No Direction In Life Quotes & Sayings

A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we're two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life. — Richard Bach

The whole of the Sermon [Matt 5-7] is framed within Jesus's announcement that what his fellow Jews had longed for over many generations was now at last coming to pass - but that new kingdom didn't look like they had thought it would. Indeed, in some ways it went in exactly the other direction. No violence, no hatred of enemies, no anxious protection of land and property against the pagan hordes. In short, no frantic intensification of the ancestral codes of life. Rather, a glad and unworried trust in the creator God, whose kingdom is now at last starting to arrive, leading to a glad and generous heart toward other people, even those who are technically "enemies." Faith, hope, and love: here they are again. They are the language of life, the sign in the present of green shoots growing through the concrete of this sad old world, the indication that the creator God is on the move, and that Jesus's hearers and followers can be part of what he's now doing. — N. T. Wright

The night in Lonsdale Square was cold, dark, and clear. There were two policemen in the square. When he got out of his car, they pretended not to notice him. They were on short patrol, watching the street near the flat for a hundred yards in each direction, and he could hear their footsteps even when he was indoors. He realized, in that footstep-haunted space, that he no longer understood his life, or what it might become, and he thought, for the second time that day, that there might not be very much more of life to understand. — Salman Rushdie

Oh," said Alex quietly, remembering her manners and falling into a curtsy, "apologies, my lord, your new title slipped my mind." Gavin turned back toward Alex, surprised. "No need to stand on ceremony, Alex. I forget that I'm the earl myself most of the time. I cannot seem to get comfortable with the idea that I carry the title now. Besides, I don't see how it would change much. Nick has been an earl your whole life and that doesn't seem to change the way you treat him." He shot her an odd smile and nodded in the direction of Alex's middle brother. Nick, as always, was quick to chime in. "That's right! You lot have never respected my title," he said, puffing out his chest in a false air of pompousness. He added a thickly arrogant tenor to his blustering. "Why should Blackmoor get any respect? I've been the Earl of Farrow since before you were born and it doesn't earn me an ounce of esteem!" Everyone laughed and, with that, the awkwardness of the situation had disappeared. — Sarah MacLean

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience. — George Santayana

I've never been good at writing letters, so I hope you'll forgive me if I'm not able to make myself clear.
I've been thinking about you constantly since I left, wondering why the journey I'm on seemed to have led through you. I know my journey's not over yet, and that life is a winding path, but I can only hope it somehow circles back to the place I belong.
That's how I think of it now. I belong with you.
It is almost as if a part of you is with me. I want to believe that's true. No, change that - I know it's true. Before we met, I was as lost as a person could be, and yet you saw something in me that somehow gave me direction again. It was you, that I had been looking for all along. And it's you who is with me now.
I realize that I miss you more than I've ever missed anyone. In the short time we spent together, we had what most people can only dream about, and I'm counting the days until I can see you again. Never forget how much I love you. — Unknown

It was at Harvard not quite forty years ago that I went into an anechoic [totally silent] chamber not expecting in that silent room to hear two sounds: one high, my nervous system in operation, one low, my blood in circulation. The reason I did not expect to hear those two sounds was that they were set into vibration without any intention on my part. That experience gave my life direction, the exploration of nonintention. No one else was doing that. I would do it for us. I did not know immediately what I was doing, nor, after all these years, have I found out much. I compose music. — John Cage

And once when we were walking on Bredon Hill, we met a bedraggled and exhausted fox. 'Oh, poor thing,' Jack said. 'What shall we do when the hunt comes up? I can already hear them. Oh, I know
I have an idea.' He cupped his hands and shouted to the first riders, "Hallo, yoicks, gone that way," and pointed in the direction opposite to the one the fox had taken. The whole hunt followed his directions. There followed a long discussion about when lying was morally justifiable, but he boasted delightedly later to my wife that he had saved the life of a poor fox and showed no trace of guilt. — George Sayer

