Not A Secret Quotes & Sayings

Like Batman, all of us hide behind our masks and use them to help define ourselves for others. We all have secret identities of a sort, hidden behind our smiling social-networking profiles or our happy church faces. They're not lies, really. They're just not the whole truth, because we know that most of the people we encounter day-to-day couldn't handle the truth (or perhaps we couldn't handle giving it to them). — Paul Asay

If a prisoner hadn't lived outside, he would not
detest the dungeon. Desiring knows there's satisfaction beyond this. Straying maps
the path. A secret freedom opens through a crevice you can barely see. Your love
of many things proves they're one. Every separate stiff trunk and stem in the garden
connects with nimble root hairs underground. The awareness a wine drinker wants cannot
be tasted in wine, but that failure brings his deep thirst closer. So the heart keeps ignoring
the waterfall and the key, but there is one guiding through all the desiring restlessness. — Rumi

The Prophet once said to his Companions, "Do you want to see a man of Paradise?" A man then passed by, and the Prophet said, "That man is of the people of Paradise." One of Companion of the Prophet wanted to find out what it was about this man that earned him such a commendation from the Messenger of God , so he decided to spend some time with this man and observe him closely. He noticed that this man did not perform the night prayer vigil (tahajjud) or do anything extraordinary. He appeared to be an average man of Medina. The Companion finally told the man what the Prophet had said about him and asked if he did anything special. The man replied, "The only thing that I can think of, other than what everybody else does, is that I make sure that I never sleep with any rancor in my heart towards another." That was his secret. — Hamza Yusuf

The landscape was snow and green ice on broken mountains. These weren't old mountains, worn down by time and weather and full of gentle ski slopes, but young, sulky, adolescent mountains. They held secret ravines and merciless crevices. One yodel out of place would attract, not the jolly echo of a lonely goatherd, but fifty tons of express-delivery snow. — Terry Pratchett

Sometimes we ask ourselves why happiness took so long to arrive, why it didn't come sooner, but appears suddenly, as now, when we've given up hope of it ever arriving, it's likely then that we won't know what to do, and rather than it being a question of choosing between laughter and tears, we will be filled by a secret anxiety to which we might not know how to respond at all. — Jose Saramago

The right procedure: You begin at the wrong end if you first dispute about your election. Prove your conversion, and then never doubt your election. If you cannot yet prove it, set upon a present and thorough turning. Whatever purposes be, which are secret, I am sure His promises are plain. How desperately do rebels argue! "If I am elected I shall be saved, do what I will. If not, I shall be damned, do what I can." Perverse sinner, will you begin where you should end? — Joseph Alleine

All mechanical habits are bad and slavish, and this one is ferocious as well. Of course, if you look upon the work of the revolutionist as the mere wresting of certain definite concessions from the government, then the secret sect and the knife must seem to you the best weapons, for there is nothing else which all governments so dread. But if you think, as I do, that to force the government's hand is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end, and that what we really need to reform is the relation between man and man, then you must go differently to work. Accustoming ignorant people to the sight of blood is not the way to raise the value they put on human life. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

I have a secret. A big, fat, hairy secret. And I'm not talking minor-league stuff, like I once let Joseph Applebaum feel me up behind the seventh-grade stairwell or I got a Brazilian wax after work last Friday or I'm hiding a neon blue vibrator called the Electric Slide in my night table. Which I'm not, by the way. In case you were wondering. — Karen MacInerney

The Vietnamese have a secret weapon. It's their willingness to die beyond our willingness to kill. In effect, they've been saying, You can kill us, but you'll have to kill a lot of us; you may have to kill all of us. And, thank heaven, we are not yet ready to do that. — George Wald

Never forget a man who holds a secret holds power. A Chinese proverb says: "If women want to keep a secret, one of them must die." What a splendid prospect, I thought! So far I have not heard one single encouraging word about this job. — John Eppler

Life works in mysterious ways, Ember, and the secret is to not think too hard on the why or how of it, and to not mourn what is no longer, but live: live hard and love hard. — L.A. Fiore

The best way to divulge a secret is to tell someone not to say anything about it. — Charles Fleischer

What we do we keep a secret. We are not to be seen or heard by the rest of the world. — Mark Simo

