Poignant Life Quotes & Sayings

In entertainment, I adore Ricky Gervais in 'Derek.' His performance is unbelievably charming, funny and poignant. In life, I adore my girlfriend. She is the most adorable person I have ever met - from her silly jokes to her cute teeth to her little drawings. — Josh Zuckerman

I bow in reverence before the emotions of every melted heart ... The more intense the delight in their presence, the more poignant the impression of their absence ... When the tears of bereavement have had their natural flow, they lead us again to life and love's generous joy. — James Martineau

At the Serima Mission, in Victoria Province, I am shown around by an enchantingly pretty African nun called Sister Balbina ... She cannot be more than 25, and has the most delightful figure. How poignant that she should have dedicated her life in this way.
When we come to the bell tower, I ask her to climb up the ladder in front of me.It was rather a caddish request, I suppose, but I had often wondered. Black petticoats and pink knickers. To think I had to come all this way to find out. — Auberon Waugh

I want to see the king," I said, after explaining who I was.
"Wonderful," said the ancient Nkumai who sat on a cushion near the corner pole of the house. "I'm glad for you."
That was all, and apparently he meant to say no more. "Why are you so glad?" I asked.
"Because it's good for every human being to have an unfulfilled wish. It makes all of life so poignant. — Orson Scott Card

I hate these affairs", he'd told her once, tearing up an engraved invitation to an exclusive charity ball. "They're the worst kind of discrimination. An invitation doesn't really mean that you're invited; it means that a whole lot of people aren't — Melinda Cross

The people they had been last summer, the person she had been
Dicey guessed she'd never be afraid again, not the way she
had been all summer. She had taken care of them all, sometimes well, sometimes badly. And they had covered the distances.
For most of the summer, they had been unattached. Nobody knew who they were or what they were doing. It didn't matter
what they did, as long as they all stayed together. Dicey remembered that feeling, of having things pretty much her own way.
And she remembered the feelings of danger. It was a little bit like being a wild animal, she thought to herself.
Dicey missed that wildness. She knew she would never have it again.
And she missed the sense of Dicey Tillerman against the whole world and doing all right. — Cynthia Voigt

Johnson told the doctors that "he enjoyed nothing but whiskey, sunshine and sex." Reedy found the moment "poignant," he was to recall. "Without realizing what he was doing, he had outlined succinctly the tragedy of his life. The only way he could get away from himself was sensation: sun, booze, sex. — Robert A. Caro

He was the friend of my life. You know, you only have one friend like that; there can't be two. — James Salter

Merrie Destefano storms the world of urban fantasy with AFTERLIFE, breathing new life into the vast genre of the undead. Gritty, poignant, in the tradition of Bladerunner, with the nostalgia of New Orleans. With crisp and beautiful prose, AFTERLIFE blurs the line between the living and the dead to ask life's ultimate questions-even if they take nine lives to solve. — Tosca Lee

But he was an only child and an only son, and for a mother in such a position it is not always easy to accept that another woman will eventually enter her son's life and, if all goes according to plan - the plan being that of the other woman - take him away. This common conflict, so understandable and so poignant, is played out time and time again, and almost always with the same painful result: Mother loses. It is so, of course, if Mother is overt in her attempt to put off the almost inevitable; if she is covert, then she stands a chance, admittedly a remote one, of introducing into her son's mind a germ of doubt that the woman he has chosen might not be the right one for him. That takes skill, and boundless patience, but it is a course fraught with dangers for the relationship between mother and future daughter-in-law, let alone for that between mother and son. — Alexander McCall Smith

It's a trick question, Aquilla. A Mask is not made. She is remade. First she is destroyed. Stripped down to the trembling child that lives at her core. It doesn't matter how strong she thinks she is. Blackcliff diminishes, humiliates, and humbles her." "But if she survives, she is reborn. She rises from the shadow world of failure and despair so that she might become as fearful as that which destroyed her. So that she might know darkness and use it as her scim and shield in her mission to serve the Empire. — Sabaa Tahir

The sight of these closed golden houses with their warmth of life awoke in him a bitter, poignant, strangely mixed emotion of exile and return, of loneliness and security, of being forever shut out from the palpable and passionate integument of life and fellowship, and of being so close to it that he could touch it with his hand, enter it by a door, possess it with a word
a word that, somehow, he could never speak, a door that, somehow, he would never open. — Thomas Wolfe