By the time I make my way to the border of Mauritania, to the edge of the Sahara, I see no end to being lost. You can spend your entire life simply falling in that direction. It isn't a station you reach but just the general state of going down. Once you make it back, if you make it back, you will stand before your long-lost friends but in some essential way they will no longer know you. — Nick Flynn

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me? Memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis. — Blaise Pascal

THE FIGURE A POEM MAKES
No one can really hold that ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life- Not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. — Robert Frost

There are a lot of times the heart burrows deeper, goes tunnelling into itself for reasons only the heart itself seems to know.They are times of isolation, of hibernation, sometimes of desolation. There is a bareness that spreads out over the interior landscape of the self, a bareness like tundra, with no sign of life in any direction, no sign of anything beneath the frozen crust of ground, no sign that spring ever intends to come again. — Marya Hornbacher

Sometimes no matter how far off course your ship has sailed in the seas of life ...
it becomes obvious that you must turn around and sail in the right direction. Sometimes it will be a higher calling and mandatory to save your life. — Timothy Pina

Knowing about God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesmen to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it .The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were , with no sense of direction, and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul. — J.I. Packer

This was totally influenced by me and the direction that I am writing about and the stuff that I am writing about. There is just no way that you can be as intense as what I have been through in my life over a drum beat machine, sample, or loop; it's just not going to happen. — Vanilla Ice

What determined the outcome of a life? A series of random events you had no control over, or did some cosmic gravity pull everything in the direction it was predestined to go? — Jo Nesbo

It often happens that men pull in a certain political, social, or familiar harness simply because they never have time to ask themselves whether the position they stand in and the work they accomplish are right; whether their occupations really suit their inner desires and capacities, and give them the satisfaction which everyone has the right to expect from his work. Active men are especially liable to find themselves in such a position. Every day brings with it a fresh batch of work, and a man throws himself into his bed late at night without having completed what he had expected to do; then in the morning he hurries to the unfinished task of the previous day. Life goes, and there is no time left to think, no time to consider the direction that one's life is taking. So it was with me. — Pyotr Kropotkin

I'm sorry, Percy. I didn't mean to ... I always mess things up. It was kind of hard to argue with her, though I was glad she was safe. I looked in the direction Annabeth had gone, but she'd disappeared into the crowd. I couldn't believe what she'd just done - saved Rachel's life, landed a helicopter, and walked away like it was no big deal. — Rick Riordan

Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I used to spend so much time reacting and responding to everyone else that my life had no direction. Other people's lives, problems, and wants set the course for my life. Once I realized it was okay for me to think about and identify what I wanted, remarkable things began to take place in my life. — Melody Beattie

There is no such thing as Freedom (though it is the most important condition of human life, after Humility, -which does not exist either). There is only Slavery (walls around one) and absence-of-Slavery (ability to walk in any direction, or to remain still). — John Berryman

Jump, if you want to, 'cause I'll catch you, girl. I'll catch you "fore you fall. Go as far inside as you need to, I'll hold your ankles. Make sure you get back out. I'm not saying this because I need a place to stay. That's the last thing I need. I told you, I'm a walking man, but I been heading in this direction for seven years. Walking all around this place. Upstate, downstate, east, west; I been in territory ain't got no name, never staying nowhere long. But when I got here and sat out there on the porch, waiting for you, well, I knew it wasn't the place I was heading toward; it was you. We can make a life, girl. A life. — Toni Morrison

Surely there were others like me, born without an inkling of direction. The wanderers, the amblers, the dabblers, united by our purposeless mantra-I have no idea what to do with my life. — Suzanne Selfors

Life isn't fair." I said. "It's taken me a while to get that. It's always going to disappoint you in some way or another. You'll make plans, and it'll push you in another direction. You will love people, and they'll be taken away no matter how hard you fight to keep them. You'll try for something and won't get it. You don't have to find meaning in it; you don't have to try to change things. You just have to accept the things that are out of your hands and try to take care of yourself. That's your job. — Alexandra Bracken

