Long Way To Go In Life Quotes & Sayings

I feel like I'm dropping such a long way down again." "I seem to be dropping into a cold dark wet place, where no one's been before and noone can every follow. There's no future there; just a past that sometimes fools you into thinking it's the future. It's the most alone place you can ever be and, when you go there, you not only cease to exist in real life, you also cease to exist in their consciousness and in their memories. — John Marsden

His eyes are cold and restless
His wounds have almost healed
And she'd give half of Texas
Just to change the way he feels
She knows his love's in Tulsa
And she knows he's gonna go
Well it ain't no woman flesh and blood
It's that damned old rodeo


Well it's bulls and blood
It's dust and mud
It's the roar of a Sunday crowd
It's the white in his knuckles
The gold in the buckle
He'll win the next go 'round
It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo
It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo


She does her best to hold him
When his love comes to call
But his need for it controls him
And her back's against the wall
And it's So long girl I'll see you
When it's time for him to go
You know the woman wants her cowboy
Like he wants his rodeo — Garth Brooks

It was the same Dimitri from long ago, the fierce one who was willing to risk his life for what was right. I almost wished he'd go back to being annoying, distant Dimitri, the one who told me to stay away. Seeing him now brought back too many memories -not to mention the attraction I thought I'd smashed. Now, with that passion all over him, he seemed sexier than ever. He'd worn that same intensity when we'd fought together. Even when we'd had sex. This was the way Dimitri was supposed to be: powerful and in charge. — Richelle Mead

After that, things happened very quickly. She gave me a key to her house, and I gave her a key to my apartment. If we were in town, we spent every weekend together. She cooked for me - she was good in the kitchen, but then she was good everywhere. We watched the Friday night fights on TV, and on Saturday or Sunday afternoons we'd go for long walks in the mountains above Malibu. Occasionally we would go to a movie, slipping in after the lights went down. Whenever we went out, Barbara [Stanwyck] would wear a scarf over her head, or a kind of hat, so it would be hard to tell who she was. For the next four years, we became part of each other's lives. In a very real way, I think we still are. Barbara proved to be one of the most marvelous relationships of my life. I was twenty-two, she was forty-five, but our ages were beside the point. She was everything to me - a beautiful woman with a great sense of humor and enormous accomplishments to her name. — Robert Wagner

And uh, forget the money. Because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life wasting your time. You will be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is, in order to do things you don't like doing, which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of things you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way. — Allan Watts

You can live your whole life in your brain and not experience what's around you. You go crazy that way. That's why I have to watch myself when I get isolated for too long. — Fiona Apple

My books have done extremely well, I know. But I don't honestly feel much different from when I began to write. I still think we have a long way to go. I suppose my name means more in Nigeria today than it did five years ago. But I feel the job that literature should do in our community has not even started. It's not yet part of the life of the nation. We are still at the beginning. It's a big beginning, because now we are catching the next generation in the schools. When I was their age, I had nothing to read that had any relevance to my own environment. — Chinua Achebe

But it doesn't happen that way, I keep telling myself knowingly and sadly. Only in our fraternity pledges and masonic inductions, our cowboy movies and magazine stories, not in our real-life lives. For, the seventeenth-century humanist to the contrary, each man is an island complete unto himself, and as he sinks, the moving feet go on around him, from nowhere to nowhere and with no time to lose. The world is long past the Boy Scout stage of its development; now each man dies as he was meant to die, and as he was born, and as he lived: alone, all alone. Without any God, without any hope, without any record to show for his life.
("New York Blues") — Cornell Woolrich

...And indeed it did take me a long time for me to find someone I wanted to marry. But I'm so glad I waited. What I know about Pete and me is that the flame will never go out. I do not look up from tossing the salad and think, Oh, God, how the hell did I ever get here? I do not look a the back of his head and think, I don't know you at all. I wake up with my pal, and go to sleep with my lover. He still thrills me, not only sexually but because of the way he regards the life that unfolds around him. I am interested in what he says about me and the children and our respective jobs, but I am also interested in what he says about the Middle East and the migratory patterns of monarchs and the amount of nutmeg that should be grated into the mashed potatoes and the impact that being a thwarted artist had on the life of Hitler. I believe he is a truly honest and awake and kind individual. If we live more than once, I want to find him again. — Elizabeth Berg