She kept swimming out into life because she hadn't yet found a rock to stand on. — Barbara Kingsolver

It's the same thing that makes all pop music so heartbreaking. Even when Miley Cyrus sings "So I put my hands up, they're playin' my song / The butterflies fly away / I'm noddin' my head like 'Yeah!' / Movin' my hips like 'Yeah!'" in her song "Party in the U.S.A." It's that chirping mirth against a backdrop of despair, that juxtaposition of blithe optimism against all the crushing brutalities and inadequacies of life. The image of an ineffably beautiful butterfly flitting by the shattered windows of a dilapidated, abandoned factory is not so poignant because it highlights the indomitable life force. To the contrary, the butterfly (and the pop song) is like a PowerPoint cursor; it's there to whet our perception of and strengthen our affinity for what's moribund, for what's always dying before our eyes. Loving the moribund is our way of signaling the dead from this shore: "We are your kinsmen ... — Mark Leyner

Mallory dropped her head to the steering wheel. "Look, I'm mad at you, okay? This isn't about me. I know my painful memories are relative. My life is good. I'm lucky. This isn't about how poor little Mallory has had it so hard. I'm not falling apart or anything."
He stroked a hand down her back. "Of course you're not. You're just holding the steering wheel up with your head for a minute, that's all. — Jill Shalvis

I did so want to hear a singer. I miss the sound of a woman's voice, the way they look and smell. — J.A. Willoughby

I want to be whole. More than half-healed. More than half-loved.

I was never given a lovely life. And I've had far too much taken from me, the most poignant being my innocence, my joy, and my trust... I want them all back. — Cheri Bauer

Later in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one's dignity, which can be an insuperable barrier against advancement in almost any direction. However, in those days, choice between dignity and unsatisfied curiosity was less clear to me as a cruel decision that had to be made. — Anthony Powell

So in the end, was it worth it? Jesus Christ. How irreparably changed my life has become. It's always the last day of summer and I've been left out in the cold with no door to get back in. I'll grant you I've had more than my share of poignant moments. Life passes most people by while they're making grand plans for it. Throughout my lifetime, I've left pieces of my heart here and there. And now, there's almost not enough to stay alive. But I force a smile, knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent. There are no more white horses or pretty ladies at my door. — George Jung

I believe there is a kind of happiness to be found in every thing in life, in all that is good and pleasing, as well as in that which is sad or poignant. — Syrie James

And now she was thinking of her own death, with her heart gripped not by fear but by the excitement of a great discovery, the feeling that she was about to learn what she had been unable to learn from her brief experience of love. What she thought about death was childish, but what could never have touched her in the past now filled her with poignant tenderness, as sometimes a familiar face we see suddenly with the eyes of love makes us aware that it has been dearer to us than life itself for longer than we have ever realized. — Georges Bernanos

To live is to travel, on a voyage more epic than the odysseys of myth - not from place to place, but through the poignant strangeness of time. — T.L. Rese

I'll never forget the crippling headaches Grandpa suffered, the nausea from chemo and radiation. I watched Daddy wrestle with decision after decision, ultimately withholding IV antibiotics to treat the pneumonia that took Grandpa more quickly and far more gently. Barrons is voicing the legitimate question of anyone who's ever agreed not to resuscitate, to cease life-sustaining measures for a loved one, to accept a Stage 4 cancer patient's decision to refuse more chemo, or euthanize a beloved pet. Throughout the caretaker experience, your loved one's presence is intense and exquisitely poignant and painful, then all the sudden they're gone and you discover their absence is even more intense and exquisitely poignant and painful. You don't know how to walk or breathe when they're no longer there. And how could you? Your world revolved around them. — Karen Marie Moning

Rain caused one to reflect on the shadowed, more poignant parts of life - the inescapable sorrows, the speechless longings, the disappointments, the regrets, the cold miseries. It also allowed one the leisure to ponder questions unasked in the bustle of brighter days; and if one were snug under a sound roof, as Abel was, one felt somehow mothered, though mothers were nowhere around, and absolved of responsibilities. — William Steig

Inevitable. The characters we've come to know and love are no longer part of our lives. This can leave us with a certain longing. Perhaps we'll open the book again and skim through it, searching out favorite passages to kindle again those powerful emotions. But the passion is never stirred quite as strong the second time around. So it is with life. We rush through the days that we're given, eager to engage in the conflicts and passions, to push through and conquer and see how it all ends. When suddenly the end is in sight, we're surprised. We stall, frantically savoring each moment. The sun shines brighter, the smiles appear more tender and we listen for words of love with an urgency that would be poignant if it were — Mary Alice Monroe

