — Seanan McGuire

Our lives hang in the balance of unpredictable situations. One minute you're driving down the road whistling a tune, the next moment the car right in front of you spins out of control and crashes. How you prepare for those unpredictable occurrences determines whether you live or die. Always leave an empty lane to your right or left for escape. — Ted Dekker

When I talk to people who feel this emptiness and lack of fulfillment, I recommend they find a source of balance in their lives. I suggest they find a way to "give back" to the world in order to feel a sense of completeness ... — Harold S. Kushner

When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling ... our actions and lives are always the richer for it. — Yo-Yo Ma

Naive optimism and pervasive pessimism are both to be avoided, therefore. It's not an easy balance to maintain, to be asked to work away in the Ninevehs of our lives without being so conscious of the coming cataclysm that we are not serious citizens of our communities and nations. By living and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are doing the most relevant thing we can do by way of helping. (There are civic and other chores to be done, of course.) Day in and day out, the gospel is the one thing that is most relevant, and we are to be of good cheer. — Neal A. Maxwell

Simply raising the theme of animals in the Third Reich means that our narrative is no longer only an account of what human beings have done to one another, but also about our relations with the natural world. If,viewed against the magnitude and terror of historical events, our personal lives appear almost trivial, the lives of animals may seem more so, and even
to raise the subject can at first seem either insensitive or pedantic. At the
same time, this new dimension places the events in an even vaster perspective still, one in which even the greatest battles and horrendous
crimes can begin to fade into insignificance. This is the standpoint of evolutionary time, in which humankind itself may be no more than a
relatively brief episode. Perhaps the focus on animals may help us to find
a more harmonious balance between the personal, historic, and cosmic
levels, on which, simultaneously we conduct our lives. — Boria Sax

From the pool of awakenings which includes creativity, strength, generosity, loving-kindness and transformation, I selected seven awakenings to immerse myself in each day: consciousness, compassion, forgiveness, expansion, abundance, healing, and balance. I believe that if we can live a life toward mastery of any seven principles in the pool of awakenings, then our lives will flourish and those we hold dear in our lives will experience greater fulfillment. Which seven do you choose? — Davidji

Yet powerful as they were, as powerful as music that brings heart-piercing pain, tears, laughter, with its enchantments, they were as music, subordinate to their own creator. Humans need not, Paks saw, worship their immortality, their cool wisdom, their knowledge of the taig, their ability to repattern mortal perceptions. In brief mortal lives humans met challenges no elf could meet, learned strategies no elf could master, chose evil or good more direct and dangerous than elf could perceive. Humans were shaped for conflict, as elves for harmony; each needed the other's balance of wisdom, but must cleave to its own nature. It was easy for an immortal to counsel patience, withdrawal until a danger passed . . . — Elizabeth Moon

Keeping the daily demands of life in balance is one of the great tasks of mortality. There is no peace for those whose lives are out of balance temporally or spiritually. — Brent L. Top

When we invest in the things that matter most to us, that are within God's unique design for each of us, I believe we will achieve a sense of balance in our lives. — Candace Cameron

Even if lives did hang in the balance, it would depend on whose they were. — Bill Watterson

As we create synergy among the roles of our lives, there's more of us to put into the time we have. — Stephen Covey

And you wish to protect a beautiful princess, with whom you have fallen in love. But do you understand how dire the situation is? He life and the lives of her sisters are hanging in the balance. You yourself risk death if you choose this path."
"I don't care," Oliver said. He stood up and faced the bishop. "I don't care! I love Petunia, and this is what I'm choosing, right here and now. — Jessica Day George

Often the lack of clear direction and goals can waste away our time and energy and contribute to imbalance in our lives. A life that gets out of balance is much like a car tire that is out of balance. It will make the operation of the car rough and unsafe. Tires in perfect balance can give a smooth and comfortable ride. So it is with life. The ride through mortality can be smoother for us when we strive to stay in balance. — M. Russell Ballard

When I was young - really young - I used to think that the kids who had money, who were popular at school and who did well at things must have had horrible home lives - abusive parents or nasty siblings or lived in cupboard under stairs.
It's kind of sick when you think about it, but what I figured was that life should be fair - everyone had to have good and bad things in their lives, and no one could have a wholly good life or a wholly bad life because that would upset the balance of things.
I know now that I was wrong. — Steph Bowe

Balance lives in the present. When you feel the earth moving, bring yourself back to the now. You'll handle whatever shake-up the next moment brings when you get to it. In this moment, you're still breathing. In this moment, you've survived. In this moment, you're finding a way to step onto higher ground. — Oprah Winfrey

We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives ... not looking for flaws, but for potential. — Ellen Goodman

No, they didn't have any money, the sea was dangerous and men were lost, but it was a satisfying life in a way people today do not understand. There was a joinery of lives all worked together, smooth in places, or lumpy, but joined. The work and the living you did was the same things, not separated out like today. — Annie Proulx

The art we produce lives in queasy balance with the art we can imagine the art the room expects. — Michael Cunningham

The heart of the matter: You should never belong fully to something that is outside yourself. It is very important to find a balance in your belonging. You should never belong totally to any cause or system. People frequently need to belong to an external system because they are afraid to belong to their own lives. If your soul is awakened, then you realize that this is the house of your real belonging. Your longing is safe there. — John O'Donohue

Today, he'd observed them seize a woman who'd gotten pregnant with an unregistered child. There'd be no chance at lenience. She would be Confined until she gave birth, the child would be placed in the Council's care, and the mother would be executed. The ship could only support a certain number of lives, and allowing anyone to disrupt the delicate balance would jeopardize the entire race. — Kass Morgan

We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it
to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Balance lives in the present. — Oprah Winfrey