Every morning we wake up with the same choice: What will my attitude be today? Ask yourself that without fail. Decide that no matter what the day brings, your attitude will include three elements: an awareness of how far you've come, gratitude for where you are, and determination to keep moving in the right direction. — Toni Sorenson

Friendship, on the other hand, serves a great host of different purposes all at the same time. In whatever direction you turn, it still remains yours. No barrier can shut it out. It can never be untimely; it can never be in the way. We need friendship all the time, just as much as we need the proverbial prime necessities of life, fire and water. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

If you have no good drive in you, your life will not be steered through a good direction. It will miss its destined station. Passion or drive is what moves the vehicle of a fulfilled life. — Israelmore Ayivor

When we find ourselves living in a situation that looks good from the outside but no longer brings us inner joy, we can choose one of two paths: we can deny or repress our discontent and "shrink" ourselves so we continue to fit into a life that is too small or no longer serves us; or we can embrace the new direction our soul is urging us toward, and make the choice not to shrink, but to stretch. — Christy Whitman

But we cannot go back to the life we shared with you yesterday, a life which you will spread before us so temptingly when you return. We have suffered too much to believe any more that the way to what we see as the Absolute can go in any other direction than through the deep valley of sorrow. Hell has not opened before our eyes to no purpose, and he who has once seen it cannot find his way back to earthly symposiums. — Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen

There can be no question of selecting in any direction, but of penetrating the whole cosmic law of rhythms, forces and material that are the real world, from the ugliest to the most beautiful, everything that has character and expression, from the crudest and most brutal to the gentlest and most delicate; everything that speaks to us in its capacity as life. — Asger Jorn

Since Rose, he'd never wanted to be the right guy for anyone. He hadn't wanted to carry that extra burden. He liked things nice and simple. But things sure as hell weren't simple with Lena. They'd never been simple with Lena. Things with Lena had been one hundred shades of unadulterated complication from day one. That fact alone should have sent him running in the opposite direction with all the speed of an Olympic gold medalist.

But no, here he stood. Holding on to her as if his life depended on it. Heaven help him, his life probably did depend on it. — Loren Mathis

When you attain the control of the internal direction of your attention, you will no longer stand in shallow water but will launch out into the deep of life. — Neville Goddard

No ... big ... deal." He wasn't saying "bad," and he wasn't saying "good." He was saying that these things happen and they can transform your life, but at the same time don't make too big a deal of them, because that leads to arrogance and pride, or a sense of specialness. On the other hand, making too big a deal about your difficulties takes you in the other direction; it takes you into poverty, self-denigration, and a low opinion of yourself. — Pema Chodron

But Lucy had been alone too much of her life, and in her loneliness she had constructed a vision of what a perfect relationship would look like. Love, in her imagination, was so dazzling, so tender and unconditional, that anything human seemed impossibly thin by comparison. Lucy's loneliness was breathtaking in its enormity ... she was trapped in a room full of mirrors, and every direction she looked in she saw herself, her face, her loneliness. She couldn't see that no one else was perfect either, and that so much of love was the work of it. She had worked on everything else. Love would have to be charmed. — Ann Patchett

If there is one thing I've learned in thirty years as a psychotherapist, it is this: If you can let your experience happen, it will release its knots and unfold, leading to a deeper, more grounded experience of yourself. No matter how painful or scary your feelings appear to be, your willingness to engage with them draws forth your essential strength, leading in a more life-positive direction. — John Welwood

Brokenness is the shattering of my self-will - the absolute surrender of my will to the will of God. It is saying "Yes, Lord!" - no resistance, no chafing, no stubbornness - simply submitting myself to His direction and will in my life. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

When you don't know where you are going in life (No Clear Destination), you don't need direction ... you need Divine Revelation — Fela Durotoye

When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore. — Elizabeth Gilbert

No matter what calamities befall him in everyday life, the true hacker still needs the pressure and inconvenience of four hours of trudging in wind or rain or sleet or sun (or all of them at once), hacking at a white pellet that seems to have a mind of its own and a lousy sense of direction. — Tom O'Connor