There was a pleasant party of barge people round the fire. You might not have thought it pleasant, but they did; for they were all friends or acquaintances, and they liked the same sort of things, and talked the same sort of talk. This is the real secret of pleasant society. — E. Nesbit

I nodded very slowly. "You're right. Everyone knows my weakness. It's not really a secret. But what most don't get is that she's also what keeps me strong. She's what keeps me fighting. I've killed for her and I'll do it again. In a heartbeat." - Aidan — Ashley Stoyanoff

Westcliff sees an odd sort of logic in why you would finally be the one to win St. Vincent's heart. He says a girl like you would appeal to ... hmm, how did he put it? ... I can't remember the exact words, but it was something like ... you would appeal to St. Vincent's deepest, most secret fantasy."
Evie felt her cheeks flushing while a skirmish of pain and hope took place in the tired confines of her chest. She tried to respond sardonically. "I should think his fantasy is to consort with as many women as possible."
A grin crossed Lillian's lips. "Dear, that is not St. Vincent's fantasy, it's his reality. And you're probably the first sweet, decent girl he's ever had anything to do with."
"He spent quite a lot of time with you and Daisy in Hampshire," Evie countered.
That seemed to amuse Lillian further. "I'm not at all sweet, dear. And neither is my sister. Don't say you have been laboring under that misconception all this time? — Lisa Kleypas

Harvey , Galileo , Copernicus do not seem occult to us, but they did so to their contemporaries, hierophants of the mysteries of Natural Law, revealers of the secrets of a New Order of the Ages. After all, the movement eventually came to be called the Age of Enlightenment. — Kenneth Rexroth

The secret is not to make a film that causes something like Virginia Tech to happen. The secret is to make a film that stops it happening. — Abel Ferrara

I HAVE A SECRET I CAN'T TELL NOR INK;
THOUGH IT HAS NO SCENT, IT DOES OFTEN STINK.
THOUGH IT MAKES NO SOUND, IT CAN MAKE YOU ROAR;
WHEN IT'S TASTELESS, I LIKE IT ALL THE MORE.
THOUGH IT HAS NO SHADE, IT LACKS NOT COLOR;
THOUGH IT HAS NO SHAPE, NO CAUSE FOR DOLOR.
IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW IT, YOU'RE INCORRECT,
AND FROM YOU THE SECRET I WILL PROTECT.
THE SECRET OF LIFE IS NOT STONE NOR CENTS,
FOR THE SECRET SENSE IS BUT A NONSENSE. — Pseudonymous Bosch

No, that's not the style of these people,' explained Maxy. 'You shouldn't think of these Bolsheviks as modern politicians. They were religious fanatics. Their Marxism was fanatical; their fervour was semi-Islamic; and they saw themselves as members of a secret military-religious order like the medieval Crusaders or the Knights Templar. They were ruthless, amoral and paranoid. They believed that millions would have to die to create their perfect world. Family, love and friendship were nothing compared to the holy grail. People died of gossip at Stalin's court. For a man like Satinov, secrecy was everything. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

What most people want in a leader is something that's very difficult to find: we want someone who listens ... The secret, Reagan's secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then to make a decision even if it contradicts the very people you are listening to. Reagan impressed his advisers, his adversaries, and his voters by actively listening. People want to be sure you hear what they said - they're less focused on whether or not you do what they said. — Seth Godin

Communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought - frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile — F Scott Fitzgerald

Paul scooted forward a bit. "Well, it's no secret I'm in love with your daughter. I want to marry Vanni. Do I have your blessing? Your permission?"
Walt shook his head and chuckled. "Haggerty, you sneak down the hall after I'm in bed every night
you'd damn sure better marry her. In fact, it might make sense for you to put the baby in that bedroom you're not using
save a trip or two, let the child have some space ... "
Paul felt a stain creep to his cheeks and thought, I'm over thirty-five
how the hell does this man make me blush? "Yes, sir. Good idea, sir. — Robyn Carr