I had to tell it because it was the only honorable way to fulfill the promise that I had made on the Red Lake Reservation almost twenty years earlier. This, then - The Wolf at Twilight - is the fruit of that promise. It is the part of Dan's life I had left untold. It takes us to places that for too long have been hidden in shadow and reveals truths about what has been taken from Native people and what the rest of us have lost in that taking. But it also reveals what we may all yet become if we heed Sitting Bull's poignant entreaty and put our minds together to see what kind of lives we can create for the children. I hope you find it worthy of your time. If it opens your eyes to another way of understanding, I am grateful. If it simply entertains you, I am pleased. But what matters most is that it touches you. For it is, above all, a story of Native America, and its goal is to lodge deep in your heart. — Kent Nerburn

At some point in life every person encounters haunting feelings of loneliness, because the feeling of being alone and withdrawing deeply into the inner self is part of the human condition. A person might choose to countenance or even cultivate their loneliness and turn the poignant hours of unerring solitude into poetry of their soul. — Kilroy J. Oldster

But the character of the music emphasized the tale as allegory
humorous, poignant, humane allegory
disclosing the metamorphosis of life itself, in which man moves from confident inexperience through the bitterness of experience, toward the rueful wisdom of self-knowledge. — Robertson Davies

Alexandre Dumas wrote those lines when he had just turned forty-five and had decided it was time to reflect on his life. He never got past chronicling his thirty-first year - which was well before he had published a word as a novelist - yet he spent more than the first two hundred pages on a story that is as fantastic as any of his novels: the life of his father, General Alexandre - Alex - Dumas, a black man from the colonies who narrowly survived the French Revolution and rose to command fifty thousand men. The chapters about General Dumas are drawn from reminiscences of his mother and his father's friends, and from official documents and letters he obtained from his mother and the French Ministry of War. It is a raw and poignant attempt at biography, full of gaps, omissions, and re-creations of scenes and dialogue. But it is sincere. The story of his father ends with this scene of his death, the point at which the novelist begins his own life story. — Tom Reiss

A father's death is the most important event, the more heartbreaking and poignant loss in a man's life. — Sigmund Freud

She'd made life poignant for the Irish. The terror she inspired gave peace its serenity; the pain she caused gave health its lustre; her failure to love made me grateful for my ability to do so, and I realized, far too late, that though I never did or could have loved her as she might have wished, I should have loved her more. — Kevin Hearne

I wish [that when] I was 12 years old I'd been able to watch a video of my favourite actress explaining in such an intellectual, beautiful, poignant way the definition of feminism - I would have understood it and then earlier on in my life I would have proudly claimed that I was a feminist, because I would have understood what the word means. — Taylor Swift

Life's missed opportunities, at the end, may seem more poignant to us than those we embraced - because in our imagination they have a perfection that reality can never rival. — Roger Ebert

A thinking puppet is the mind of life:
Its choice is the work of elemental strengths
That know not their own birth and end and cause
And glimpse not the immense intent they serve.
In this nether life of man drab-hued and dull,
Yet filled with poignant small ignoble things,
The conscious Doll is pushed a hundred ways
And feels the push but not the hands that drive.
For none can see the masked ironic troupe
To whom our figure-selves are marionettes,
Our deeds unwitting movements in their grasp,
Our passionate strife an entertainment's scene. — Sri Aurobindo

Miriam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Miriam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings. — Khaled Hosseini

Whatever form each of our own intimate adventures has taken in our fantasies, or in "real life," this Sacred Romance is set within all our hearts and will not go away. It is the core of our spiritual journey. Any religion that ignores it survives only as a guilt induced legalism, a set of propositions to be memorized and rules to be obeyed.
Someone or something has romances us from the beginning with creek-side singers and pastel sunsets, with the austere majesty of snow capped mountains and the poignant flames of autumn colors telling us of something - or someone - leaving with a promise to return. These things can, in an unguarded moment, bring us to our knees with longing for this something or someone who is lost; someone or something only our hearts recognizes. — John Eldredge

In the movies there are always these poignant moments when people work out their misunderstandings, their miscommunications. But that's not real life. In real life it's hard to tell someone you don't love them anymore. It's harder to tell your father you don't know how to live another day. My grief has stolen my voice -Audrey — Suzanne Young

