Misplaced Things Quotes & Sayings

Life is a storeroom filled with boxes, some empty, some misplaced forever. We're what remains, what we've grabbed hold of. — Margaret Mazzantini

In many languages, even the word for human being is "one who goes on migrations." Progress itself is a word rooted in a seasonal journey. Perhaps our need to escape into media is a misplaced desire for the journey. — Gloria Steinem

You get a sense of reference there. You feel part of something that's got order and balance and harmony to it. All the distraction and noise, all the confusion of misplaced, misdirected energy just don't happen there. — Harrison Ford

Man's fatal flaw is misplaced optimism. — Allan Wolf

The war on drugs thrives on ignorance of drugs and misplaced faith in the power of the law to regulate human vice. — Tom Feiling

In recording from time to time some of the curious experiences and interesting recollections which I associate with my long and intimate friendship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have continually been faced by difficulties caused by his own aversion to publicity. To his sombre and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent, and nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation. It was indeed this attitude upon the part of my friend and certainly not any lack of interesting material which has caused me of late years to lay very few of my records before the public. My participation in some of his adventures was always a privilege which entailed discretion and reticence upon me. — Arthur Conan Doyle

How dare you belittle me this way?'
'What the hell are you talking about?'
'I have never, not even once in my life, given my love to another man. And you throw it back in my face like a trifle.'
'You misunderstand me. It is because I value your love so highly that I do not accept it.'
'You don't accept it because you don't want to accept it. You're mired in misplaced guilt and self-pity. — Julia Quinn

All through the workday something was nagging at the back of his head, and he didn't know what it was. He misplaced things. He forgot things. At one point, he started singing at his desk, not because he was happy, but because he forgot not to. — Neil Gaiman

On any given day, something claims our attention. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days then go back to wherever they came from ... to darkness. We've got all these wells dug in our hearts. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth. — Haruki Murakami

He told himself she wasn't really such a bad person, she was just a pest, she was sticky, there was something misplaced in her make-up, something that kept her from fading clear of people when they wanted to be in the clear. — David Goodis

Nay, you don't throw away those misplaced beads.. you find them, pick them up and make a new necklace.. probably not as beautiful as you imagined..but wearable nevertheless.. — Sanhita Baruah

We should bear the intelligence and taste of the architect or the gardener in how we shape the becoming of our self. Too much precision ("stringency") is simply misplaced, a formalism inappropriate to the kind of matter we have to deal with (and to be). — Kenny Smith

It's not that I had more important things to do or that I didn't want to help with whatever problems were interfering with her students being successful - rather, it's this horrible truth that life has taught me: misplaced hope is the most devastatingly painful thing you can give someone. — Tucker Elliot

Should we grieve over a little misplaced charity, when an all knowing, all wise Being showers down every day his benefits on the unthankful and undeserving? — Francis Atterbury

The biographer is often asked at the conclusion of his project whether he has grown to like or dislike his subject. The answer of course is both. But the question is misplaced. This biographer's greatest fear was not that he might come to admire or disapprove of his subject, but that he might end up enervated by years of research into another man's life and times. That was, fortunately, never the case. The highest praise I can offer Andrew Carnegie is to profess that, after these many years of research and writing, I find him one of the most fascinating men I have encountered, a man who was many things in his long life, but never boring. — David Nasaw

Bill is about moving forward on a long overdue provision to protect vulnerable paid farm workers in Alberta to the same degree that they are protected in every other province in the country, and we feel confident that once people see how the bill actually applies to the regular family farm, they will see that a lot of the concerns were perhaps misplaced. And it's unfortunate that we created a situation that made people worry; that was not ever our intention. — Rachel Notley

The day misspent,
the love misplaced,
has inside it
the seed of redemption.
Nothing is exempt
from resurrection. — Kay Ryan

Got up this morning and could not find my glasses. Finally had to seek assistance. Kate [Winslet] found them inside a flower arrangement. — Emma Thompson

One of the great dangers in political engagement is misplaced hope. — Shane Claiborne

I lost my wife twenty years ago. Sometimes I feel as if I have lived without her for a decade, and sometimes I feel as though I lost her just a minute before.