So ... I feel in regard to this aged England ... pressed upon by transitions of trade and ... competing populations,-I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before;-indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In what, then, can those engaged in this kind of warfare place their hope? The Nakano Military School answered this question with a simple sentence: "In secret warfare, there is integrity." And this is right, for integrity is the greatest necessity when a man must deceive not only his enemies but his friends. With integrity - and I include in this sincerity, loyalty, devotion to duty and a sense of morality - one can withstand all hardships and ultimately turn hardship itself into victory. This was the lesson that the instructors at Futamata were constantly trying to instill in us. One of them put it this way: "If you are genuinely pure in spirit, people will respond to you and cooperate with you." This meant to me that so long as I remained pure inside, whatever measures I saw fit to take would eventually redound to the good of my country and my countrymen. — Hiroo Onoda

But you're so easy to sneak up on." He crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. "You should be honored that I bother, since there's no challenge to it."
"Right," I said dryly.
Tybalt has never made a secret of his contempt for changelings in general and me in particular. Not even the years I spent missing could change that. If anything, it made things worse, because when I came back, I promptly removed myself from all the places he was accustomed to finding me. Hating me suddenly took effort - an effort he's proved annoying glad to make. On the other hand, it's actually been something of a relief, because it is something I can count on. Dawn comes, the moon rises and Tybalt hates me. — Seanan McGuire

He had given each a code and procedure to follow should any kind of disaster arise, be it a siege of the city or a revolt from within. This revolt fulfilled the second contingency. He would not have to gather everyone himself. He need only contact a couple of them and they would pass along the information through their prescribed channels. All of them would follow various prepared routes to meet in the secret passageways below the palace, created for this very purpose. Down there, they could weather the danger in the city above. They even had food stores which stayed well-preserved in the cool and dry environment. — Brian Godawa

The secret of being a writer: not to expect others to value what you've done as you value it. Not to expect anyone else to perceive in it the emotions you have invested in it. Once this is understood, all will be well. — Joyce Carol Oates

I don't want just bits and pieces of you that I can steal away. I told you - you're worth more than being someone's secret."
"Yeah, well, it's not really a secret anymore," she declared.
"I know it isn't."
She groaned. "Then what, Corrado? What do you want?"
His strong hands cupped both of her cheeks as he leaned down toward her. He stared into her eyes, drinking in the devotion she - for some godforsaken reason - felt toward him. "I'm a greedy man, Celia. I want everything. — J.M. Darhower

We should never forget that our time is among the talents for which we must give account at the judgment of God. Time being not the least precious of these, will be required with a strictness proportionate to its value. Let us tremble at this idea, as well we may. We must be tried not only for what we have done - but for what we had time to do, yet neglected to do it. Not only for the hours spent in sin - but for those wasted in idleness. Let us beware of that mode of spending time which some call killing it, for this murder,like others, will not always be concealed - the hours destroyed in secret will appear when we least expect it, to the unspeakable terror and amazement of our souls - they arise from the dead, and fly away to heaven, where they might have carried better news, and there tell sad tales of us, which we shall be sure to hear of again, when we hold up our hands at the bar, and they shall come as so many swift witnesses against us! — John Angell James

Women have innate talents and exceptional abilities that go unnoticed by our society, and that women themselves often do not fully appreciate. If every woman were to listen closely enough to her own secret song- not simply with ears, but with eyes (all three!), loins, breasts, heart, spirit, and soul- she would discover a power that she has carried with her since before the beginning of time. — Laurie Cabot

I had only some dim and unformed sense, a sense which struck me now and then, and which I could not explain coherently, that for some years the South and particularly the Gulf Coast had been for America what people were still saying California was, and what California seemed to me not to be: the future, the secret source of malevolent and benevolent energy, the psychic center. — Joan Didion

People are being really picky about the upcoming election. I read that Americans do not want the next president to be a first-term senator, be over 65, or have a former president in the family. Then the Secret Service said, 'Hey, whoever slips through slips through. No promises.' — Jimmy Fallon

The secret of seeing is, then the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise. I return from one walk knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the laurel blooms. I return form the same walk a day later scarcely knowing my own name. Litanies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth. Ailinon, alleluia! — Annie Dillard

Yet, analytical truth is not as mysterious, or as secret, so as to not allow us to see that people with a talent for directing consciences see truth rise spontaneously. — Jacques Lacan