I find these comparisons particularly poignant: life versus death, hope versus fear. Space exploration and the highly mechanized destruction of people use similar technology and manufacturers, and similar human qualities of organization and daring. Can we not make the transition from automated aerospace killing to automated aerospace exploration of the solar system in which we live? — Carl Sagan

What we set out to do with this movie [Leaves of Grass] was to create something that was funny and serious and had large tonal ambitions. A movie that could be poignant and funny, and suddenly quite violent. To have a character utterly sideswiped, and to learn that life is about balance. — Edward Norton

Failure is life at it's most poignant and it's only there to push you in the right direction. — Oprah Winfrey

It was an unexpected kiss and terribly poignant, because in it there wasn't a promise of love but a farewell.
Morwen felt the salty tears slide down the sides of the cheeks, while her lips moved in unison with those of Galadir. The Prince was holding her close, stroking her black hair. He wanted to keep her for life. He wished that moment would last forever, but it was too late. — Chiara Cilli

Medicine may be the lens through which I see the world, but since I think of medicine as 'life +', a place where life is exaggerated and seen at its most vital and poignant, I'll be writing about life more than I will be writing about medicine. — Abraham Verghese

If you think about people's lives, you think about what's significant. And the things I find significant in my life are not the moments when people are yelling at each other. They're the moments when someone says something that is very poignant, but oftentimes not loud. — Patrick Wang

Life has to end. Love doesn't. — Mitch Albom

I really should not be so willing to interpret my own books as I seem to be this evening. But the blessing Ames gives Jack is an act of recognition that blesses Ames, too. He is profoundly moved that he has had the occasion to do it, that Jack accepted it, wanted it. I really do believe that all blessing is mutual, and that the moment of blessing is when people rise to the very beautiful seriousness of what they are. I feel that we ought to value ourselves and one another far more than we do, and I'm speaking theologically here, but also with an awareness that always haunts me, that we are the wonder of the universe, incomparably complex, brilliant, poignant - and perverse, of course. Our own overwhelming problem. But there are good grounds for awe in any human encounter. If we came anywhere near respecting the richness of this improbable life - hopes would flourish and blossom as they have never done before. — Marilynne Robinson

You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it," she said.
"And it's the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than men because birth is the reflection of death. — Frank Herbert

We all have the best laid plans for our children, and they go and ruin it all by growing up any way they want to. What the hell was it all for, then? (Real Life and Liars) — Kristina Riggle

Confined to common life thy numbers flow,
And neither soar too high nor sink too low;
There strength and ease in graceful union meet,
Though polished, subtle, and though poignant, sweet;
Yet powerful to abash the from of crime
And crimson error's cheek with sportive rhyme.
[Lat., Verba togae sequeris, junctura callidus acri,
Ore teres modico, pallentes radere mores
Doctus, et ingenuo culpam defigere ludo.] — Aulus Persius Flaccus

The world, every day, is New. Only for those born in, say, 1870 or so, can there be a meaningful use of the term postmodernism, because for the rest of us we are born and we see and from what we see and digest we remake our world. And to understand it we do not need to label it, categorize it. These labels are slothful and dismissive, and so contradict what we already know about the world, and our daily lives. We know that in each day, we laugh, and we are serious. We do both, in the same day, every day. But in our art we expect clear distinction between the two ... But we don't label our days Serious Days or Humorous Days. We know that each day contains endless nuances - if written would contain dozens of disparate passages, funny ones, sad ones, poignant ones, brutal ones, the terrifying and the cuddly. But we are often loathe to allow this in our art. And that is too bad ... — Dave Eggers

Ogden Nash wrote a line that I have always remembered: "The old men know when an old man dies." With the years, that line has become ever more poignant to me. After all, an old person to one who has known him for a long time is not an "old person" but is much more likely to be thought of as the younger person who inhabits our memory, vigorous and vibrant. When an old person dies who has been a part of your life, it is part of your youth that dies. And though you survive yourself, you must watch death take away the world of your youth, little by little. — Isaac Asimov

Christ walked the path every mortal is called to walk so that he would know how to succor and strengthen us in our most difficult times. He knows the deepest and most personal burdens we carry. He knows the most public and poignant pains we bear. He descended below al such grief in order that he might lift us above it. There is no anguish or sorrow or sadness in life that he has not suffered in our behalf and borne away upon his own valiant and compassionate shoulders. — Jeffrey R. Holland