So I punished myself instead. I gave myself the worst punishment I could think of: I decided to live and I decided to stop drinking." "And afterward?" "I got to my feet again and started working. Worked longer days than all the others. Trained. Went on long walks. Read books. Some on law. Stopped meeting bad friends. Good ones too, by the way. The ones I had left after all the boozing. I don't know why in fact, it was like a big cleanup. Everything in my old life had to go, good as well as bad. One day I sat down and rang round all those I thought I had known in my former life and said: 'Hi, we can't meet anymore. It was nice knowing — Jo Nesbo

It is like a beautiful sunset you see once in your life, one you swear you will never forget as long as you live. And you never do forget, but you never have a reason to restore the memory - so it remains hidden inside. Until one day, for no apparent reason, you remember that sunset. You recall the way your skin felt as the sun brushed across it, the way the colors painted the sky. You wonder why it took you so long to go back to that place again, swearing you won't take so long next time. Only you do forget the memory and you may or may not ever relive it again. — J.A. Saare

Watch this, Larry. The seeds I saved from last year bring forth plants this year. It's a death, burial, and resurrection. It's this way with the sun also. It comes up in the morning and brings us light all the day long. But in the evening it goes down. Is that the end of the sun? No... It comes up the very next day. Death, burial, and resurrection."
"I never saw it like that, Charlie. Tell me more."
"See Larry, let's go deeper with that. Just for instance, something must die for something to live. You and I eat live substance--whether it is corn or beans, it's a life. That life dies to give us life. Now watch this, Larry. If that works with the physical; then it also works in the spiritual. Jesus Christ had to die to give us life... — Jerrel C. Thomas

When I was a child and told my mother I didn't felt this was my planet, she thought I was schizophrenic or autistic. When later I finished a college degree and started working in different countries, she called me monster and started threatening me. Nearly 40 years later, when I was making a living from the books I wrote based on what I know, and making 6 times more money than she ever will, she apologized. I'm just not sure why or what she was apologizing for. I had already forgiven her ignorance when realizing nobody would ever believe the truth but myself. I had to go the whole way alone. Nobody was going to come with me on this very long, painful and challenging journey that humans call life but for me was much more than that, it was my mission, of changing their whole future far beyond the time when I'm gone. She was never my mother but merely the human body that gave me birth. In that sense, I am a monster, because I had no love. I had to find that too, on my own. — Robin Sacredfire

Now, let's imagine that we have been condemned for life to making, year in year out a burdensome and nearly impossible decision to which the world increasingly and inexplicably ascribes a crazy importance. How do we go about it? We look for some simple, rapid, and broadly acceptable criteria that will help us get this pain out of the way. And since, as Borges himself noted, aesthetics are difficult and require a special sensibility and long reflection while political affiliations are easier and quickly grasped, we begin to identify those areas of the world that have grabbed public attention, perhaps because of political turmoil or abuses of human rights; we find those authors who have already won a huge level of respect and possibly major prizes in the literary communities of these countries and who are outspokenly committed to the right side of whatever political divide we're talking about, and we select them. — Tim Parks

When people are broken on the outside, society is taught to never be rude to them. When people are broken on the inside, society is taught to rub happiness in their faces and show them how perfect life should be. When someone has half of an arm, you are not supposed to go up to them and show them how great of an arm wrestler you are. But when someone has a broken mind or a broken soul, you're taught to go up to them and tell them to look for joy in everything. Society has a very long way to go in terms of what it means to heal this world's broken people. — C. JoyBell C.