What is this Charity, this clinking of money between strangers, and when did Charity cease to be a comforting and secret thing between one friend and another? Does Love make her voice heard through a committee, does Love employ an almoner to convey her message to her neighbor? ... The real Love knows her neighbor face to face, and laughs with him and weeps with him, and eats and drinks with him, so that at last, when his black day dawns, she may share with him, not what she can spare, but all that she has. — Stella Benson

I don't know a lot of show runners. I mean I met a lot of them in picket lines. I'm not part of a, like, secret society or pickup basketball game. As far as I'm concerned, pick-up basketball games are secret societies. They confuse me. I've never been a networker or I've never been very social. — Joss Whedon

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley ... He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: To Harry Potter - the boy who lived! — J.K. Rowling

Jem's eyes had widened, and then he'd laughed, a soft laugh. "Did you think I did not know you had a secret?" he'd said. "Did you think I walked into my friendship with you with my eyes shut? I did not know the nature of the burden you carried. But I knew there was a burden." He'd stood up. "I knew you thought yourself poison to all those around you," he'd added. "I knew you thought there to be some corruptive force about you that would break me. I meant to show you that I would not break, that love was not so fragile. Did I do that? — Cassandra Clare

But it's not time that matters. It felt ... like a secret place just us two knew about. — David Mitchell

No society can survive if it allows its members to behave toward one another in the same way in which it encourages them to behave as a group toward other groups; internal cooperation is the first law of external competition. The struggle for existence is not ended by mutual aid, it is incorporated, or transferred to the group. Other things equal, the ability to compete with rival groups will be proportionate to the ability of the individual members and families to combine with one another.
Hence every society inculcates a moral code, and builds up in the heart of the individual, as its secret allies and aides, social dispositions that mitigate the natural war of life; it encourages by calling them virtues those qualities or habits in the individual which redound to the advantage of the group, and discourages contrary qualities by calling them vices.
In this way the individual is in some outward measure socialized, and the animal becomes a citizen. — Will Durant

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes. — Mark Twain

When my father finally got around to teaching me to drive, he was impressed at my "natural" talent for driving, not knowing that I had already been secretly driving my mother's car around the neighborhood. When I took the test and got my license and my father gave me my own set of keys to the car one night at dinner, it was a major rite of passage for him and my mother. Their perception of me had changed and was formally acknowledged. For me the occasion meant a private sanction to do in public what I had already been doing in secret. — Robert Fulghum

Chad Michael Ward is a master of the storytelling craft. His imagery, both still and moving, reaches deep into the darkest corners of the mind, combining the macabre and the sensuous Revealing humanity's secret daydream atrocities. CMW taps into our most excitable of emotions with a blend of fear and human sexuality. Like an erotic car accident we can not look away from. — Dave Navarro

I think Kwan intended to show me the world is not a place but the vastness of the sou. And the soul is nothing more than love, limitless, endless, all that moves us toward knowing what is true ... If people we love die, then they are lost only to our ordinary senses. If we remember, we can find them anytime with our hundred secret senses. — Amy Tan

I don't believe in the Law of Attraction. There were things I wanted in my life that no amount of positive thinking was going to make it a reality for me. However, I have learned to believe in the Law of Tough Love. Life has thrown a dozen tragedies at me. I did what any Christian would do
prayed for the outcome I wanted, but God was tough and only gave me what I needed. I now realize that life is not about fulfilling a wish list; rather a need list. Good and bad experiences are on the horizon. How else does a person change, grow and evolve? And just like any warrior woman, I won't simply survive
but thrive! — Shannon L. Alder

Zen is a study. It's a discipline. It involves the active use of will to make things happen or not happen. These are the secrets of power. — Frederick Lenz

The secret of meditation is the art of unlearning. Mind is learning; meditation is unlearning: that is - die constantly to your experience; let it not imprison you; experience becomes a dead weight in the living and flowing, riverlike consciousness. — Rajneesh

If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever little work I can do. I try to give joy to one person in the morning, and remove the suffering of one person in the afternoon. If you and your friends do not despise the small work, a million people will remove a lot of suffering. That is the secret. Start right now. — Chan Khong