I write lost, but I have grown to hate that expression. She was not a set of keys or a hat. Losing her is the equivalent of saying that I have misplaced my lungs. — Cath Crowley

When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right ones a fighting chance- Victoria Barron- dedicated attorney and protagonist of Misplaced — SL Hulen

His books were in the bookcase, his coloring books on the desk. A place for everything and everything in its place, Mommy said. Then you know where it is when you want it. But now things had been misplaced. Things were missing. Worse still, things had been added, things you couldn't quite see, like in one of those pictures that said CAN YOU SEE THE INDIANS? And if you strained and squinted, you could see some of them - the thing you had taken for a cactus at first glance was really a brave with a knife clamped in his teeth, and there were others hiding in the rocks, and you could even see one of their evil, merciless faces peering through the spokes of a covered wagon wheel. But you could never see all of them, and that was what made you uneasy. Because it was the ones you couldn't see that would sneak up behind you, a tomahawk in one hand and a scalping knife in the other ... — Stephen King

I'm a pathetic haggler and often give more than the original price out of a misplaced sense of duty. — Joanna Lumley

Ignorance is avoiding that which stands in front of me out of the misplaced hope that it will put what I'm ignoring behind me. Instead, it's most certain to drop it on top of me. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I wondered when I would stop feeling like such a clueless twit for that misplaced trust. — Tammara Webber

As the surface of the seashore rocks were pitted by by the waves and gathered limpets that further disguised what lay beneath, so time made truth of what appeared to be. The days that passed, in becoming weeks, still did not disturb the surface an assumption had created. The weather of a beautiful summer continued with neither sign nor hint that credence had been misplaced. The single sandal found among the rocks became a sodden image of death; and as the keening on the pier at Kilauran traditionally marked distres brought by the sea, so did silence at Lahardane. — William Trevor

Self-satisfaction with the inability to remain conscious when faced with printed matter seems misplaced. — Ursula K. Le Guin

There are two things to be aware of if the fight against evil inclinations is to have any chance of success. First, our efforts will never be sufficient on their own. Only the grace of Christ can win us the victory. Therefore our chief weapons are prayer, patience, and hope. Second, one passion can only be cured by another - a misplaced love by a greater love, wrong behavior by right behavior that makes provisions for the desire underlying the wrongdoing, recognizes the conscious or unconscious needs that seek fulfillment and either offers them legitimate satisfaction or transfers them to something compatible with the person's calling. — Jacques Philippe

There are times in relationships, when we blow it. In spite of our best intentions, we wrong others. Our jealousy makes us feel inferior. Our own wounds cause us to act irrationally. Our insecurities lead us to say hurtful things.
And so, we find ourselves acting out. In short, we cloud our lives with muddy water. We trash around the pond of our emotions until things are just too messed up to figure out how to fix them.
It is in the times of muddy water that we learn how to wait it out. We have to wait until the mud settles. We must wait until we can clearly see where the water of our lives ends and the mud of misplaced emotions begin.
Have the patience to wait until the mud settles. Be still until the water is clear. In clear water, words come. Right actions reveal them selves and healing appears.
From the Devotional A Word in Season — Stella Payton

Both religiousness and lawlessness share the same problems: overconfidence and unrighteousness. "Why do bad things happen to good people?" we might ask - the very question that betrays our misplaced assumption that we somehow deserve a good life. — Tim Chaddick

It disturbs me that he can remember some of these things about himself, but not others; that the things he's lost or misplaced exist now only for me. If he's forgotten so much, what have I forgotten? — Margaret Atwood

Hope founded upon a human being, a man-made philosophy or any institution is always misplaced ... because these things are unreliable and fleeting. — Charles Stanley

A faith project in Christian artistry will never be healthy among us until there is a living sense of Christian community, and the misplaced emphasis on the 'individual' has been corrected. God has set things up so that cultural endeavour is always a communal enterprise, done by trained men and women in concert, gripped by a spirit that is larger than each one individually and that pulls them together as they do their formative work. — Calvin Seerveld

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Civilization needs a new operating system. — Paul Hawken

Let's start with some of the reasons that the press holds its tongue and some of the things that you don't know because of this. We'll begin with squeamishness, prudishness, timidity and an overdeveloped fear of offending someone ... So much for squeamishness and prudishness. There are many other reasons that we editors fail you in this pact you and we have. Let me name a few more: Orthodoxy, conventional thinking, a misplaced pleasure at being on the inside, incompetence and laziness. — Geneva Overholser

The devil considers all misplaced trust as devil worship, for he hides himself in its shadows. — Bill Johnson

Loyalty is important, one of the most important character traits we can have. But loyal love does not mean infinite and/or misplaced responsibility for another's life, nor does it mean that one forever puts up with mistreatment out of inappropriate loyalty. — Henry Cloud

Imagine a very long time passing - and I find my way out, following someone who already knows how to leave Hell. And God says to me on Earth for the first time, "Xas!" in a tone of discovery, as if I'm a misplaced pair of spectacles or a stray dog. And he puts it to me that he wants me in Heaven. But Lucifer has doubled back - it was him I followed - to find me, where I am, in a forest, smitten, because the Lord has noticed me, and I'm overcome, as hopeless as your dog Josie whom you got rid of because she loved me.' Xas glared at Sobran. Then he drew a breath - all had been said on only three. He went on: 'Lucifer says to God the He can't have me. And at this I sit up and tell Lucifer that I didn't even think he knew my name, then say to God no thank you - very insolent this - and that Hell is endurable so long as the books keep appearing. — Elizabeth Knox