Wish" gives the warmth, the content, the imagination, the child's play, the freshness, and the richness to "will." "Will" gives the self-direction, the maturity, to "wish." Without "wish," "will" loses its life-blood, its
viability, and tends to expire in self-contradiction. If you have only "will" and no "wish," you have the dried-up, Victorian, neopuritan man. If you have only "wish" and no "will," you have the driven, unfree, infantile person who, as an adult-remaining-an-infant, may become the robot man.66 — Irvin D. Yalom

[Our goal] is to help revive America's traditional values: faith, family, neighborhood, work and freedom. Government has no business enforcing these values but neither must it seek, as it did in the recent past, to suppress or replace them. That only robbed us of our tiller and set us adrift. Helping to restore these values will bring new strength, direction and dignity to our lives and to the life of our nation. It's on these values that we'll best build our future. — Ronald Reagan

There's no key to the universe, you just have to point your way in one direction, keep going, keep going, keep going, and see what happens. — Davy Rothbart

Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction. — James Russell Lowell

NO ONE EVER says it'll be easy. All you can do is close your eyes and feel the wind sweep through your hair and savor the salty, sweet treats life tosses in your direction. Don't become bitter, and never ever hold on too tight, because you'll not only blister your hands, you'll choke the precious love you hold within them. — Alexia Purdy

It is conceivable at least that a late generation, such as we presumably are, has particular need of the sketch, in order not to be strangled to death by inherited conceptions which preclude new births ... The sketch has direction, but no ending; the sketch as reflection of a view of life that is no longer conclusive, or is not yet conclusive. — Max Frisch

My life was definitely going into a nosedive. When my parents separated (and) divorced when I was fifteen, I definitely lost my bearings and was completely out of control. My grades were plummeting. I had no direction. I was a pretty angry teenager (and) somewhat destructive. So, I broke down in a church when I was 18 and turned my life over to God, thankfully. — Michael Landon Jr.

The way I choose to start my day sets its tone. When I make the decision to begin by giving thanks for the positive things in my life, no matter how seemingly few or bountiful they might be, I am setting the flow for new opportunities to come my way. Each and every day I will remind myself that I can steer my outcome in any direction I wish by the actions I take. The steps I take day in and day out are the determining factors as to whether or not I achieve the success I desire. I take comfort in knowing that I have control over the actions I choose to do or not do. — Josh Hinds

Desire demands only a constant attention to the unknown gravitational field which surrounds us and from which we can recharge ourselves every moment, as if breathing from the atmosphere of possibility itself. A life's work is not a series of stepping-stones onto which we calmly place our feet, but more like an ocean crossing where there is no path, only a heading, a direction, which, of itself, is in conversation with the elements. — David Whyte

To me, nothing feels more like being dead than being in your 20s and having no direction in your life. — Gerard Way

When we return to our breathing, we return to the present moment, our true home. There's no need for us to struggle to arrive somewhere else. We know our final destination is the cemetery. Why are we in a hurry to get there? Why not step in the direction of life, which is in the present moment? — Thich Nhat Hanh

It is quite amazing how hard the subconscious works when it is made to understand that this life is not a rehearsal, there is no safety net and no assurance of any final closure. It is also quite appalling to realize how catatonic the imagination can become when we hedge our bets, opt for the safer direction at every fork in the path. — John Burdett

I was one of those people who just flitted about in life. I had no plans and no sense of direction. — Anton Du Beke

In the Great War, there is no room for the faint-hearted, the cowardly. A criminal or an anarchist will be better conditioned than a bourgeois, indecisive or cowardly man. They only need a push in the right direction. Only one who is born a hero or a warrior has a place in our order. Only the Lord of the Pure Will can march to the end, breaking in the gates of the City of Eternal Life. Because will, through its perseverance, creates the thing it contemplates. Only the Wild Hordes of Odin and Parsifal will achieve the Graal. — Miguel Serrano