It is odd how, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by someone else will rouse you to a fury of denial. — Agatha Christie

Truth is not a mystery - its greatest secrets are yours to know through simple honesty and surrender to what that honesty reveals. — John De Ruiter

Do you know the real secret of how Presidents become Presidents?" Before I can answer, he explains, "It's because they're good at getting people to do things for them. In fact, they're not just good at it. They're maestros. Virtuosos. To get that title of President, you need thousands of people doing thousands of different things, all for your benefit. It's a massive churning machine. And y'know what feeds that machine?" he asks. "People like you, Beecher. It's fed with your life, and your family, and your reputation. Because when things go wrong ... and they always go wrong ... the President isn't allowed to have that skunk smell around him. So when that happens, he doesn't just replace you. He crumples you up, tosses you out back, and ... chomp goes the woodchipper. — Brad Meltzer

Secrets of the heart are different. They are private and painful, and we want nothing more than to hide them from the world. They do not swell and press against the mouth. They live in the heart, and the longer they are kept, the heavier they become. Teccam claims it is better to have a mouthful of poison than a secret of the heart. Any fool will spit out poison, he says, but we hoard these painful treasures. We swallow hard against them every day, forcing them deep inside us. There they sit, growing heavier, festering. Given enough time, they cannot help but — Patrick Rothfuss

Are you afraid in there?" she said softly, as the men called out for them.
"No," he said. "I'm not afraid. You lock me in. They won't get me."
She closed the door on the little white face, turned the key in the lock. Then she slipped the key into her pocket. The lock was hidden by a pivoting device shaped like a light switch. It was impossible to see the outline of the cupboard in the paneling of the wall. Yes, he'd be safe there. She was sure of it.
The girl murmured his name and laid her palm flat on the wooden panel.
"I'll come back for you later. I promise. — Tatiana De Rosnay

Sexuality is a part of our behavior. It's part of our world freedom. Sexuality is something that we ourselves create. It is our own creation, and much more than the discovery of a secret side of our desire. We have to understand that with our desires go new forms of relationships, new forms of love, new forms of creation. Sex is not a fatality; it's a possibility for creative life. It's not enough to affirm that we are gay but we must also create a gay life. — Michel Foucault

The secret of poetry is never explained - is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, & the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, & knows not that they are such. 'Tis as easy as breath. 'Tis like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, & none knows what it is. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Over time, a commitment to challenging, focused work and leisure produces not only better daily experience, but also a more complex, interesting person: the long-range benefit of the focused life. As Hobbs put it, the secret of fulfillment is to choose trouble for oneself in the direction of what one would like to become. — Winifred Gallagher

Hence, when his name was casually mentioned by neighboring yeomen, the listener said, Ah, Clym Yeobright: what is he doing now?' When the instinctive question about a person is, What is he doing? it is felt that he will not be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in particular. There is an indefinite sense that he must be invading some region of singularity , good or bad. The devout home is that he is doing well. The secret faith is that he is making a mess of it ... So the subject recurred: if he were making a fortune and a name, so much the better for him, if he were making a tragical figure in the world, so much the better for a narrative — Thomas Hardy

The critic will certainly be an interpreter, but he will not treat Art as a riddling Sphinx, whose shallow secret may be guessed and revealed by one whose feet are wounded and who knows not his name. Rather, he will look upon Art as a goddess whose mystery it is his province to intensify, and whose majesty his privilege to make more marvellous in the eyes of men. — Oscar Wilde

From lips indifferent of her death I heard,
Indifferently I listened to it, too,'
were echoing in my heart. O youth, youth! little dost thou care for anything; thou art master, as it were, of all the treasures of the universe - even sorrow gives thee pleasure, even grief thou canst turn to thy profit; thou art self-confident and insolent; thou sayest, 'I alone am living - look you!' - but thy days fly by all the while, and vanish without trace or reckoning; and everything in thee vanishes, like wax in the sun, like snow ... . And, perhaps, the whole secret of thy charm lies, not in being able to do anything, but in being able to think thou wilt do anything; lies just in thy throwing to the winds, forces which thou couldst not make other use of; in each of us gravely regarding himself as a prodigal, gravely supposing that he is justified in saying, 'Oh, what might I not have done if I had not wasted my time! — Ivan Turgenev