You will be someone else if you did not answer the question "Who am I — Sunday Adelaja

There are doubtless those who would wish to lock up all those who suspected of terrorist and other serious offences and, in the time-honored phrase, throw away the key. But a suspect is by definition a person whom no offence has been proved. Suspicions, even if reasonably entertained, may prove to be misplaced, as a series of tragic miscarriages of justice has demonstrated. Police officers and security officials can be wrong. It is a gross injustice to deprive of his liberty for significant periods a person who has committed no crime and does not intend to do so. No civilized country should willingly tolerate such injustices. — Tom Bingham

Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. — James Baldwin

THE SUN HAD just crested on the horizon like a misplaced planet, swollen and molten and red, lighting a landscape that seemed sculpted out of clay and soft stone and marked by the fossilized tracks of animals with no names, when a tall barefoot man wearing little more than rags dropped his horse's reins and eased himself off the horse's back and worked his way down an embankment into a riverbed chained with pools of water that glimmered as brightly as blood in the sunrise. — James Lee Burke

We ourselves are the substance we withdraw to, not from, as we pull our overextended and misplaced creative energy back into our own core. — Julia Cameron

With wisdom comes responsibility. Somewhere along the way, I misplaced both. — I.E. Castellano

A lot of these American actors have this - in my view - misplaced view that they have to look like Action Man. The trouble is, they all run the risk of being interchangeable. — Damian Lewis

A fist in the face is all you deserve from love you've misplaced. — Rodney Crowell

Men! She could not understand why so many women feared them. Hadn't the gods made them with the most vulnerable part of their guts hanging right out of their bodies, like a misplaced bit of bowel? Kick them there and they curled up like snails. Caress them there and their brains melted. — Stephen King

Was Adam safe? Was any child, even his own dearest Anna, ever free from danger? As soon as a son or daughter was placed in the care of others a parent had made an act of trust. If that was misplaced or mistaken, it could soon come to be seen as carelessness or neglect. Perhaps being a parent was to live in a state of constant fear, where the cost of the freedom of youth lay in the anxiety of those who protected it? Because — James Runcie

In the euphoria after the Cold War, there was a misplaced notion that the UN could solve every problem anywhere. — Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Like a child at bedtime who insists she's not tired, Celia's provocation was all unproductive, almost self-negating. Sometimes I thought this was just her scorpion nature, but other times it seemed to me that she had settled on this pose purposefully, out of some dimly perceived, horribly misplaced idea that the job of an artist was to hide her light under the darkest bushel possible and wait for a dedicated acolyte to be drawn to it like a clairvoyant moth. — Rachel Pastan

We cannot keep our eyes focused on Jesus while our greed lusts for worldly security. We may go through the motions, but eventually the misplaced priority of worldliness will corrode the soul's joy. — Tony Reinke

[I]t doesn't matter whom you love or where you move from or to, you always take yourself with you. If you don't know who you are, or if you've forgotten or misplaced her, then you'll always feel as if you don't belong. Anywhere. (xiii) — Sarah Ban Breathnach

If a misplaced admiration shows imbecility, an affected criticism shows vice of character. Expose thyself rather to appear a beast than false. — Denis Diderot

The center was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misplaced even the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers. Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that had held the society together. People were missing. Children were missing. Parents were missing. Those left behind filed desultory missing- persons reports, then moved on themselves. — Joan Didion

Because who can describe the look that triggers the memory of loved ones? Who can anticipate the frown, the smile, or the misplaced lock of hair that sends a swift, undeniable signal from the past? Who can ever estimate the power of association, which is always strongest in moments of love and in memories of death? — John Irving

A man of the best parts and greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd, and consequently very unwelcome in company. He may say very good things; but they will be probably so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue. — Lord Chesterfield

This is Winter," said Scarlet. "Princess Winter."
Thorne guffawed and pushed a hand into his hair. "Are we running a boardinghouse for misplaced royalty around here, or what? — Marissa Meyer

Prayer is not an act I perform, words I recite, a behavior I strive to maintain. It is a returning. It is a broken life finding healing, a misplaced soul recognizing home. — Micha Boyett

ROSALIND: I would we could do so, for her benefits are mightily misplaced, and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women. — William Shakespeare

Monkeys"
"You can buy cooler, more humdrum pets
a monkey deprived of his mother in the cradle
feels the want of her affection so keenly
he either pines away or masters you
by literally hanging on your neck
no ounce of your patience or courage is misplaced;
the worst is his air of boredom and neglect,
manifested in tail-chewing and fur plucking.
The whole species is vulnerable to killing colds,
likes straw, hay or bits of a torn blanket,
a floortray thinly covered with sawdust,
they need trapezes, shelves, old rubber tires
any string or beam will do to set them swinging
these charming youngsters tend to sour with age — Robert Lowell