Lost In This Moment Quotes & Sayings

Shortly afterward, I sat puzzled, grieving over the state of our church. "I think I've lost hope in the church," I confessed, brokenhearted, to a friend. I will never forget her response. "No, you haven't lost hope in the church. You may have lost hope in Christianity or Christendom or all the institutions, but you have not lost hope in the church. This is the church." At that moment, we decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming the church we dreamed of. — Shane Claiborne

There is a secret that the casinos possess, a secret they hold and guard and prize, the holiest of their mysteries. For most people do not gamble to win money, after all, although that is what is advertised, sold, claimed, and dreamed. But that is merely the easy lie that gets them through the enormous, ever-open, welcoming doors.
The secret is this: people gamble to lose money. They come to the casinos for the moment in which they feel alive, to ride the spinning wheel and turn with the cards and lose themselves, with the coins, in the slots. They may brag about the nights they won, the money they took from the casino, but they treasure, secretly treasure, the times they lost. It's a sacrifice, of sorts. — Neil Gaiman

She got fired?" Confusion laced Gavin's voice. "When?"
"This morning," Dante muttered.
"Why?" Gavin asked. "What did she do?"
"Me," Dante said.
"Oh." A moment of silence passed before Gavin broke out into laughter. "Ah man, really? She lost her job for fucking around with you?"
"I don't see why that's so funny."
"Because," Gavin said, "you're the worst consolation prize ever."
Dante shot right back up, and Matty barely had enough time to move out of the way before the bottle of water hurled by him, hitting Gavin in the chest. — J.M. Darhower

Elza needed challenges in her life, needed to be occupied. Without walls to climb or windmills to attack she was the type of person who became depressed. She knew this. The feeling lived inside her somewhere - probably nestled close to her solar plexus. Yes, it seemed like that was the case. She felt it right in her chest. So, to escape dwelling on her anxieties - which she was prone to do - Elza lived in a state of perpetual movement. If she slowed down or was obstructed, even for a moment, she would suffer being left alone with herself, and then all would be lost. — Marc Fitten

It's the old who need work. They've lost their spring and their zest for life, and need something to hold on to. It's all wrong, the way we arrange it - making the young work and the old sit idle. It should be the other way about. Girls and boys don't get bored with perpetual holidays; they live each moment of them hard; they would welcome the eternal Sabbath; and indeed I trust we shall all do that, as our youth is to be renewed like eagles. But old age on this earth is far too sad to do nothing in. — Rose Macaulay

He needed to sort this out - needed to get her to just look at him again, so he could try to explain that he hadn't been prepared. Having her touch the tattoo that told the story of what he'd done and how he'd lost Lyria . . . He hadn't been ready for what he felt in that moment. The desire hadn't been what shook him at all. It was just . . . Aelin had driven him insane these past few weeks, and yet he hadn't considered what it would be like to have her look at him with interest. — Sarah J. Maas

The problem isn't that I'm uncomfortable with it, the problem is that I want it!" I yelled. It was official; I'd lost it. Oh well, I wasn't known for having a long fuse.
"Are you happy? Jesus. You say something like that and then expect me to just be whatever about it. That's like teasing someone with a giant red velvet cake and then putting it in one of those glass rotating desert thingies." I wasn't my most eloquent at the moment.
"Does this mean I'm the cake?"
"Shut up, it was a metaphor."
"So you want me?"
So much it hurt. "Yes," I whispered.
"Right now?"
"Yes."
"Oh." Now he was the one who sounded nervous.
"It's just... a surprise."
"I told you I would entertain the idea."
"I know. I just didn't think you'd be so enthusiastic so soon."
"Hunter, I'm a virgin. Not a nun."
He didn't talk for a moment.
"That was the sexiest thing you've ever said. God, why do you do this to me? — Chelsea M. Cameron

I turned back to my work and lifted the lid of the last crate.

I sat down. Hard. And stared.

It was filled with paper. Ink. Blank journals.

In one wonderful, horrible moment I knew that I was lost. Keir, Warlord, had taken me, claimed me, made me his warprize. But somewhere, somehow, he had managed to find a way into my heart as well.

How had this happened? I'd given myself to a barbarian, a ravaging, crazed warlord, expecting little more than abuse and dishonor at his hands. But this man had offered nothing but kindness and respect to me, his property. I knew this gift was by his hand, I'd not spoken to Sal about paper or ink, and she'd not understand its importance.

Could he care so much that he paid attention to this tiny detail?

Did he want me to be happy? — Elizabeth Vaughan

A gull planed steeply over their heads, a precarious flash of white against the windy blue sky. The short, hacking cry of a baby seemed to merge seamlessly for a moment with the gull's repetitive wail, as if they were one species. One species, Falkender thought, raucous and scavenging; one species calling out in pain. To be human is to be mixed and miscegenated like this. To be lost. — M. John Harrison

I've been in many battles in my lifetime. I've slain monsters by the hundreds and won more victories than I can count, but against this there's no defense. From the moment we met I tried fighting it - gods, I've tried. Nothing works. I thought I'd be safe at the other end of the country, but the minute I heard you were coming to Edan Rose I flew here as fast as Akarra would take me. I'm a Rider and you're a nakla," Daired said. "There's nothing we have in common. There's nothing we should have in common. Your birth, your bloodline, all of it - it's beneath me. I know all of that, and it hasn't changed a thing. I've lost, Aliza. You've defeated me. — Elle Katharine White