I have complete confidence in - in Secret Service. These guys and gals are unbelievably professional. They know what they're doing. And I basically do what they tell me to do. Now, sometimes I - I'm the first one to admit that it chaffs a little bit being inside this bubble. It's the hardest adjustment of being president, not being able to just take a walk. — Barack Obama

She did not still feel, as I did, the anxiety about a woman who was suffering for love. What did I care about shoes. I still had, in my mind's eye, the most secret stages of that affair of violated trust, passion, poetry that became a book, and it was as if she and I had read a novel together, as if we had seen, there in the back of the shop and not in the parish hall on Sunday, a dramatic film. I — Elena Ferrante

Everyone agrees that a secret should be kept intact, but everyone does not agree as to the nature and importance of secrecy. Too often we consult ourselves as to what we should say, what we should leave unsaid. There are few permanent secrets, and the scruple against revealing them will not last forever. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more willing to follow their own vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored places do not frighten them- or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power. That which we call genius has a great deal to do with courage and daring, a great deal to do with nerve. — Nathaniel Branden

In order to deceive others, it is necessary also to deceive oneself. The actor playing Hamlet must indeed believe that he is the Prince of Denmark, though when he leaves the stage he will usually remember who he really is. On the other hand, when someone's entire life is based on pretense, they will seldom if ever return to reality. That is the secret of successful politicians, evangelists and confidence tricksters - they believe that they are telling the truth, even when they know that they have faked the evidence. Sincerity, my dear Julia, is a quality not to be trusted. — Sarah Caudwell

The CIA has transformed from an organization created to recruit spies to steal secrets, into a paramilitary organization, a paramilitary force. It's not supposed to be a paramilitary force. It's not good at it. It needs to return to its roots. — John Kiriakou

Sometimes, to protect a secret we will say it so openly that most will not suspect the truth of what we are saying. — Donna Goddard

Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel -movement through space -provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions -perhaps one of the secret terrors -of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did. — Daniel J. Boorstin

Many of the books I loved as a kid, that even my mother read as a child, are very slow going. Today's children are not as patient. The best example of this is 'The Secret Garden,' which I adored as a child. — Lois Lowry

That room was Rolandsen's world. Rolandsen was not just irresponsibility and inebriation, he was also great thinker and inventor. There was a smell of acids that permeated the corridor and came to the notice of every visitor. Rolandsen made no secret of the fact that he had all these medicaments there solely to disguise the aroma of all the brandy he consumed. But this was part of an act designed purely to give himself an air of inscrutability. — Knut Hamsun

Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human being and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims worship nothing except God and Muhammad is his Messenger. There is no any mystery and secret in it. — Leo Tolstoy

Augustus Waters was the Mayor of the Secret City of Cancervania, and he is not replaceable", Isaac began.
"Other people will be able to tell you funny stories about Gus, because he was a funny guy, but let me tell you a serious one: A day after I got my eye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. I was blind and heartbroken and dind't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, 'I have wonderful news!' And I was like, 'I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now' and Gus said, 'This is wonderful news you want to hear' and I asked him, 'Fine, what is it?' and he said, 'You're going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet!'"
Isaac couldn't go on, or maybe that was all he had written. — John Green

For the first time in memory, I was unable to sleep not because I was anxious but because I was excited. To live in a damp crowded asshole and sing
if these guys don't know the secret to living, I don't know who does. (The Grieving Owl, page 157) — David Sedaris

He remembered Alejandra and the sadness he'd first seen in the slope of her shoulders which he'd presumed to understand and of which he knew nothing and he felt a loneliness he'd not known since he was a child and he felt wholly alien to the world although he loved it still. He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and it's beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for he vision of a single flower. — Cormac McCarthy

Rickie had a young man's reticence. He generally spoke of "a friend," "a person I know," "a place I was at." When the book of life is opening, our readings are secret, and we are unwilling to give chapter and verse. Mr. Pembroke, who was half way through the volume, and had skipped or forgotten the earlier pages, could not understand Rickie's hesitation, nor why with such awkwardness he should pronounce the harmless dissyllable "Ansell. — E. M. Forster