First, you can develop resilience. Anyone can do it. No one can do it for you. You and you alone have to do the work. Second, you can develop resilience. It's possible to build virtues. It's possible to change your character. It's possible, therefore, to change the direction of your life. Third, you can develop resilience. Resilience cannot be purchased or given to you; you have to do the hard work of building excellence in your life. — Eric Greitens

It is no more natural and no less conventional to shout in anger or to kiss in love than to call a table 'a table'. Feelings and passional conduct are invented like words. Even those which like paternity seem to be part and parcel of the human make-up are in reality institutions. It is impossible to superimpose on man a lower layer of behavior which one chooses to call 'natural' followed by a manufactured cultural or spiritual world. Everything is both manufactured and natural in man as it were in the sense that there is not a word, not a form of behavior which does not owe something to purely biological being and which at the same time does not elude the simplicity of animal life and cause forms of vital behavior to deviate from their pre-ordained direction through a sort of leakage and through a genius for ambiguity which might serve to define man. — Maurice Merleau Ponty

This magical universe is so faithful in waiting for us to get out of our own way. No matter how long you have gone astray, when you take action, the universe moves to support the act. Move in the direction of your goals and watch the magic flow. — Steve Maraboli

To resent is to brood in inaction, to pass through life acting in a manner indistinguishable from those who bear no grudges. But hatred hails from a wilder, far more violent tribe. Even when you cannot strike out, you strike nonetheless. Inward, if not outward, as if such things have direction. To hate, especially without recourse to vengeance, is to besiege yourself, to starve yourself to the point of eating your own, then to lay wreaths of blame at the feet of the accused. — R. Scott Bakker

Spiritual perception must be an individual quest or it has no meaning. We are greatly influenced by our own immediate reality, and we can act on that reality one step at a time without the necessity of seeing too far into the distance. Even steps in the wrong direction give us insight into the many paths designed to teach us. To bring the soul Self into harmony with our physical environment, we are given freedom of choice to exercise free will in the search for the reasons why we are here. On the road of life we must take responsibility for all our decisions without blaming other people for life's setbacks that bring unhappiness. — Michael Newton

There are no signboards in life; your inner voice and your inner knowledge are enough to lead you in the direction of your highest evolution. — Priya Kumar

Every day is a new beginning, the building of a habit. Every action is a step in some direction. There is no pause in living. — Anna White

We, people's hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, towards it's own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them-the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place. So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won't be heard: we don't want people to suffer because they don't follow their hearts. — Paulo Coelho

And so when you have lost everything, no more roads, no direction, no fixed signs, no ground, no thoughts able to resist other thoughts, when you are lost, beside yourself, and you continue getting lost, when you become the panicky movement of getting lost, then, that's when, where you are unwoven weft, flesh that lets strangeness come through, defenseless being, without resistance, without batten, without skin, inundated with otherness, it's in these breathless times that writings traverse you, songs of an unheard-of purity flow through you, addressed to no one, they well up, surge forth, from the throats of your unknown inhabitants, these are the cries that death and life hurl in their combat. — Helene Cixous

Sometimes we look for those thunderous things to happen in our life for our lives to change or go in the other direction. We seek the miracle. We seek the parting of the seas, the moving of the mountains. But no, it's a quiet thing. At least for me it was. — Ben Vereen

Children I implore you
get out of the burning house now
three carts wait outside
to save you from a homeless life
relax in the village square
before the sky everything's empty
no direction is better or worse
east is just as good as west
those who know the meaning of this
are free to go where they want — Han-shan

If life's journey was intended to be easy, we would have been given directions. However, since we have no road map, we must climb the highest mountain and forge the deepest streams with love in our souls, in the hope that our own journey will give us peace within... — Virginia Alison

All change is change for the better. There is no such thing as "change for the worse." Change is the process of Life Itself, and that process could be called by the name 'evolution.' And evolution moves in only one direction: forward, and toward improvement. — Neale Donald Walsch