Imagine yourself near the end of your life. You are relaxing in a rocking chair reflecting on the decision you presently want to make. As the older, wiser you thinks about the outcome of your choice, ask yourself three simple questions.
1. Did it cause harm?
2. Did it bring about good?
3. How did it shape the person I became?
The Rocking Chair Test helps you to take a long view of your options. After imagining your answers to those questions, you should know better which way to go. — Steve Goodier

Take the Long Way Home is a song that I wrote that's on two levels - on one level I'm talking about not wanting to go home to the wife, 'take the long way home' because she treats you like part of the furniture. But there's a deeper level to the song, too. I really believe we all want to find our true home, find that place in us where we feel at home, and to me, home is in the heart. When we're in touch with our heart and we're living our life from our heart, then we do feel like we found our home. — Roger Hodgson

Lay down
Your tired & weary head my friend.
We have wept too long
Night is falling
And you are only sleeping

We have come to this journey's end
It's time for us to go
To meet our friends
Who beckon us
To jump again

From across a distant sky
A C-130 comes to carry us
Where we shall all wait
For the final green light

In the light of
The pale moon rising
I see far on the horizon
Into the world of night and darkness
Feet and knees together

Time has ceased
But cherished memories still linger
This is the way of life and all things
We shall meet again
You are only sleeping. — Jose N. Harris

I'm a fool. I expect too much, then I'm angry because nothing ever works out the way I want. When I was young and full of hopes and aspirations, I didn't know I would get hurt so often. I think I'll get tough and won't ache again, then my fragile shell shatters, and again, symbolically, my blood is spilled with the tears I shed. I pull myself back together again, go on, convince myself there is a reason for everything, and at some point in my life it will be disclosed. And when I have what I want, I hope to god it stays long enough to let me know I have it, and it wont hurt when it goes, for I don't expect it to stay, not now. I'm like a doughnut, always being punch out in the middle, and constantly I go around searching for the missing piece, and on and on it goes, never ending, only beginning ... — V.C. Andrews

Your personal life, your professional life, and your creative life are all intertwined. I went through a few very difficult years where I felt like a failure. But it was actually really important for me to go through that. Struggle, for me, is the most inspirational thing in the world at the end of the day - as long as you treat it that way. — Skylar Grey

A block or two west of the new City of Man in Turtle Bay there is an old willow tree that presides over an interior garden. It is a battered tree, long suffering and much climbed, held together by strands of wire but beloved of those who know it. In a way it symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the midst of concrete, and the steady reaching for the sun. Whenever I look at it nowadays, and feel the cold shadow of the planes, I think: "This must be saved, this particular thing, this very tree." If it were to go, all would go
this city, this mischevious and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death. — E.B. White

But mostly, I remembered what I've always believed. What my mom taught me. That while some things are just plain awful, most things in life can be seen either tragic or comic. And it's your choice. Is life a big, long, tiresome slog from sadness to regret to guilt to resentment to self-pity? Or is life weird, outrageous, bizarre, ironic, and just stupid?
Gotta go with stupid.
It's not the easy way out. Self-pity is the easiest thing in the world. Finding the humor, the irony, the slight justification for a skewed, skeptical optimism, that's tough. — Katherine Applegate

I believe in the baby Jesus, and I believe he is handsome and lives in the sky with his pet cow. I believe that it is essential the cow like you, and if you pet the cow with your mind, it will lick your hand and give you cash. But if you make the cow angry, it will turn away from you, forget you exist, and your life will fall into shambles. I believe that as long as the cow likes you, you can get what you want. In order to keep the cow's favor, you need to 'let go and let God,' meaning you can't obsess about controlling every little thing. You have to let things unfold naturally, and not try to change things you cannot change. On the other hand, I believe that if you've made the cow happy by living this way, you're allowed to ask for favors... — Augusten Burroughs