Reggie was so sick of it all. The things people knew (or thought they knew) about other people. Maybe everyone had a secret life, not just Vera. She suddenly hated all of it. She wanted people to be as see-through as fish tanks, no more murkiness, no misdirection. No lies and bullshit. No secret rooms or lies about being the star of some goddamn play that didn't even exist. — Jennifer McMahon

I talk to groups studying the most advanced spiritual teachings and sometimes these people wonder why nothing is happening in their lives. Their motive is the attainment of inner peace for themselves - which of course is a selfish motive. You will not find it with this motive. The motive, if you are to find inner peace, must be an outgoing motive. Service, of course, service. Giving, not getting. Your motive must be good if your work is to have good effect. The secret of life is being of service. — Peace Pilgrim

My dad was a bedwetter; I think his dad was a bedwetter. I like to talk about it because it's something that I thought would be my deepest, darkest secret my whole life, and then you become an adult, and it's not. — Sarah Silverman

Even at this stage, my preparations were like strapping on a parachute in an airplane that was about to crash; the whole time I was preparing to hurl myself out the door, I clung to the hope that something would happen at the last minute to forestall that terrible necessity I felt-not hostility, as psychiatric texts would say, or vengeful rage, or a desire for attention. This was done in secret, out of a need to alleviate pain which was as implacable as thirst. — Tracy Thompson

At first the rebels seemed to play the role of Don Quixote, courageously tilting at invincible windmills. Yet within eighty years the Dutch had not only secured their independence from Spain, but had managed to replace the Spaniards and their Portuguese allies as masters of the ocean highways, build a global Dutch empire, and become the richest state in Europe. The secret of Dutch success was credit. The — Yuval Noah Harari

Don't tell me you've been harboring secret fantasies about the farm laborers.'
'Of course not,' she said, 'although ... '
There was no way he was going to let those words trail off into oblivion. 'Although?' he prompted.
She looked a bit sheepish. 'Well, they do look terribly ... *elemental* ... out there in the sun, toiling away.'
He smiled. Slowly, like a man about to feast upon his dream come true. — Julia Quinn

The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep — Edgar Watson Howe

Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels. — Natalie Goldberg

We insist that this stuff we call science fiction is not SCI-FI. For some in the ghetto of Genre this is axiomatic, a secret truth known only to the genre kids, that there is proper science fiction and then there's that SCI-FI shit. — Hal Duncan

Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man. He speaks Himself; His words are written in the secret heart. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Moscow, Rome, London, Paris stay in place. Leningrad and New York float, spreading all their sails, cutting space with their prows, and can disappear, if not in reality, then in the imagination of the poet creating a myth, a mythical tradition on the grounds of his secret experience. — Nina Berberova

when one talks on subjects in which one takes a few ideas that are familiar to everyone, and combines and recombines them, it is easy to follow because these channels are present in everyone's brain, and it is only necessary to recur to them. But whenever a new subject comes, new channels have to be made, so it is not understood readily. And that is why the brain (it is the brain, and not the people themselves) refuses unconsciously to be acted upon by new ideas. It resists. The Prana is trying to make new channels, and the brain will not allow it. This is the secret of conservatism. — Swami Vivekananda

She was sad with an obscure sadness of which she had not the secret herself. There was in her whole person the stupor of a life ended but never commenced. — Victor Hugo

Visual journals are created in a secret language of symbols. Intentional or not, they are private maps only their makers can follow. — Jennifer New

They had a lurking suspicion even, that he died of secret love; though I must say there was a picture of him in the house with a damask nose, which concealment did not appear to have ever preyed upon. — Charles Dickens

Hunger is a blade that carves me
I open my arms and pull the air in
-big hug!-
then poof, right through me, nobody there.
It's only me holding myself.
My arms wrap two times
around my own ribs,
meet behind my back for a secret
handshake.
I am not what was expected.
I'm so sharp-
it's cut me now I'll cut you.
Come closer
closer
No, come closer
I'm gonna make you see what I see. — Madeleine George

