Lost Occasion Quotes & Sayings

Yet I cannot believe that this talisman of love has lost all its power and I still attempt to use it.

- Those who have never had occasion to feel sometimes the value of a word, of an expression, consecrated by love will find no sense in this phrase. (C. de L.) — Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

Nor is it wiser to weep a true occasion lost, but trim our sails, and let old bygones be. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

I always felt that at the moment I was born, God must have blinked. He missed the occasion and never knew I had arrived. My parents had 11 children. While I love them and my five brothers and five sisters deeply, some days I felt lost in the litter. — Regina Brett

Finally, I would thank, had I not lost his name and address, a gentleman in America, who has generously and gratuitously corrected the punctuation, the botany, the entomology, the geography, and the chronology of previous works of mine and will, I hope, not spare his services on the present occasion. — Virginia Woolf

Bathrooms that traded mirrors for glass walls invited prurience on occasion, but they also drew the inhabitant's gaze away from himself toward an increasingly threatened nature. — Christopher Bascom Rawlins

We will come to understand the part a difficult circumstance has played in our lives. Hindsight makes so much clear. The broken marriage, the lost job, the loneliness have all contributed to who we are becoming. The joy of the wisdom we are acquiring is that hindsight comes more quickly. We can, on occasion, begin to accept a difficult situation's contribution to our wholeness while caught in the turmoil. — Karan Casey

I dedicate the merit of the occasion to all beings. This gesture of universal friendship has been likened to a drop of fresh spring water. If we put it on a rock in the sunshine, it will soon evaporate. If we put it in the ocean, however, it will never be lost. Thus the wish is made that we not keep the teachings to ourselves but to use them to benefit others. — Pema Chodron

He'd never asked for an exciting life. What he really liked, what he sought on every occasion, was boredom. The trouble was that boredom tended to explode in your face. Just when he thought he'd found it he'd be suddenly involved in what he supposed other people - thoughtless, feckless people - would call an adventure. And he'd be forced to visit many strange lands and meet exotic and colourful people, although not for very long because usually he'd be running. He'd seen the creation of the universe, although not from a good seat, and had visited Hell and the afterlife. He'd been captured, imprisoned, rescued, lost and marooned. Sometimes it had all happened on the same day. — Terry Pratchett

Once you accept the power of spine in the creative act, you will become much more efficient in your creativity. You will still get lost on occasion, but having a spine will anchor you. — Twyla Tharp

Fighting's not a good idea, said Jon-Johan, and the other boys nodded, ending the discussion then and there, even though we girls probably lost some degree of respect for them on that occasion. — Janne Teller

The opportunity should not be lost, which is afforded by the occasion, for illustrating and enforcing the thought that the universe, its creation, its arrangement, and all of its developing processes, are not due to human planning or oversight, but to the infinite wisdom and power of God. — Andrew S. Draper

He wanted you to love her, forgive her, and if she had been loved on that night ... but of course you couldn't love her, you are not as large as he in heart, nor will you ever be, and that is unforgivable - so unforgivable that he was going to leave with Myrtle and you would have lost him. If you included her, Teddy would have always been with us, instead of trying to prove the might of his love that night. He made a terrible mistake, and we need to forgive him for that mistake. He loved Tilly Dunnage as strongly as you hate her, please imagine that - she said that she would marry him and i know that without exception all of you, along with your secrets and mistakes and prejudices and flaws, would have been a soothing occasion a right and true union. In fact, it was... — Rosalie Ham

Alcohol is like anything else. It's only as bad as the person it's being poured into. If it's used to heighten an occasion, or to take an edge off stress, I don't see a problem. Trouble starts when you either lose control and let the bottle run you, or when you believe its promises of immortality. You realize that no matter how much you punish yourself, you always seem to wake up the next day. Pretty soon you're convinced that you will never die. When that happens I guess it is time to look for help before your life becomes one long, lost weekend. — Bill Lee

Success always calls for greater generosity - though most people, lost in the darkness of their own egos, treat it as an occasion for greater greed. Collecting boot is not an end itself, but only a means for building an empire. Riches would be of little use to us now - except as a means of winning new friends. — Cyrus The Great