For kids stuck in small towns everywhere who feel like you'll never escape, I hear you. We are all connected. We're all in this together. You are not alone.
No matter what happens, never *ever* give up.
Happiness is not limited. There's enough for everyone. You can start right now, today, to move toward a happier life. Your life is shaped by your choices. Make ones that will help you get where you want to go.
Find your place to belong. It may not be a physical place. At least, not yet. Maybe your place is somewhere you let your imagination take you. Maybe it's your vision of the way your ideal life will be.
Eventually, you'll find a real place that feels like home. Your whole world will open up in ways you kept believing were possible. And you'll be so happy you held on long enough to make it there.
So let's do this thing. Let's own what makes up unique. Let's refuse to allow haters to stop us from moving forward. Let's turn our dreams into reality.
Starting now. — Susane Colasanti

You have described only too well," replied the Master, "where the difficulty lies ... The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You ... brace yourself for failure. So long as that is so, you have no choice but to call forth something yourself that ought to happen independently of you, and so long as you call it forth your hand will not open in the right way
like the hand of a child. — Eugen Herrigel

Keep this constantly in mind: that all sorts of people have died - all professions, all nationalities. Follow the thought all the way down to Philistion, Phoebus, and Origanion. Now extend it to other species. We have to go there too, where all of them have already gone: . . . the eloquent and the wise - Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Socrates . . . . . . the heroes of old, the soldiers and kings who followed them . . . . . . Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Archimedes . . . . . . the smart, the generous, the hardworking, the cunning, the selfish . . . . . . and even Menippus and his cohorts, who laughed at thewhole brief, fragile business. All underground for a long time now. And what harm does it do them? Or the others either - the ones whose names we don't even know? The only thing that isn't worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don't. — Marcus Aurelius

We only have a few hours, so listen carefully.
If you're hearing this story, you're already in danger. Sadie and I might be your only chance.
Go to the school. Find the locker. I won't tell you which school or which locker, because if you're the right person, you'll find it. The combination is 13/32/33. By the time you finish listening, you'll know what those numbers mean. Just remember the story we're about to tell you isn't complete yet.
How it ends will depend on you.
The most important thing: when you open the package and find what's inside, don't keep it longer than a week. Sure, it'll be tempting. I mean, it will grant you almost unlimited power. But if you possess it too long, it will consume you. Learn its secrets quickly and pass it on. Hide it for the next person, the way Sadie and I did for you. Then be prepared for your life to get very interesting. — Rick Riordan

I thrust Sophie into a corner, blocking her with my body. She panted and snagged her lower lip in her teeth. "This is not my life," she insisted.
I looked at her solemnly. "I'm afraid it is. But it doesn't have to be for long. Let's just get through this. Then things go back to normal for you."
"Like they keep going back to normal for you?" Sophie hissed. "Ghost of your mother, psycho ex-best friend, company agent dating your dad, psychic vampire ex-boyfriend, werewolf current boyfriend - by the way, I can't blame you for that one," she confessed, eyes round as she mouthed the word whoa before continuing with her list, "Trip to the asylum, attempts against your life, vigilante father ... "
"Hey, the last ones are brand new. And the vigilante father thing? He'll revert."
"Anyhow, I'm not so keen on your concept of normal." I caught her staring at me. — Shannon Delany

We can travel a long way in life and do many things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences. it is born from letting go of what is unnecessary, and knowing ourselves to be always at home. — Sharon Salzberg

I think we can provide better stories through providing mentors, and certainly part of my story is providing mentors to kids growing up without dads. I think positive male role models go a long way in terms of rescuing kids from a life of trouble.I think positive male role models go a long way in terms of rescuing kids from a life of trouble. — Donald Miller

When the war ended in 1945, Robert Newton's film career took off. And then he landed the part of Disney's Long John Silver. "What accent do you want me to put on?" he asked Walt, in his natural thick West-country, 'Cornwall/Devon/Dorset' burr. Pointing at his face excitedly, "Why, that one." Disney replied. And THE OFFICIAL PIRATE ACCENT was born. Newton went on to do another Long John Silver film, then a 26 part television series. He died early, aged 50, from chronic alcoholism, just the way a pirate would want to go. But he left the legacy of 'the' pirate accent 'til the end of time. Every pirate 'R' or 'Arrrgh' joke you ever heard, owes its very life to the combination of Robert Newton, R. L. Stevenson, and Walt Disney.
-- Renaissance Festival Survival Guide — Ian Hall