For those of you who think that I have my life altogether, I definitely do not. Every season brings new challenges. For example, since I had my fifth child, I am notoriously 5-10 minutes late everywhere no matter how hard I try to be on time. I would like to say that I am "fashionably" late, but that isn't the truth either. Running in a mad dash in a parking lot (all holding hands of course) to make it somewhere 5 minutes late (instead of 6 minutes cause that makes a big difference) while one child is missing shoes and my hair is going in every direction. Yep, that is my family. — Tamara L. Chilver

Too often, the notion of progress is used as a code word for perfection, the chain of being in a different guise. The term should be employed with caution. Some see an arrow of time in biology, as in physics, but in the opposite direction- a relentless tendency to improve, just as a universe has a built-in trend towards chaos and disorder. That is too optimistic. Some lineages get more complicated, some simpler, and much of life has to struggle to stay in the same place. If everyone is evolving, nobody can afford to stop, and there may be constant change with no overall advance at all. — Steve Jones

Friendship isn't partying with a group of people to get drunk or chatting with him/her once a week, it's exactly the opposite. Friends make sure you get home safely and they help you when you need it, no matter the scenario. They don't care about what clothes you wear or what you look like, and they don't last for a day. Real friends are more interested in what direction your life is headed rather than your popularity. They care about what you have to say and how you feel, and once you meet this person you'll know it without having to think twice. — Morgan Tang

Your wedding completely changes the direction of your life, you know, no matter how greatly you desire it. I think that moment of doubt and faintness comes from all those imagined and now impossible futures all pressing in on you at once. It is your last chance to experience them, you see, and they all want to be lived at that moment. — Sharon Shinn

We do not live in a world of dreams, but in an Universe which while relative, is real so far as our lives and actions are concerned. Our business in the Universe is not to deny its existence, but to LIVE, using the Laws to rise from lower to higher--living on, doing the best that we can under the circumstances arising each day, and living, so far as is possible, to our biggest ideas and ideals. The true Meaning of Life is not known to men on this plane .if, indeed, to any--but the highest authorities, and our own intuitions, teach us that we will make no mistake in living up to the best that is in us, so far as is possible, and realising the Universal tendency in the same direction in spite of apparent evidence to the contrary. We are all on The Path--and the road leads upward ever, with frequent resting places. — Three Initiates

What is freedom?
Is it moving through a room unhindered, in any direction you want, fast or slow? Or is it being able to think any thought whatsoever, high or low, without shame or fear? Is freedom being able to openly express your convictions, and then trying to influence others to think the same thing? Or is freedom having the possibility to choose, being able to say no to what you don't want?
[...]
Freedom, thought Phillip Mouse, would be to outwit the limitations fate had once given him. To break out of the social, intellectual, and emotional framework that the factory [birthplace] and his youth had defined.
Freedom, thought Mouse, was to surprise life by placing yourself above your fate. — Tim Davys

Turned and ran down another. They remembered the corridors that held no cheese and quickly went into new areas. Sniff would smell out the general direction of the cheese, using his great nose, and Scurry would race ahead. They got lost, as you might expect, went off in the wrong direction and often bumped into walls. But after a while, they found their way. Like the mice, the two Littlepeople, Hem and Haw, also used their ability to think and learn from their past experiences. However, they relied on their complex brains to develop more sophisticated methods of finding Cheese. Sometimes they did well, but at other times their powerful human beliefs and emotions took over and clouded the way they looked at things. It made life in the Maze more complicated and challenging. Nonetheless, Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw all discovered, in their own way, what they were looking for. They each found their own kind of cheese one day at the end of one of the corridors in Cheese Station — Spencer Johnson

Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake. — Jonathan Franzen

His conviction of having no purpose in life other than to act as a distillation of poison was part of the ego of an eighteen-year-old. He had resolved that his beautiful white hands would never be soiled or calloused. He wanted to be like a pennant, dependent on each gusting wind. The only thing that seemed valid to him was to live for the emotions
gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose. — Yukio Mishima

To live a fulfilling life is an endurance event, and the only way to get to the finish line is to focus on the present, checking from moment to moment that I am still heading in the right direction. The Atlantic taught me that no matter how huge and seemingly impossible the task, anybody can achieve extraordinary things, by simply taking it one stroke at a time. — Roz Savage

The decisions you make today matter. Every decision points your life in the direction you are about to travel. No decision is an isolated choice. It's a chain of events. If you choose wisely, your future will reflect that. But if you don't choose wisely, the decisions you make now will take you to places you don't want to be later. — Lysa TerKeurst

These metaphysic rights entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their straight line. Indeed in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity: and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty. — Edmund Burke

I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you. — C. JoyBell C.