He had been relfecting, while staring at the fringed blue petals, about love, about the long steady way his imperfect parents managed to love each other, and about his own deficient love for Dorrie, how it came and went, how he kept finding it and losing it again.
And now, here in this garden maze, getting lost, and then found, seemed the whole point, that and the moment of willed abandonment, the unexpected rapture of being blindly led. — Carol Shields

Lost," I say, dropping the photo on to the counter. "I've lost Elizabeth." She pauses a moment and straightens to look at the photo. "Oh, was it an advert you wanted?" Breath floods into my lungs. "Yes. Yes, that's it. I wanted to place an advert." "I'll get you a form. Awful, cats, aren't they?" I nod, feeling as though I've missed some part of the conversation. I nod, but I quite like cats, and I wonder what this woman has against them. "I remember when my auntie lost her Oscar. She was frantic. Missing for weeks, he was. Found him in a beach hut in the end. Have you asked your neighbours to look in their sheds?" I stare at the woman. I can't imagine finding Elizabeth in a shed. But perhaps it is a good suggestion. Perhaps it's just me it doesn't make sense to. I borrow a pen and write beach hut on a scrap of paper. — Emma Healey

I wonder how God is good, how it doesn't do any good to run from Him because what He has is good and who He is, is good. Even if I want to run, it isn't really what I want - what I want is Him, even if I don't believe it. If He made all this existence, you would think He would know what He is doing, and you would think He could be trusted. Everything I want is just Him, to get lost in Him, to feel His love and more and more of this dazzling that He does. I wonder at His beautiful system and how it feels better than anything I could choose or invent for myself. I wonder as I gaze up at the night sky, this love letter from God to creation, this reminder that somewhere there is peace, somewhere there is order, and I think about how great His kingdom is, and is going to be, and I wonder, in this rare and beautiful moment, how I could ever want to walk away from it all. — Donald Miller

Admitting that this job isn't always easy doesn't make somebody a bad mother. At least, it shouldn't. We're all on this ride together. We are not the first ones to ever accidentally tell our children to shut up, or wonder - just for a moment - what it would be like if we'd never had children. We aren't the first mothers to feel overwhelmed and challenged and not entirely fulfilled by motherhood. And we certainly won't be the last. Nothing can be lost by admitting our weaknesses and imperfections to one another. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We will be better mothers, better wives, and better women if we are able to finally drop the act and get real. Who are we pretending for, anyway? — Jill Smokler

I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and I'm breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed in my life. — Lauren Oliver

There's hidden sweeteness in the stomach's emptiness.
We are lutes, no more no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and the belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you're full of food and drink, an ugly metal statue sits where your spirit should. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control, they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages. — Rumi

This book attempts to
record a journey to restoration that applies to ordinary people like you and I. It is a shot towards healing. A step headed for a new consciousness. It emerges from a moment in time where all seems lost. — Phindiwe Nkosi

Maybe a damned good night's sleep will bring me back to a gentle sanity.
But at the moment, I look about this room and, like myself, it's all in disarray: things fallen out of place, cluttered, jumbled, lost, knocked over and I can't put it straight, don't
want to.
Perhaps living through these petty days will get us ready for the dangerous ones. — Charles Bukowski

In real life I always seem to have a hard time winding up a conversation or asking somebody to leave, and sometimes the moment becomes so delicate and fraught with social complexity that I'll get overwhelmed trying to sort out all the different possible ways of saying it and all the different implications of each option and will just sort of blank out and do it totally straight
'I want to terminate the conversation and not have you be in my apartment anymore'
which evidently makes me look either as if I'm very rude and abrupt or as if I'm semi-autistic and have no sense of how to wind up a conversation gracefully ... I've actually lost friends this way. — David Foster Wallace

And then we're kissing. His lips are soft and leave mine tingling. I close my eyes, and in the darkness behind them I see beautiful blooming things, flowers spinning like snowflakes, and hummingbirds beating the same rhythm as my heart. I'm gone, lost, floating away into nothingness like I am in my dream, but this time it's a good feeling - like soaring, like being totally free. His other hand pushes my hair from my face, and I can feel the impression of his fingers everywhere that they touch, and I think of stars streaking through the sky and leaving burning trails behind them, and in that moment - however long it lasts, seconds, minutes, days - while he's saying my name into my mouth and Im breathing into him, I realize this, right here, is the first and only time I've ever been kissed. — Lauren Oliver

The generations before you failed. They didn't stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it. — Paul Hawken

An intolerable pain pierced him. He was totally lost without her ... estranged from his life utterly, and from the world. This was the world into which he'd been born; the only world he would ever know. Yet nowhere in it did he feel the slightest degree at home. She was his home ... his one sanctuary upon earth ... the only place of safety for him in the whole universe. But he had lost her ... and consequently was doomed to absolute loneliness in an alien, frozen vacancy ... at the mercy of something huge, insensate and merciless as an eclipse ... For a moment his isolation was so agonisingly intense that it seemed impossible to go on living. He longed only to plunge into the black pit of annihilation opening before him. — Anna Kavan