And in a way, this was how he had come to see his death, as a series of small ones taking place over the course of his life and leading finally to the main event, which would be so anti-climatic, so undramatic (a sudden violent seizure in his long abused heart, a quick massive flooding of the brain) it would go unnoticed. It was the small deaths occurring over an entire lifetime that took the greater toll. — Paule Marshall

And I have always had an especially great desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, in order to see my way clearly in my actions, and to go forward with confidence in this life. It is true that, so long as I merely considered the customs of other men, I found hardly anything there about which to be confident, and that I noticed there was about as much diversity as I had previously found among the opinions of philosophers. Thus the greatest profit I derived from this was that, on seeing many things that, although they seem to us very extravagant and ridiculous, do not cease to be commonly accepted and approved among other great peoples, I learned not to believe anything too firmly of which I had been persuaded only by example and custom; and thus I little by little freed myself from many errors that can darken our natural light and render us less able to listen to reason. — Rene Descartes

Em, we've known each other five or six years now, but two years properly, as, you know, 'friends', which isn't that long but I think I know a bit about you and I think I know what your problem is. Here it is. I think you're scared of being happy, Emma. I think you think that the natural way of things is for your life to be grim and grey and dour and to hate your job, hate where you live, not to have success or money or God forbid a boyfriend. In fact, I think I'll go further and say that I think you actually get a kick out of being disappointed and under-achieving, because it's easier, isn't it? Failure and unhappiness is easier because you can make a joke out of it. — David Nicholls

Here, listen to this; a poem by a Greek who lived in Alexandria, one Cavafy: "You said, 'I shall go to another land to another sea Another city will be found better than this. My every effort is a written indictment And my heart - like the dead - is buried. How long will my mind be in this decay,' "and so on like that, it's the same old song we know so well - if only I were somewhere else, I would be happy. Until the poet replies to his poor friend, "New lands you will not find, you won't find other seas. The city will follow you. The streets you roam will be the same. There is no boat for you, there is no street. In the same way your life you destroyed here In this petty corner, you have spoiled it in the entire universe. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Every night before you go to bed, review your day and either write down or mentally note ten things you can be grateful for in your life. These can be everything from the beautiful flowers in your garden to the fact that your heart is beating to the hour-long visit from your persnickety neighbor that taught you to be happy that you don't have her life. Stopping and noticing throughout the day all the things that you can be grateful for is a great way to keep your frequency high at all times. So try and remember to do it all day long, but at the very least, make it part of your evening routine. — Jen Sincero

The author of the hymn 'Amazing Grace', John Newton, who once was a slave ship captain, and who became a Christian preacher and an enemy of the slave trade, once said: 'I have reason to praise [God] for my trials, for, most probably, I should have been ruined without them.' The author of The Gulag Archipelago , Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who suffered for twenty years in the hellish prison camps he describes in that book, wrote: 'Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.' This does not mean that Newton would have chosen to go through his trials, or that Solzhenitsyn in any way enjoyed the terrible suffering of his imprisonment. But it means that in retrospect they can see that God used those difficulties to bless them in the long run. — Eric Metaxas

Aren't you, like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don't you often hope: 'May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country or relationship fulfill my deepest desire.' But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied. You know that this is the compulsiveness that keeps us going and busy, but at the same time makes us wonder whether we are getting anywhere in the long run. This is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burn-out. This is the way to spiritual death. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

A solution to many of the issues in this book, and one that would go a long way toward fixing American healthcare, is relatively clear: Treasure nurses. Hire more. Nurses are perennially the number-one most trusted profession in America, according to an annual Gallup poll rating honesty and ethical standards. They are called to an exhausting commitment in which mortals must sustain an unwavering grace at the edge of life and death, almost divinely slowing heartbeats, hurrying them along, or pounding them back into existence. Nurses are exceptional. So why aren't they treated accordingly? — Alexandra Robbins