It's a wondrous thing, that a decision to act releases energy in the personality. For days on end a person may drift along without much energy. Having no particular sense of direction and having no will to change. Then, something happens to alter the pattern. It may be something very simple and inconsequential in itself. But it stabs awake, it alarms, it disturbs. In a flash, one gets a vivid picture of oneself, and it passes. The result is decision. Sharp, defenitive decision. In the wake of the decision, yes, even as a part of the decision itself, energy is released. The act of decision sweeps all before it, and the life of the individual maybe changed forever. — Howard Thurman

There are innumerable worlds of different sizes. In some there is neither sun not moon, in others they are larger than in ours and others have more than one. These worlds are at irregular distances, more in one direction and less in another, and some are flourishing, others declining. Here they come into being, there they die, and they are distroyed by collision with one another. Some of the worlds have no animal or vegetable life nor any water. — Democritus

I've met men who've stood in long lines on my book tours, and they've said things like, 'I've read your books and they've changed the direction in my life, and I want to thank you.' I think they're standing in line for their wife or their mother or their sweetheart or somebody, but no. — Beverly Lewis

He had by now divested himself of schoolboy attitudes. He was unburdened by the desire to be a martyr or a hero. Any thoughts in that direction, Belgica effectively had quashed. Heroism in the corrupt sense of the age almost by definition, meant wanton self-sacrifice and bungling. For neither had he any taste. He wanted rational attainment; victory, but not at any price. No point upon the globe was worth the cost of a single life. — Roland Huntford

I had no direction. I thought, 'I need to make a difference in my life,' and music was my answer. — Gerard Way

Never before in his life had he known what happiness was. He knew at most some very rare states of numbed contentment. But now he was quivering with happiness and could not sleep for pure bliss. It was as if he had been born a second time; no, not a second time, the first time, for until now he had merely existed like an animal with a most nebulous self-awareness. but after today, he felt as if he finally knew who he really was: nothing less than a genius ... He had found the compass for his future life. And like all gifted abominations, for whom some external event makes straight the way down into the chaotic vortex of their souls, Grenouille never again departed from what he believed was the direction fate had pointed him ... He must become a creator of scents ... the greatest perfumer of all time. — Patrick Suskind

If we are going to inquire into that, (religion, i.e. a life in which there is no fragmentation whatsoever) we must not only be free of all belief, but also we must be very clear about the distorting factor of all effort, direction and purpose. — Krishnamurti

Like a feather in a dust storm, with no direction The Raven flies through life, helpless and omitted Until night declares and the wind expires. Then it flies to the land of stones and etchings And becomes an Ember, breaking away — Jessica Sorensen

Have you ever thought about the grid of Manhattan?' It's like ... a metaphor for life. You think you have the freedom to walk anywhere. But in fact ... you are strictly controlled. Up or down. Left or right. Nothing in between. No other options.' Life should be like an open space ... you should be able to walk in whatever direction you choose. — Sophie Kinsella

One of the arguments that authoritarian governments use to ward off the call for greater political freedom is to argue that American-style democracy is no guarantee of good policy ... Over the years, I've grown used to these arguments, and my response has rarely wavered: Sure, we might make dumb choices sometimes, but we will defend, to the end, the right to make choices at all, because we believe that our collective conscience, freely expressed, will eventually lead us in the right direction. When it comes to guns, it is getting harder to muster that argument abroad. Every new shooting, every new failure of will and citizenship, slashes another hole in our credibility as a way of life. — Evan Osnos