Even in the Moment of Our Earliest Kiss

Even in the moment of our earliest kiss,
When sighed the straitened bud into the flower,
Sat the dry seed of most unwelcome this;
And that I knew, though not the day and hour.
Too season-wise am I, being country-bred,
To tilt at autumn or defy the frost:
Snuffing the chill even as my fathers did,
I say with them, "What's out tonight is lost."
I only hoped, with the mild hope of all
Who watch the leaf take shape upon the tree,
A fairer summer and a later fall
Than in these parts a man is apt to see,
And sunny clusters ripened for the wine:
I tell you this across the blackened vine. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Well, monsieur, I am suffering at this moment something strange, and that is the satisfaction of despair. There is in certain souls - and I have just discovered that mine is of the number - a real satisfaction in the assurance that all is lost, and the time is come to yield. — Alexandre Dumas

I saw my name: THOMAS, Petria. Saw my time, 57.72. Saw the number one next to them. I'd done it. Me! Petria Thomas, Olympic champion. The feeling inside was one of pure, utter joy. Excitement, disbelief, relief, hapiness, amazement, the whole works. Id worked so hard. I'd gone through so much, privately, publicly. I'd lost faith in myself and found it again. I'd sometimes stopped believing that I could do it and that I had a purpose in life. I'd come through the darkness, and this, this moment, was the sweetest, most amazing light there could possibly be. I was alive and loving it! — Petria Thomas

No matter how much I tried to justify the affair, the fact remained that I was a deceitful person. One moment I was making out with a man and an hour later I was in bed with another man. Who had I become? What had I lost in life that led me to do this? Did I not have a perfect life? Was I not happy? Of course, I was happy. I knew I was happy and content. Had I become greedy? I was in a maze and I could not find a way out. — Jagdish Joghee

Her hair, drawn back off her ears, brushed her shoulders in such a way that the face seemed to have just emerged from it, as if this were the exact moment when she was coming from a wood into clear moonlight. The unknown yielded her up; Dick wished she had no background, that she was just a girl lost with no address save the night from which she had come. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Lucius paused, turning on his heel to face me. "I grow weary of your ignorance." He moved closer to me, leaning down and peering into my eyes. "Because your parents refuse to inform you, I will deliver the news myself,and I shall make this simple for you." He pointed to his chest and announced, as though talking to a child, "I am a vampire." He pointed to my chest. "You are a vampire. And we are to be married, the moment you come of age. This has been decreed since our births."
I couldn't even process the "getting married" part, or the thing about "decreed." He'd lost me at "vampire."
Nuts. Lucius Vladescu is completely nuts. And I'm alone with him, in an empty barn.
So I did what any sane person would do. I jammed the pitchfork in the general direction of his foot and ran like hell for the house, ignoring his yowl of pain. — Beth Fantaskey

Everything was floating and without weight. Future and past met and both were without desire or pain. No one thing was more important and stronger than anything else. The horizons were in equilibrium and for one strange moment the scales of his existence were even. Fate was never stronger than the serene courage with which one faced it. If one could no longer stand it, one could kill oneself. This was good to know, but it was also good to know that one was never completely lost so long as one was alive. — Erich Maria Remarque

Most people are born the day they arrive in this world. They take their first breath, open their eyes, take in their surroundings and then they scream. It's the same for most. The moment they are held in their parent's arms is the moment they truly begin to live. Not me. I was born on the 4th February, 1999 in so many different ways. In the morning, I went from being a girl to a woman. I lost my innocence in a way not many others have lost theirs before. Then I went home and lost my youth. My parents have turned their backs on me and I have happily walked away, and even though that walk was painful, it was also freeing. My wings have spread and finally, I feel like I am soaring. — Victoria L. James

Little in his brief life was lost on him; there are premonitions of Nineteen Eighty-Four even in his memoir of schooldays 'Such, Such Were the Joys'. Experiences in the colonies and the BBC can be seen to have furnished raw materials; so indeed can his reading of Evgeny Zamyatin's We and other dystopian literature from the early days of Stalinism. But the transcendent or crystallising moment undoubtedly occurred in Spain, or at any rate in Catalonia. This was where Orwell suffered the premonitory pangs of a man living under a police regime: a police regime ruling in the name of socialism and the people. For a Westerner, at least, this epiphany was a relatively novel thing; it brushed the sleeves of many thoughtful and humane people, who barely allowed it to interrupt their preoccupation with the 'main enemy', fascism. But on Orwell it made a permanent impression. — Christopher Hitchens

In that moment, I understand the way that the noblest yearning for duty and sacrifice can be mixed up with all that is savage and shameful, like in the Bible, where a just and merciful God tells you to kill everyone, kill the children, kill the livestock, kill John Polling, leave nothing alive to sully this pure and just world. Except when it's all done you find out that wasn't really God after all, just some politician, or maybe it was God, but he taps you on the shoulder and says, 'No, dude, that isn't what I meant,' and leaves you sitting in a Dairy Queen in Bothell with blood on your hands and no further orders ... — Stuart Archer Cohen

The idea that at each successive moment he was deeper into the Sahara than he had been the moment before, that he was leaving behind all familiar things, this constant consideration kept him in a state of pleasurable agitation. — Paul Bowles

At a quarter to twelve on that Friday, Patty Jefferson died. In the final moments, Jefferson's sister Martha Carr had to help the grieving husband from his wife's bedside.13 He was, his daughter recalled, "in a state of insensibility" when Mrs. Carr "with great difficulty, got him into the library, where he fainted" - and not for a brief moment. Jefferson "remained so long insensible that they feared he would never revive." When he did come to, he was incoherent with grief, and perhaps surrendered to rage. There is a hint that he lost all control in the calamity of Patty's death. According to his daughter Patsy, "The scene that followed I did not witness" - presumably "the scene" unfolded in the library when he revived - "but the violence of his emotion, when, almost by stealth, I entered his room by night, to this day I dare not describe to myself."14 (Patsy was writing half a century later.) A — Jon Meacham