Negative habits eat you up. They're the biggest roadblocks that prevent you from realising your fullest potential; and the very first step towards crafting real change is to become aware of all the destructive habits that squander you! An awareness of what needs to be improved, tackled, or abandoned will go a long way in restructuring your life. Make a list of all the lousy habits that you want to eliminate; and then roust them out of your life, before they chomp you up completely. Axe them, uproot them, throw them into the ocean and never look back. — Manprit Kaur

To live only for some unknown future is superficial. It is like climbing a mountain to reach the peak without experiencing its sides. The sides of the mountain sustain life, not the peak. This is where things grow, experience is gained, and technologies are mastered. The importance of the peak lies only in the fact that it defines the sides. So I went on towards the top, but always experiencing the sides. I had a long way to go but I was in no hurry. I went in little steps - just one step after another - but each step towards the top. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

I was reading a poem by my idol, Wallace Stevens, in which he said, 'The self is a cloister of remembered sounds.' My first response was, Yesss! How did he know that? It's like he's reading my mind. But my second response was, I need some new sounds to remember. I've been stuck in my little isolation chamber for so long I'm spinning through the same sounds I've been hearing in my head all my life. If I go on this way, I'll get old too fast, without remembering any more sounds than I already know now. The only one who remembers any of my sounds is me. How do you turn down the volume on your personal-drama earphones and learn how to listen to other people? How do you jump off one moving train, marked Yourself, and jump onto a train moving in the opposite direction, marked Everybody Else? I loved a Modern Lovers song called, 'Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste,' and I didn't want to waste mine. — Rob Sheffield

In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored. We spend long hours trying to teach a variety of courses on, say, the structure of government or the structure of the amoeba. But how much effort goes into studying the structure of everyday life - the way time is allocated, the personal uses of money, the places to go for help in a society exploding with complexity? We take for granted that young people already know their way around our social structure. In fact, most have only the dimmest image of the way the world of work or business is organized. Most students have no conception of the architecture of their own city's economy, or the way the local bureaucracy operates, or the place to go to lodge a complaint against a merchant. Most do not even understand how their own schools - even universities - are structured, let alone how much structures are changing under the impact of the Third Wave. — Alvin Toffler

And they spoke of their Antigonie, who they called Go, as if she were a friend.
Leo hadn't yet written any music, but he had made drawings on butcher paper stolen from the kitchen. They curled around his walls, intricate doodles, extensions of the boy's own lean, slight body. The shape of Leo's jaw in profile, devestating. The way he gnawed his fingernails to the crescents, the fine shining hairs down the center of his nape, the smell of him, up close, pure and clean, bleaching.
The ones made for music are the most beloved of all. Their bodies a container for the spirit within; the best of them is music, the rest only instrument of flesh and bone.
The weather conspired. Snow fell softly in the windows. It was too cold to be out for long. The world colorless, a dreamscape, a blank page, the linger of woodsmoke on the back of the tongue. — Lauren Groff

I did everything wrong," he said. "I misunderstood everything. Moon Child gave me so much, and all I did with it was harm, harm to myself and harm to Fantastica."
Dame Eyola gave him a long look.
No," she said. "I don't believe so. You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that was your way. And do you know why? Because you are one of those who can't go back until they have found the fountain from which springs the Water of Life. And that's the most secret place in Fantastica. There's no simple way of getting there."
After a short silence she added: "But every way that leads there is the right one. — Michael Ende

I don't know what I could say specifically, except that everything I've learned as a kid of course must somehow play into what I do now. I think when everything kind of drifted away, I had to go out into the world and learn how to emotionally be okay with all that, which to me was a decades-long process. But also I happened to find my way in life, to find a living, to figure out what I wanted to be when I grow up. I think all of that now probably helps me. It probably gives me more life experience to draw from. — Jackie Earle Haley