In True Balance Sonia Choquette takes the mystery out of staying balanced, both physically and spiritually. She offers a clear explanation of our chakras and how they influence our daily lives. — Salle Merrill Redfield

You don't get to see your family much. In the movie business, directors often go out of town for long periods of time, and even if you're in town, you're working 14-15 hour days. People tend to not balance out the important things in their lives with their career. — Jon Favreau

How we shape our understanding of others' lives is determined by what we find memorable in them, and that in turn is determined not by any potentially accurate overview of another's personality but rather by the tension and balance that exist in our daily relationships. — Tom Robbins

We forget that we create the situations, then we give our power away by blaming the other person for our frustration. No person, no place, and no thing has any power over us, for "we" are the only thinkers in our mind. We create our experiences, our reality, and everyone in it. When we create peace and harmony and balance in our mind, we will find it in our lives. — Louise Hay

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name". Do not then (concludes the Stoic) take good words in your mouth, and prate before applauding citizens of honour, duty, and so forth, while you make your private lives a mere selfish calculation of expediency. We were surely born for nobler ends than this, and none who is worthy the name of a man would subscribe to doctrines which destroy all honour and all chivalry. The heroes of old time won their immortality not by weighing pleasures and pains in the balance, but by being prodigal of their lives, doing and enduring all things for the sake of their fellow-men. — W. Lucas Collins

Over the years, I've learnt how to strike a balance between both my lives and give quality time to my passion as well as to my family. Yes, it is tiring at times, and every working woman goes through the phase. — Malaika Arora Khan

Because if you take something you're a thief.' She nursed the silence a moment. Downed the balance of her drink and silently signaled for another. 'Sounds simple, but you'd be amazed how many people don't get it. They steal but they call themselves honest. They cheat on their spouses and lovers but they think they're good people. They lie but they'd never call themselves liars. Well, let me tell you something, Todd ... She pointed toward him with her right hand, with her lit cigarette. He leaned away slightly. She looked into the mirror of his eyes and saw herself going too far. 'You are what you do. That's what I'm trying to tell you. What we do defines us. However we behave, conduct our lives ... that's real. The rest is just a story for publication. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Past conference topics have included strengthening the role of fathers in children's lives, the impact of the media culture on children, the delicate balance between work and family, and family involvement in education. — Tipper Gore

Those in the grip of a strong drug - heroin, devil grass, true love - often find themselves trying to maintain a precarious balance between secrecy and ecstasy as they walk the tightrope of their lives. Keeping one's balance on a tightrope is difficult under the soberest of circumstances; doing so while in a state of delirium is all but impossible. — Stephen King

My husband and I have kept a good balance between the work and the rest. I feel so lucky having a job, and I know so may people who focus too much on work, and their home lives suffer. — Jewel

I told Ing once that she dances like a German and she didn't like it, but it's true: she dances seriously, like lives are hanging in the balance, like precision dancing can save the starving children of India. — Audrey Niffenegger

[But] I fear that in the individual lives of all but a few, the balance is in debit - we do so little that is positive good, even if we negatively avoid what is actively evil. — J.R.R. Tolkien

My funeral," the Blue Man said. "Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should?
"It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
"You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
"It is why we are drawn to babies ... " He turned to the mourners. "And to funerals. — Mitch Albom

We are wired to move through our lives chasing and rehearsing narratives that will promise to bring the world back into balance. — Timothy Keller

Apartment windows are cracked open to the cold to balance overzealous radiators, and there's comfort in the sounds drifting out. Each window Amelia passes hints at the warmth inside: people talking, people laughing, kitchen sounds, the steady pulse of music. Now salsa, now reggae. Now opera, now rock. voices in English, in Spanish in Korean, in junkie gibberish. And she's a part of it, at least as long as the sounds of all those lives wash over her. — Cari Luna

I've always known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. It's essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intellect? I don't know. I only know there has been your mind here and my mind here, and the afternoons have been like none I can remember. — Ray Bradbury

We will be able to depart this life with the quiet peace-giving notion, that we were permitted to contribute to the happiness of many who will live after us. In our long lives we endeavored to unfold the collective consciousness. In our lives we have known hell and heaven; the final balance, however, is that we helped pave the way to dynamic harmony in this earthly house. That, I believe, is the meaning of life. — R.W. Van Bemmelen

What was the power that induced strong soldiers to put off their jackets and shirts, and present their hands to be tied up, and tortured for hours, it might be, under the scourge, with an air of ready volition? The moral coercion of despair; the result of an unconscious calculation of chances that satisfies them that it is ultimately better to do all that, bad as it is, than try the alternative. These unconscious calculations are going on every day with each of us, and the results embody themselves in our lives; and no one knows that there has been a process and a balance struck, and that what they see, and very likely blame, is by the fiat of an invisible but quite irresistible power. — J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Why do you tolerate it? (Kat)
The same reason Sin hasn't resigned himself to death. There are six billion people on earth who need someone to protect them from things that are scarier than the tax man or a knife-wielding stranger. Things that a gun won't stop. As long as their lives hang in the balance, what's a little humiliation for me? (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Who values the past lives sentimentally.
Who optimizes the present grabs opportunity.
Who balances time creates harmony.
Who disturbs harmony leads complexity.
Who solves complexity opens continuity. — Angelica Hopes

Tis in ourselves that we are thus
or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusions: but we have
reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that
you call love to be a sect or scion. — William Shakespeare

Soul work is the 'more' that we need to do to heal our souls.

Soul retrieval is one more step toward balance and wholeness. The trauma of major illness, death, financial devastation, abuse, terror, and other stressors in our lives will not cease while we live and breathe. But, knowing they can rob us of our soul allows us to address those loses before or as they occur, so that we do not have to struggle to survive without that which makes us who we are. — Barbara Lieberman