The girls we'd believed to have been lost in the haze of regret and recrimination that comes with surviving in the unscrupulous business; this unjust world. But it turned out they'd been here all along, these two; caught forever in a shared moment, preserved together in a silver frame. — Melanie Benjamin

The habit of spending nearly every waking moment lost in thought leaves us at the mercy of whatever our thoughts happen to be. Meditation is a way of breaking this spell. — Sam Harris

Syn closed his eyes as he savored the taste of her body. He'd never made love to a woman who knew anything about him. At least nothing more than the lies he'd told her.
But Shahara had stared into the abyss of his soul and seen the monster that lurked there. And she hadn't run.
Why?
What made her able to see the man when no one else ever had? In this one moment, he would give her anything.
Even his life.
I'm lost.
Lost in a way he'd never been before. Not even with Mara. Shahara made him want to be something more than a drunken thief and a paid killer.
She made him want to be a hero...
Pulling back, he stared at her dilated eyes and saw the ragged pleasure on her face. And as he gazed at her, he realized the truth.
I'm not lost. I'm found. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Job's was a temperament that swung easily from one extreme to the other and now misery was lost in a joy that seemed lifting him off his feet. At this moment personal wretchedness seemed to him a small thing in comparison with the vast shining outer world that was always there, sustaining and holding him even when he did not remember or notice it, small even in comparison with his own world that he held within himself. The two, echoing and calling to each other, reflected some mystery that was greater than either. — Elizabeth Goudge

Said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight. Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. However, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand. 'And now which is which?' she said to herself, and nibbled a little of the right-hand bit to try the effect: the next moment she felt a violent blow underneath her chin: it had struck her foot! She was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change, but she felt that there was no time to be lost, as she was shrinking rapidly; so she set to work at once to eat some of the other bit. — Lewis Carroll

Foreword To you, that you may awaken to understand that the whole universe is a dance of energy, and that energy is God, and that energy is you. You are something that the whole universe is doing, that God is doing, just as a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing. The real you, the energy, the soul, is not a puppet that life pushes around. The real you is the whole universe. The real you is God, destined to follow no one, destined to ignite the ether, experience life from an individual perspective, and take part in the creation. So this is for you, my fellow creators, my fellow gods, and my fellow selves, that coincidence may never disguise itself with the mask of fate and torment you, that every moment be meaningful, and that no experience be lost — Dylan Saccoccio

Yet, even now, ever time (often) that I find that I don't understand something, then instinctively, I'm filled with the hope that perhaps this will be my moment again, perhaps once again I shall understand nothing, I shall grasp that other knowledge, found and lost in an instant. — Italo Calvino

Noah doesn't hold hands often. In fact, it was one of the few rules I understood, and it's not lost on me how special this moment is. It's like the roses. Noah's showing me his love. — Katie McGarry

What happens when we lose the things that anchor us? What if, instead of grasping at something to hold on to, we pull up our roots and walk away? Instead of trying to find the way back, we walk deeper and deeper into the woods, willing ourselves to get lost. In this place where nothing is recognizable. not the people or the language or the food, we are truly on our own. Eventually, we find ourselves unencumbered by the past or the future. Here is a fleeting glimpse of our truest self, our self in the present moment. — Rachel Friedman

What story will you tell me?" "What kind of story would you like?" "An exciting story. One with an exotic climate and mortal peril." He had to smile at the relish in her voice. "Do we have bloodthirsty warring factions in this story?" "No war, please." She'd lost a brother to the Corsican's armies. He'd forgotten that, though she never would. "You want a happy ending, then?" She studied her teacup for a thoughtful moment. "I don't admit to my family that I still want the happy endings and wishes to come true. A mature woman should just take life as it comes, and I do have a great deal to be grateful for." "But a mature woman should also be honest with herself, and with me. You're allowed to wish for the happy endings, Sophie. For yourself and for Kit too." When — Grace Burrowes

Meanwhile the fact that the connection with the activity of memory in ordinary life is for the moment lost is of less importance than the reverse, namely, that this connection with the complications and fluctuations of life is necessarily still a too close one. — Hermann Ebbinghaus

The whole skin has this delightful sensitivity; it feels the sun, it feels the wind running inside one's garment, it feels water closing on it as one slips under - the catch in the breath, like a wave held back, the glow that releases one's entire cosmos, running to the ends of the body as the spent wave runs out upon the sand. This plunge into the cold water of a mountain pool seems for a brief moment to disintegrate the very self; it is not to be borne: one is lost: stricken: annihilated. Then life pours back. — Nan Shepherd

Sometime later, I stood watching the cold rain fall, when suddenly I felt Daemon's arms around me and his lips on my neck. He loved my pregnant body and his hands roamed over it under the warm terrycloth of my bathrobe. I was lost in the moment, content to stay here forever ... lost in the cold rain and welcoming warmth of Dublin, and lost in the arms of my husband. Since we arrived early this morning we were in our room, making love and sleeping, lost in a fairy tale moment, savoring every caress. — Rebecca Boucher