A child dragging bent useless legs is crawling up the hill outside the village. Nose to the stones, goat dung, and muddy trickles, she pulls herself along like a broken cricket. We falter, ashamed of our strong step, and noticing this, she gazes up, clear-eyed, without resentment - it seems much worse that she is pretty. In Bengal, GS says stiffly, beggars will break their children's knees to achieve this pitiable effect for business purposes: this is his way of expressing his distress. But the child that lies here at our boots is not a beggar; she is merely a child, staring in curiosity at tall, white strangers. I long to give her something - a new life? - yet am afraid to tamper with such dignity. And so I smile as best I can, and say "Namas-te!" "Good morning!" How absurd! And her voice follows as we go away, a small clear smiling voice - "Namas-te!" - a Sanskrit word for greeting and parting that means, "I salute you". — Peter Matthiessen

Sometimes it's easy to walk by because we know we can't change someone's whole life in a single afternoon. But what we fail to realize it that simple kindness can go a long way toward encouraging someone who is stuck in a desolate place. — Mike Yankoski

There's a way,
a way way too long but reachable,
not for everyone a way but possible ...
Go and don't lose your way! — Rossana Condoleo

If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound. — Steve Martin

You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks ... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life ... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.
- Penny Baxter — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

If you could go back and relive any perfect moment in your
life, which one would it be?"His smile took her breath away. "You know I'm forbidden to use that'gift' except in the direst of circumstances. And itdoesn't work like that - remember, I can only bend it to gain back the last few minutes.""I know, but
if
youcould. Humor me."He thought for a long
moment. "None of them."Disappointment stabbed her. "Why not?""Because the perfect moment can never be improved, and should be remembered, cherished, just the way it was. Like every moment I spend in your arms," he said."We should just go forward and make more of them. — J.D. Tyler

The emotion I'd held back for years assaulted me with staggering intensity. Everything. All of it. I cried for Clay, for the lost years with Courtney, but most of all for myself and the cowardly person I'd become. They were right. I was a shell of who I used to be and lived a lonely little life. I'd been certain that protecting my heart had been the right way to go. That Courtney and I didn't mix in the long term. That love was not for me. I'd been wrong on all counts. — Melissa Brayden

Losing this part of my life, this time of being a mother to growing children, is indeed an ending. For months, I've carried that quiet sorrow, getting used to its heaviness, the way one learns to live with the chronic soreness of a joint, a tenderness in wrist or knee. What I long to do now is to let the sadness go as well, to have faith that even as my sons graduate from high school and leave home, and this phase of our family life draws to a close, there will be new beginnings not just for them, but for all of us. — Katrina Kenison

I'm a big believer in, no matter what you go through in life, as long as you can laugh your way through it, you're going to be okay. — Alyssa Milano

Sometimes when I try to make jokes or have a sense of humor in interviews, it doesn't go over very well. But Twitter made my life easier in this way that I didn't expect. It would have taken probably 10 times as long for people to accept my voice and my sense of humor if I didn't have Twitter. — Anna Kendrick

I really believe that at the start of the journey the condemned man, sitting in the tumbril, must feel that an infinite life still stretches ahead of him. However, the houses roll by one by one, the tumbril rumbles on - oh, that's nothing, it's still a long way to the turning into the next street, and he continues to look keenly to the left and the right at the thousands of indifferently curious people with their eyes riveted upon him, and he continues vaguely to imagine that, like all of them, he is still a human being. But here's the turning into the next street! Never mind though, never mind, still a whole street to go. And no matter how many houses he passes, he still thinks: "There are still a lot of houses." And so to the very end, right up until they reach the town square. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Your mind always follows your heart. That will never change. The one good thing about you is that you are a survivor. You can survive and get out of any situation. The bad part about it is that in the process you always unintentionally hurt others as well as yourself. Did you ever ask yourself how long you will be able to go this way? Whatever you are after in your life, is it worth it? — Stevan V. Nikolic