On occasion, I like to reread my grandfather's letters. While leafing through them, I'm saddened by what is being lost in modern communication. Soul-baring sentimentality isn't typically poured into text messages, tweets and emails. All too often, personal connections are brushed aside for the sake of convenience in a fast-paced world. — Kristina McMorris

I can't help it either, the laughing: solemn gatherings, slow
ballads, pompous orations, any person or occasion that assumes I'll
offer my unreserved respect: I tend to find them all hysterical in the
end. Especially if someone similar is there to set me off. They don't
have to do much: I recognize what it looks like when somebody's
composure starts to strip itself away. They'll maybe cross their arms
with that twitchy, shaky, tension, or they'll grab down little wheezes
of embarrassed air, or they'll simply hood their faces under their
palm, trying to hide how fast they're slipping, how fast *we're*
slipping, because I'll be weakening with them by then, I'll be just as
lost, pulled equally tight against the moment when we both stop caring
and let it disgrace us
when we laugh. — A. L. Kennedy

Don't lose yourself, don't let yourself be lost, he said, and these were unexpected, enigmatic words that did not seem to fit the occasion. — Jose Saramago

In the emergency of growing up, we all need heroes. But the father I grew up with was no hero to me, not then. He was too wounded in the head, too endlessly and terribly sad. Too funny, too explosive, too confusing. Heroes are uncomplicated. *This* makes them do *that* ... But the war does not make sense. War senselessly wounds everyone right down the line. A body bag fits more than just its intended corpse. Take the 58,000 American soldiers lost in Vietnam and multiply by four, five, six - and only then does one begin to realize the damage this war has done ... War when necessary, is unspeakable. When unnecessary, it is unforgivable. It is not an occasion for heroism. It is an occasion only for survival and death. To regard war in any other way only guarantees its inevitable reappearance. — Tom Bissell

On more than one occasion David, in his urge to explore the darker corners of the bookshelves, had found himself wearing strands of spider silk in his face and hair, causing the web's creator to scuttle into a corner and crouch balefully, lost in thoughts of arachnoid revenge. — John Connolly

Humility is the safeguard of chastity. In the matter of purity, there is no greater danger than not fearing the danger. For my part, when I find a man secure of himself and without fear, I give him up for lost. I am less alarmed for one who is tempted and who resists by avoiding the occasions, than for one who is not tempted and is not careful to avoid occasions. When a person puts himself in an occasion, saying, I shall not fall, it is an almost infallible sign that he will fall, and with great injury to his soul. — Philip Neri

In Jack Dempsey's early days he had a fight contract, which paid him two dollars per fight for the fights he won. He received nothing for the fights he lost. Jack Dempsey said that in his early days he was knocked down a lot of times and he usually was tempted to stay down because he knew that no one would hit him again until he started to get up. But Jack was a hungry fighter and he knew that if he was going to eat, he must get up in order to get the two dollars. He tells of one occasion when he was knocked down 11 times in one fight, and 11 times he got up in order to win the $2. — Sterling W. Sill

Hence the greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion; Hence, it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any certain inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervour or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere. Nay, it has been observed, that enormities of the blackest dye have been rather apt to produce superstitious terrors, and increase the religious passion. Bomilcar, having formed a conspiracy for assassinating at once the whole senate of Carthage, and invading the liberties of his country, lost the opportunity, from a continual regard to omens and prophecies.7 Those who undertake the most criminal and most dangerous enterprises are commonly the most superstitious; as an ancient historian remarks on this occasion. Their devotion and spiritual faith rise with their fears. — Christopher Hitchens

All chess masters have on occasion played a magnificent game and then lost it by a stupid mistake, perhaps in time pressure and it may perhaps seem unjust that all their beautiful ideas get no other recognition than a zero on the tournament table. — Bent Larsen

In the busy city, dying might be resented as a breach of good taste, and the body hastily dispatched to the undertaker and the crematorium; but in Lost Haven, where a man's mates had to turn out and dig his grave, it was an occasion shared by the whole community. — Kylie Tennant