Now what I want to know is what happened when you found Bryony, Leo," said Will.
"Did you just say your sister sent me, pack up everything and come with me this moment?"
"More or less."
"And she came away with you?"
"More or less." Leo tossed Bryony a mischievous look. "Although there might have been
laudanum, drugging, and a midnight abduction involved."
"Now that's a much better story," said Matthew. "I would pay to read that one."
"And for his knavery, Leo lost one of his - more important parts," said Bryony.
"No!" Matthew and Will shouted in unison.
"Bryony!" Callista squeaked.
"Kidney," Leo cried. "It was just a kidney. A man can live a perfectly vigorous life with
one kidney."
"You can call it a kidney if you want," said Bryony. — Sherry Thomas

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

This life has no meaning to me now. Do not grieve for me, my dear. Up until the moment I lost her, I had a wonderful life. These moments now are the ones that are hard. I'm eager to depart this world and rejoin her in the next. Then, and only then, will I finally be at peace. — Rose Wynters

He observed how his feet chose each wrong turning, working against his navigational instincts, circling and repeating, and bringing on a feverish detachment. Someone older than himself paced inside his body, someone stronger too, cut loose from the common bonds of sex, of responsibility. Looking back he would remember a brief moment when time felt mute and motionless. This hour of solitary wandering seemed a gift, and part of the gift was an old greedy grammar flapping in his ears: lost, more lost, utterly lost. He felt the fourteen days of his marriage collapsing backward and becoming an invented artifact, a curved space he must learn to fit into. Love was not protected. No, it wasn't. It sat out in the open like anything else. — Carol Shields

The tune was too ingrained for Mortenson to consider the novelty of this moment- an American, lost in Pakistan, singing a German hymn in Swahili. — Greg Mortenson

From the moment they had left the Earth, their own weight, and that of the Projectile and the objects therein contained, had been undergoing a progressive diminution ... Of course, it is quite clear, that this decrease could not be indicated by an ordinary scales, as the weight to balance the object would have lost precisely as much as the object itself. But a spring balance, for instance, in which the tension of the coil is independent of attraction, would have readily given the exact equivalent of the loss. — Jules Verne

When we are mired in the relative world, never lifting our gaze to the mystery, our life is stunted, incomplete; we are filled with yearning for that paradise that is lost when, as young children, we replace it with words and ideas and abstractions - such as merit, such as past, present, and future - our direct, spontaneous experience of the thing itself, in the beauty and precision of this present moment. — Peter Matthiessen

But forget that for a moment," Nash went on, "because man is even insignificant here on this very planet. Let's take this whole argument down to just earth for a moment, okay?" She nodded. "Do you realize that dinosaurs walked this planet longer than man?" "Yes." "But that's not all. That would be one thing that would show that man is not special - the fact that even on this infinitesimally small planet we haven't even been kings the majority of the time. But take it a step farther - do you realize how much longer the dinosaurs ruled the earth than us? Two times? Five times? Ten times?" She looked at him. "I don't know." "Forty-four thousand times longer." He was gesturing wildly now, lost in the bliss of his argument. "Think about that. Forty-four thousand times longer. That's more than one hundred and twenty years for every single day. Can you even comprehend it? Do you think we will survive forty-four thousand times longer than we already have?" "No, — Harlan Coben

Yeah so - nothing gets lost. Cal isn't, and not just because he'll still be a little part of my life. I get to carry him with me, the way you do all your memories and mistakes. He started out a mistake I had no memory of, and he wound up being, well, my kid.
Maybe thinking any one person can show up and give you all you need is as much of a delusion as thinking you can find truth in a bottle. Maybe you can just find what you need in little pieces, in people who show up for one crucial moment - or a whole chain of them - even if they can't solve it all. Maybe this is the secret of big families, like the Garretts ... and like AA. People's strengths can take their turn. There can be more of us than their is trouble. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

Our intimate relationship has always remained and stands above the entirety of love poems ever written. Nothing shall invade this cosmic declaration. One day the heart I had will return. I'm lost in the insecurity of the moment. I'm deeply aching for something more than something that hurts — Jeremy Limn

The world is being created and destroyed in this very moment. Whoever you met will reappear, whoever you lost will return. Don't betray the grace that was bestowed on you. Understand what is going on inside you and you will understand what is going on inside everyone else. Don't imagine that I came to bring peace. I came with a sword. — Paulo Coelho

Imagine considering every moment as a potential time of communion with God. By the time your life is over, you will have spent six months at stoplights, eight months opening junk mail, a year and a half looking for lost stuff (double that number in my case), and a whopping five years standing in various lines.7Why don't you give these moments to God? By giving God your whispering thoughts, the common becomes uncommon. Simple phrases such as "Thank you, Father," "Be sovereign in this hour, O Lord," "You are my resting place, Jesus" can turn a commute into a pilgrimage. You needn't leave your office or kneel in your kitchen. Just pray where you are. Let the kitchen become a cathedral or the classroom a chapel. Give God your whispering thoughts. — Max Lucado

The doctor's wife was not particularly keen on the tendency of proverbs to preach, nevertheless something of this ancient lore must have remained in her memory, the proof being that she filled two of the bags they had brought with beans and chick peas, Keep what is of no use at the moment, and later you will find what you need, one of her grandmothers had told her, the water in which you soak them will also serve to cook them, and whatever remains from the cooking will cease to be water, but will have become broth. It is not only in nature that from time to time not everything is lost and something is gained. — Jose Saramago