Perhaps my sense of reality is not very highly developed, perhaps I lack a sound and reassuring instinct for the solid facts of our earthly existence; I can't always tell memories from dreams, and often I mistake dreams, coming to life again in colours, smells, sudden associations, with the eerie secret certainty of a past life from which time and space divide me no differently and no better than a light sleep in the early hours. — Annemarie Schwarzenbach

They read a little bit, write a little, and especially agree with themselves on important moves, important information, important awards, important writers that they plan to enthrone forever in history through a variety of memberships and numerous prizes awarded under the influence of top bureaucrats who know everything, not only about literature, but also about secret conspiracies, the Masons that lurk in every corner to crucify someone, steal someone's soul and sell it to an unknown devil, about whom only the chief bureaucrat possesses secret knowledge that he doesn't share; about history, ghosts, missing continents; about who said what to whom in confidence. — Dejan Stojanovic

It is ironic that constructive thinkers are often misunderstood as negative, as they differ from those longing for positivity: constructive thinkers have been conditioned to find positive in negative rather than suffering from the negative in negative. Or as Paul the Apostle wrote, 'I have learned the secret to contentment in any and every circumstance.' He was right. Indeed the Lord is our strength, especially under the commandment to love one another. Otherwise we are nothing and easily thrown about by both our own and other people's mind control in a painful, mental, physical desperation to run from every thought, every thing, and every one not seeming so positive or immediately beneficial to us. — Criss Jami

I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence
whether much that is glorious
whether all that is profound
does not spring from disease of thought
from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable", and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi".
We will say then, that I am mad. — Edgar Allan Poe

Whatever his secret was, I have learnt one secret too, and namely: that the soul is but a manner of being
not a constant state
that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations. The hereafter may be the full ability of consciously living in any chosen soul, in any number of souls, all of them unconscious of their interchangeable burden. — Vladimir Nabokov

Ultimately, all church mission statements have certain common threads. They contain a vertical dimension such as loving and obeying God. And they emphasize a horizontal dimension: how Christians treat those both inside and outside the church. They answer the question of why God left the church here on earth. The secret of success is not the wording but the fact that the people of the board have dug the mission statement out of the Bible for themselves, have decided to commit their church to it, and have made it theirs. — Carl F. George

This is not exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to miss lunch," Alex said grumpily forty minutes later. He shifted uncomfortably and tried to see what I was doing.
I stared him back into submission. "Wait."
The art room is usually empty Thursday afternoons except for me. Ms. Evers leaves early to teach her UArts class and looks up.Of course, I am one of the few entrusted with the Secret Location of the Key.
A few feet away from where I sat perched on a stool,Alex was posed on the anchient chaise we use for figure drawing. It's a relic, probably from the Palladinetti years: chipped mahogany and dusty velvet, what little remaining stuffing pokes out from a century of holes. I was probably luxurious once. Now it's like sitting on a slightly smelly board. But I'd wanted to sketch Alex as I so often saw him, reclining with his head propped on one hand,listening or talking or coaxing me to put down the glass, already,Ella,and come here. — Melissa Jensen

Are you conscious of a growing failure of your bodily powers? Do you expect to suffer long nights of languishing and days of pain? O be not sad! That bed may become a throne to you. You little know how every pang that shoots through your body may be a refining fire to consume your dross
a beam of glory to light up the secret parts of your soul. Are the eyes growing dim? Jesus will be your light. Do the ears fail you? Jesus' name will be your soul's best music, and His person your dear delight. Socrates used to say, "Philosophers can be happy without music;" and Christians can be happier than philosophers when all outward causes of rejoicing are withdrawn. In Thee, my God, my heart shall triumph, come what may of ills without! By thy power, O blessed Spirit, my heart shall be exceeding glad, though all things should fail me here below. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

We are only chance visitants to this jungle of blind mutations. The natural world existed when we did not, and it will continue to exist long after we are gone. The supernatural crept into life only when the door of consciousness was opened in our heads. The moment we stepped through that door, we walked out on nature. Say what we will about it and deny it till we die
we are blighted by our knowing what is too much to know and too secret to tell one another if we are to stride along our streets, work at our jobs, and sleep in our beds. It is the knowledge of a race of beings that is only passing through this shoddy cosmos. — Thomas Ligotti