Contemporary consciousness is no longer equipped to deal with our mortality. Never in any other time, or any other civilization, have people thought so much or so contantly about aging. Each individual has a simple view of the future: a time will come when the sum of pleasures that life has left to offer is outweighed by the sum of pain (one can actually feel the meter ticking, and it ticks always in the same direction). This weighing up of pleasure and pain, which everyone is forced to make sooner or later, leads logically, at a certain age, to suicide. — Michel Houellebecq

But a map is not enough as a guide for action; we also need a goal that tells us where to go. Animals have no such problems. Their instincts provide them with a map as well as with goals. But lacking instinctive determination and having a brain that permits us to think of many directions in which we can go, we need an object of total devotion, a focal point for all our strivings and the basis for all our effective - not only our proclaimed - values. We need such an object of devotion in order to integrate our energies in one direction, to transcend our isolated existence, with all its doubts and insecurities, and to answer our need for a meaning of life. — Erich Fromm

It was as if there were no names here, as if there were no words. The desert cleansed everything in its wind, wiped everything away. The men had the freedom of the open spaces in their eyes, their skin was like metal. Sunlight blazed everywhere. The ochre, yellow, gray, white sand, the fine sand shifted, showing the direction of the wind. It covered all traces, all bones. It repelled light, drove away water, life, far from a center that no one could recognize. The men knew perfectly well that the desert wanted nothing to do with them: so they walked on without stopping, following the paths that other feet had already traveled in search of something else. — Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

Then I stood alone at the edge of the sea I had longed for so often; but though I was alone, I found it cheering, and breathed the air that is like no other, and smiled to hear the soft song of the little waves. Land - Nessus, the House Absolute, and all the rest - lay to the east; west lay the sea; I walked north because I was reluctant to leave it too soon, and because Triskele had run in that direction, along the margin of the sea. There great Abaia might wallow with his women, yet the sea was older far, and wiser than he; we human beings, like all the life of the land, had come from the sea; and because we could not conquer it, it was ours always. The old, red sun rose on my right and touched the waves with his fading beauty, and I heard the calling of the sea birds, the innumerable birds. — Gene Wolfe

The value of a human being depends on the quality of information held in his or her brain. Depending on whether that information is positive or negative, destructive or constructive, loving or hateful, the direction and destiny of the person's life will be determined. But the most important point, which we must never forget, is that no piece of information is more important than the soul. Even the gods and religions that make up our faith traditions are merely information that has been received into our brains from birth. That information did not create our souls. — Ilchi Lee

I never prayed for no money, and I never prayed for no fame. I said, 'I'll take care of that myself. You just keep me healthy and I'll do all I can to try to turn people around, to try to steer 'em in the right direction.' That's the whole trip in life, ya know. — Wolfman Jack

When you get to the end of the road and feel like you've arrived at a place where you don't want to be, for pity sakes, turn around, back up and move in a different direction. There's no road in life that is a dead end unless you stop there permanently. — Toni Sorenson

No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction
toward anarchy and poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat. — Hunter S. Thompson

Writing (and reading) is a sort of exercise in empathy, I think. In life, when you encounter people, you and they have separate trajectories, each person pushing in a different direction. What's remarkable about fiction is that it places you in the uncommon position of having no trajectory. You stand aside, motives abandoned for the duration. The characters have the trajectories now, while you just observe. And this stirs compassion that, in real life, is so often obscured by our own motives. What — Tom Rachman

People say that it's the big decisions that are important ... that these are the type of issues worthy of prolonged consideration. But no one ever explains how it's the little choices that send your life careening in another direction. — Julie Gittus

As a kid who failed out of high school as a freshman, I know firsthand and personally that sense of hopelessness and just being - drifting in the wrong direction, having really no hope. And being able to harness that frustration was incredibly valuable in my life. That's one of the reasons I focus so consistently on the foundation of education, because it helps to eviscerate those things that - unemployment, high jobless rates, poverty. — Tim Scott