Each soul lives on the verge of remembering the forgotten agreement and original dream that it carries; yet each moment can be another point when the dream of life becomes lost again. Each meaningful step we take on the path of life involves some tension between the needs of the common world and the dreams of the soul. This inherent tension can stop us in our tracks, yet can also be the source of vital energy needed for the soul to grow. Each time we remember a piece of why we came to life we pull the seeds of eternity farther into the world of time. The inner seed keeps trying to sprout, but often our fate must place us in a crossroads or nail us to a cross before we pay proper attention to it. — Michael Meade

By tomorrow Marilyn would forget this moment: Lydia's shout, the shattered edges in her tone. It would disappear forever from her memory of Lydia, the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth and simplify themselves, shedding complexity like scales. — Celeste Ng

There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you - may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn't that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours. — Anne Carson

Within this enclosed women's world, so to say, behind the walls and fortifications of it, I felt the presence of a great ideal, without which the garrison would not have carried on so gallantly; the idea of a Millennium when women were to reign supreme in the world. The old mother at such times would take on a new shape, and sit enthroned as a massive dark symbol of that mighty female deity who had existed in old ages, before the time of the prophet's God. Of her they never lost sight, but they were, before all, practical people with an eye on the needs of the moment and with infinite readiness of resource. — Karen Blixen

For a moment he was lost in the scent and the closeness of her, the grief and self-loathing vanished by this new intimacy. He knew he should tell her to stop, that this was inappropriate, but found himself too intoxicated to care. — Anthony Ryan

The train slows and lengthens, as we approach London, the centre, and my heart draws out too, in fear, in exaltation. I am about to meet
what? What extraordinary adventure awaits me, among these mail vans, these porters, these swarms of people calling taxis? I feel insignificant, lost, but exultant. With a soft shock we stop. I will let the others get before me. I will sit still one moment before I emerge into that chaos, that tumult. I will not anticipate what is to come. The huge uproar is in my ears. It sounds and resounds under this glass roof like the surge of a sea. We are cast down on the platform with our handbags. We are whirled asunder. My sense of self almost perishes; my contempt. I become drawn in, tossed down, thrown sky-high. I step on to the platform, grasping tightly all that I possess
one bag. — Virginia Woolf

Let me love you, Ysolde. Let this happen. Since I was reborn, I have lived every moment in despair because I lost you. Let me worship you now as I've longed to do all those years.
Baltic, Love In The Time of Dragons — Katie MacAlister

She had been ready to love this man from the moment she first saw him. In all these years, that had never changed. They'd hurt each other, let each other down, and yet, here they were after everything, together. She needed him now, needed him to remind her that she was live, that she wasn't alone, that she hadn't lost everything. — Kristin Hannah

I lost a girlfriend when I was in my 30s. She was 46. It all sounds so trite, but I put a Post-it on my dressing-room wall. It said, 'The past is history. The future is a mystery. This moment is a gift, which is why it's called the present.' — Samantha Bond

The secret is this: people gamble to lose money. They come to the casinos for the moment in which they feel alive, to ride the spinning wheel and turn with the cards and lose themselves, with the coins, in the slots. They want to know they matter. They may brag about the nights they won, the money they took from the casino, but they treasure, secretly treasure, the times they lost. It's a sacrifice, of sorts. The — Neil Gaiman

Daffy had stopped talking, without her noticing. It was if he'd run out of words. He did a peculiar thing, then; he reached out and touched Mary's cheekbone; lightly, as if he was brushing away a speck of coal dust. She thought of Doll, that first morning, wiping mud out of the lost child's eyes. Her throat hurt, all at once, as if she were swallowing a stone. She wished the two of them could stay forever frozen in this moment, hidden in the grass, as the setting sun slid across the fields of Monmouth. Before any asking, any refusal. While this strange, tame young man was still looking at her as is she were worth any price. — Emma Donoghue

Species tend to bite sometimes during the sharing of sex but we never break the skin. There are only two ways this usually happens. I had to bite you to assert my control if we fought for dominance during sex or because I wanted to mark you to show other males you belonged to me." He blinked. "I am sorry. I lost control and I wanted to completely own you in that moment. I wanted all of you. — Laurann Dohner

He rid himself of his own pants, and unlike her, he was naked, his cock hard. He didn't shield himself, let himself be studied as she wished, but his eyes lost the mirth from before as he waited for her next move.
Strange. When she approached him, she expected to have a moment's hesitation sometime during their play, a voice that would tell her this wasn't a good idea. Right now was a perfect time for that voice to show up, but her body only thrummed. She leaned up on her elbows, giving him an exaggerated once-over. "That thing looks more dangerous than what you show in the cage."
And with that, the mirth was back, and all hardness in him was due to desire. "Wait until you see it in action."
"Well, for that, I think you need to come closer. — Danielle Monsch

He shook the hair out of his face. "I'm not interested in court ladies," he said thickly, and kissed her. His mouth was warm, and his lips were smooth, and Celaena lost all sense of time and place as she slowly kissed him back. He pulled away for a moment, looked into her eyes as they opened, and kissed her again. It was different this time - deeper, full of need. — Sarah J. Maas