This is very American, too - the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness. Planet Advertising in America orbits completely around the need to convince the uncertain consumer that yes, you have actually warranted a special treat. This Bud's for You! You Deserve a Break Today! Because You're Worth It! You've Come a Long Way, Baby! And the insecure consumer thinks, Yeah! Thanks! I AM gonna go buy a six-pack, damn it! Maybe even two six-packs! And then comes the reactionary binge. Followed by the remorse. Such advertising campaigns would probably not be as effective in the Italian culture, where people already know that they are entitled enjoyment in this life. The reply in Italy to "You Deserve a Break Today" would probably be, Yeah, no duh. That's why I'm planning on taking a break at noon, to go over to you house and sleep with your wife. — Elizabeth Gilbert

People treat the present moment as if it is just a stopping point on the way to some great goal that will happen in the future, and then they are surprised that the long day closes; they look back on their life and see that the things they let go by so unregarded, the small pleasures they dismissed so easily were in fact the true significance of their lives- all the time these things were the great and wonderful successes and purpose of their existence. — Paul Hoffman

If people were in the habit of refering to 'King George's council, Winston and his gang,' it would go a long way to clearing thought, and reducing the frightful landslide into Theyocracy. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Yet in making our choices we must sometimes start with a vision, however inchoate, of what it is for a human life to go well. That was one of Aristotle's central insights. It is my argument that we should be free to avail ourselves of the resources of many disciplines to define that vision; and that in bringing them together we are being faithful to a long tradition. In the humanities,
I think, we are always engaged in illuminating the present by drawing on the past; it is the only way to make a future worth hoping for. — Kwame Anthony Appiah

My primary pastoral work had to do with Scripture and prayer. I was neither capable nor competent to form Christ in another person, to shape a life of discipleship in man, woman or child. That is supernatural work, and I am not supernatural. Mine was the more modest work of Scripture and prayer- helping people listen to God speak to them from the Scriptures and then joining them in answering God as personally and honestly as we could in lives of prayer. This turned out to be slow work. From time to time, impatient with the slowness, I would try out ways of going about my work that promised quicker results. But after a while it always seemed to be more like meddling in these people's lives than helping them attend to God. More often than not I found myself getting in the way of what the Holy Spirit had been doing long before I arrived on the scene, so I would go back, feeling a bit chastised, to my proper work: Scripture and prayer; prayer and Scripture. — Eugene H. Peterson

For example, the citizens will live out the value of diligence in their enterprises. They will live out the value of prudence in their finances. They will live out the value of industry in the economy. They will live out the value of love in their neighbourhood. They will live out the value of dignity of labour in the market place, etc. All these will go a long way into propelling both the economy and political life of a nation to the greatest height possible. — Sunday Adelaja

It can be difficult to leave a long-term relationship, even when our inner-wisdom tells us it's time to let go. At this point, we can choose let go and endure the intense pain of leaving behind the familiar to make way for a new chapter in our life. Or we can stay and suffer a low-grade pain that slowly eats away at our heart and soul, like an emotional cancer. Until we wake up, one day and realize, we are buried so deep in the dysfunction of the relationship that we scarcely remember who we were and what we wanted and needed to be. — Jaeda DeWalt

I look at the white woman's cards and listen to her bold English words - dog, cat, house - and there is all the evidence of what is to come in my life. I am not to go the way of the two people I long for in the thick terror of the night. The first man I love and the first woman I adore, my father and my mother with their Spanish words, are not in these cards. The road before me is English and the next part too awful to ask aloud or even silently: What is so wrong with my parents that I am not to mimic their hands, their needs, not even their words? — Daisy Hernandez

Disquite Sonnet
I wish that I could find the words to tell
You were it hurts; nothing breaking my skin
Slices whispering in my brain like hell
Leaking suggestions of a morose grin
Cannot collect my thoughts long enough to
Share them in an understandable way
So I lock my lips firmly and walk through
Life, searching for the perfect words to say
Trapped in my head, I seek to be let out
Grasping connections with those who might know
What it feels like, alone in a crowd, doubt
Filling my body with reasons to go
Face to face, I might not find the right phrase
But I hope someone hears me anyway — Kathy Trithardt