It had been a beautiful day for an outdoor ceremony, with the kind of lucid weather she hoped to have at her own funeral. She thought often of her own death, but without fear, loss having been her only belonging in this life. For years, acceptance had been her only means of survival. She knew that no matter how miserable or wretched life became, all she could do with her meek piece of time was sustain it. Decades of guilt, lost faith, the betrayal by those few people she'd let herself love - it was worth enduring these things, if only for the gift of a single, exalted moment. And such moments happened, even frequently, in the lives of people wise enough to see them. — Esi Edugyan

In point of fact, he was not afraid to die, not anymore. He now understood with a faith that he had never before possessed that he would see those he had lost when he died, that everything would be made whole, that he would talk to Boukman, and his mother and father and sister, again. It was true that there was no need on earth that could not be slaked and satisfied. When you are thirsty there is water. When you are hungry there is food. It is impossible to need a thing without that thing being available for the having. A man may want a green horse that flies, but he canot need one, for there is no such thing.
At this precise moment, Toussaint felt that he needed Boukman, that he could not bear it if he never saw him again, and he knew, because this need existed, that it would be met. — Nick Lake

It seems as if everything she's cared about over the past twenty-five years has disintegrated, oblivious to the time and energy she has invested. She can call herself a physician but can't take the same pride in this she used to. She is not really a wife at the moment, not much of a mother. Somewhere along the way, Somer realizes, she has lost herself. — Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it," he echoed.
We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
"I feel like I could eat the world raw. — Madeline Miller

When he nodded, the physician disappeared into thin air, and then a moment later, Payne felt a warm palm encompass hers. It was Vishous's un-gloved hand against her own and the connection between them eased her in ways she couldn't name. Verily, she had lost her mother ... but if she lived through this, she still had family. On this side. — J.R. Ward

Kaylee, this means something to me." His hands trailed down my arms to cup my elbows, and his gaze held mine. "With any
luck, we're going to have millions of moments over the course of eternity, and I plan to love every one of them. But we'll never
have this moment again, and this is very important to me." The twists of blue in his eyes coiled so tightly the color was almost gone,
lost among pale shades of a need so deep it couldn't possibly be captured in a kiss, or a touch. "I need to know that this is important
to you, too. I need to know that this isn't like last time. That you're not doing this just so you can say you've done it. Because that's
not good enough for me. That's not good enough for us. — Rachel Vincent

Shine on, then, O Illuminati! Shine on! That the moment of your greatest darkness may yet become your grandest gift. And even as you are gifted, so, too, will you gift others, giving to them the unspeakable treasure: Themselves. Let this be your task, let this be your greatest joy: to give people back to themselves. Even in their darkest hour. Especially in that hour. The world waits for you. Heal it. Now. In the place where you are. There is much you can do. For My sheep are lost and must now be found. Be ye, therefore, as good shepherds, and lead them back to Me. — Neale Donald Walsch

Not reaching back for what was lost in my yesterdays. And not reaching for what I hope will be in my tomorrow. But living fully with what is right in front of me. And truly seeing the gift of this moment. — Lysa TerKeurst

I lost about 60 pounds. I don't really have a moment specifically that made me do it. I remember little things, like, when I was in Japan, I remember looking around at the portion sizes of a fast food restaurant and being like, 'Well, this has something to do with it.' Americans definitely eat too much. — Patrick Stump

Art replaces the light that is lost when the day fades, the moment passes, the evanescent extraordinary makes its quicksilver. Art tries to capture that which we know leaves us, as we move in and out of each other's lives, as we all must eventually leave this earth. Great artists know that shadow, work always against the dying light, but always knowing that the day brings new light and that the ocean which washes away all traces on the sand leaves us a new canvas with each wave. — Elizabeth Alexander

It's in this moment that I know
I'm lost to her, forever.
She doesn't just own my heart,
she is my heart. — Kristen Proby

I'll be able to forget you after that." A bald-faced lie. Even if I turned ninety, lost my mind and forgot everything else, the memory of the Winter prince would be a shining beacon that would never fade.
Ash still wavered, looking torn. His eyes flicked to the door, and for a moment I thought he would walk away, leaving me to shrivel into a mortified heap. But then he let out a quiet sigh, and his shoulders slumped in resignation.
Meeting my gaze, he took one step forward, drew me into his arms, and brushed his lips to mine.
I think our last kiss was meant to be quick and chaste, but ... There was nothing sweet or gentle in our last kiss; it was filled with sorrow and desperation, of the bitter knowledge that we could've had something perfect, but it just wasn't meant to be.
"Don't ask me this again," he rasped, and I was too breathless to answer. — Julie Kagawa

I did not want to move. For I had the feeling that this was a place, once seen, that could not be seen again. If I left and then came back, it would not be the same; no matter how many times I might return to this particular spot the place and feeling would never be the same, something would be lost or something would be added, and there never would exist again, through all eternity, all the integrated factors that made it what it was in this magic moment. — Clifford D. Simak

Beginning today, I will create a new future by creating a new me. No longer will I dwell in a pit of despair, moaning over squandered time and lost opportunity. I can do nothing about the past. My future is immediate. I will grasp it in both hands and carry it with running feet. When I am faced with the choice of doing nothing or doing something, I will always choose to act! I seize this moment. I choose now. — Andy Andrews

I've been wanting to kiss ye since the first moment I saw ye," he said. "I'm going to do it now."
Sybil could not breathe, let alone form the words to object. When she moistened her lips with her tongue, she felt his heartbeat leap beneath her palm. Her gaze fixed on his mouth as he drew her to him ever so slowly.
She had expected a sweet, teasing kiss, not this explosion of passion that seared through her body at the first touch of their lips. No one had ever kissed her like this before, as if he would die if he could not have his mouth on hers. With a will of their own, her arms wound around his neck and her fingers tangled in his long, thick hair as she pulled him closer.
She was lost in the sensations and long past thought. As his kisses slowly changed from feverish to tender, she felt as if she were floating. She wanted this to go on forever.
When Rory pulled away, she stared up at him, stunned.
"That was promising," he said with a wide grin. — Margaret Mallory

All right," he said. "Ready for the moment of truth?"
Lindsay looked at him quizzically.
Fred held a wooden spoonful of fudge up in front of her, waving it lightly through the air to cool it. "Here. Time to see if I've got it right."
Lindsay looked at him over the spoon, a wonderful complication of emotions in her eyes. Did she want him to win or lose the bet? Fred wasn't sure she knew the answer herself. She turned her face up toward him as he held the spoon to her lips. And then, as she tasted it, she closed her eyes, savoring the chocolate. Her expression was one of blissful surrender.
This was the real Lindsay, her face unguarded, completely in the moment. Very much like a woman lost in a kiss.
He never should have brought the bloody mistletoe. — Sierra Donovan

I received comments on how extraordinary it was that I could keep up speaking for exactly 45 minutes. Indeed, in an age of soundbites lasting some seconds and of quick quotes in the news, all those minutes do seem like an eternity, easy to get lost in. Yet, wait a moment. Television is not the only place where speeches are given. Some hundred thousand teachers teach every day. They all speak 45 minutes, more times a day. They have been doing this for years. Every teacher knows exactly when the time will be over and that by then his speech will need to come to a natural end. It is this tension that determines the success of a lesson. It is a sign of the times that we forget these daily achievements in education. A million students daily attend several 'live' lectures and this in secondary education alone. These are high ratings! — Robbert Dijkgraaf

He was about to go home, about to return to the place where he had had a family. It was in Godric's Hollow that, but for Voldemort, he would have grown up and spent every school holiday. He could have invited friends to his house ... He might even have had brothers and sisters ... It would have been his mother who had made his seventeenth birthday cake. The life he had lost had hardly ever seemed so real to him as at this moment, when he knew he was about to see the place where it had been taken from him. — J.K. Rowling

Grab every opportunity. You have maximum control only on 'now'! If this moment goes; if this opportunity is lost; you may not get another ever! — Abhishek Ratna

Whereas during those months of separation time had never gone quickly enough for their liking and they were wanting to speed its flight, now that they were in sight of the town they would have liked to slow it down and hold each moment in suspense, once the breaks went on and the train was entering the station. For the sensation, confused perhaps, but none the less poingant for that, of all those days and weeks and months of life lost to their love made them vaguely feel they were entitled to some compensation; this present hour of joy should run at half the speed of those long hours of waiting. — Albert Camus

He closed his eyes. Swiftly like a predator, the vision of his death struck. This time it would not be denied.
The white ground, black rocks, and red drops of his heart's blood growing on the ground like blooming roses. He lost himself in the sensation of liquid warmth flowing between his fingers.
When he could finally see again, he found himself kneeling on the floor, shoulders hunched. That damned scene hung like an albatross around his neck, until he almost wished it would go ahead and happen, just so that he could get it the fuck over with.
He had carried that albatross for almost two hundred damn years - exactly from the moment when he had responded to a damsel in distress and had embroiled himself in another man's curse. — Thea Harrison

Suddenly I can't breath, can't figure out what the hell he sees in me, but I can't look away, either. And that's when I realize, his eyes are locked on mine. Until this moment, I didn't notice; I thought he was off in music land, but he's lost in me instead. — Ann Aguirre

I feel grateful for the slight sprain which has introduced this mysterious and fascinating division between one of my feet and the other. The way to love anything is to realise that it might be lost. In one of my feet I can feel how strong and splendid a foot is; in the other I can realise how very much otherwise it might have been. The moral of the thing is wholly exhilarating. This world and all our powers in it are far more awful and beautiful than even we know until some accident reminds us. If you wish to perceive that limitless felicity, limit yourself if only for a moment. If you wish to realise how fearfully and wonderfully God's image is made, stand on one leg. If you want to realise the splendid vision of all visible things
wink the other eye. — G.K. Chesterton

[A]s soon as you try and take a song from your mind into piano and voice and into the real world, something gets lost and it's like a moment where, in that moment you forget how it was and it's this new way. And then when you make a record, even those ideas that you had, then those get all turned and changed. So in the end, I think, it just becomes it's own thing and really I think a song could be recorded a million different ways and so what my records are, it just happened like that, but it's not like, this is how I planned it from the very beginning because I have no idea, I can't remember. — Regina Spektor

The moment she was cursed, I lost her. Once it wears off- soon- she will be embarrassed to remember things that she said, things she did, things like this. No matter how solid she feels in my arms, she is made of smoke. — Holly Black

When we live completely from the mind over a period of time, we lose touch with the infinite self, and then we begin to feel lost. This happens when we'are in doing mode all the time, rather than being . The latter means letting ourselves be who and what we are without judgment. Being doesn't mean that we don't do anything. It's just that our actions stem from following our emotions and feelings while staying present in the moment. Doing, on the other hand, is future focused, with the mind creating a series of tasks that take us from here to there in order to achieve a particular outcome, regardless of our current emotional state. — Anita Moorjani