...the woods, when they give at all, give unstintedly, and hold nothing back from their true worshippers. We must go to them lovingly, humbly, patiently, watchfully, and we shall learn what poignant loveliness lurks in the wild places and silent intervales, lying under starshine and sunset, what cadences of unearthly music are harped on aged pine boughs or crooned in copses of fir, what delicate savours exhale from mosses and ferns in sunny corners or on damp brooklands, what dreams and myths and legends of an older time haunt them. Then the immortal heart of the woods will beat against ours and its subtle life will steal into our veins and make us its own forever, so that no matter where we go or how widely we wander we shall yet be drawn back to the forest to find our most enduring kinship. — L.M. Montgomery

I only photograph myself at poignant moments in my life as a check of where I am and how large my thighs are. — Sam Taylor-Johnson

Raw and delicate, poignant and poetic, Shelby Smoak's Bleeder exposes the sorrow and sometimes sweetness of coming to age with HIV. In a world of misunderstanding and stigmas, the young Smoak searches for love and acceptance, and his readers can't help but find themselves becoming emotionally attached to him. His is an observant and encompassing story, noticing the brilliance of existence that others might take for granted. The sunsets written here are more lovely than in life. — Jenny Boully

Among all the tragic consequences of depression and war, this suppression of personal self-expression through one's life work is among the most poignant. — Henry Wriston

Rich said, "As your get older, feelings are harder to come by." It was so simple and poignant. — Ahmir Questlove Thompson

A particularly poignant moment for me today was after being given two quotes which caused me to spend time reflecting on the path that my own life has taken so far, and might take in the future: "Whatever does not make your heart sing was not meant for you in this life" "Whatever you lose time doing, you should be doing in life — Rachel Stainer

credited with one of the most poignant summaries of commitment to Christ ever penned: "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep [this temporal life] to gain what he cannot lose [eternal life with Christ]. — Tim LaHaye

We sat down and told stories that happened to us in our childhood, to our children. They were all basically based on the truth. These stories were funny and poignant to us. They just took off. These are all stories from my life. — Howie Mandel

The Bird of Time

O Bird of Time on your fruitful bough
What are the songs you sing? ...
Songs of the glory and gladness of life,
Of poignant sorrow and passionate strife,
And the lilting joy of the spring;
Of hope that sows for the years unborn,
And faith that dreams of a tarrying morn,
The fragrant peace of the twilight's breath,
And the mystic silence that men call death.

O Bird of Time, say where did you learn
The changing measures you sing? ...
In blowing forests and breaking tides,
In the happy laughter of new-made brides,
And the nests of the new-born spring;
In the dawn that thrills to a mother's prayer,
And the night that shelters a heart's despair,
In the sigh of pity, the sob of hate,
And the pride of a soul that has conquered fate. — Sarojini Naidu

Of all the agonies in life, that which is most poignant and harrowing
that which for the time annihilates reason, and leaves our whole organization one lacerated, mangled heart
is the conviction that we have been deceived where we placed all the trust of love. — Bill Vaughan

It is when we are confronted with ... poignant reminders of mortality that we become most aware of the strangeness and wonder of our brief life on Earth. — Kathleen Basford

People are unhappy because they don't understand life; by happy, I mean complete, aware, conscious, poignant, caring, loving, unaffected, cosmic, simplistic, humble, excited, passive - everything. You are everything. — Frederick Lenz

I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others
young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life. — F Scott Fitzgerald

As a twenty-one-year-old college student, Daisy Richmond's answer to the question "If you knew you were going to die in one month, what would you do?" was full of adventure and travel to exotic lands. As a twenty-seven-year-old woman who is faced with a recurrence of breast cancer, her answer is very different. Before I Go is the poignant story of Daisy's journey to navigate the unexpected twists and turns of life, and the painful process of letting go of everything but love. — Colleen Oakley

We learn about life by exploring the texture and depth of space that composes our private inner world. In solitude we revisit our wounded feelings, sins, doubts, and deepest despair, replay poignant memories of loved ones, project what we are becoming, and ascertain the purpose of our being. — Kilroy J. Oldster

This book is not the memoir of a contented man. It's not the poignant reflections of a white-haired guru who has finally figured out the secret to contentment. It's more like sweaty, bloody, hastily scribbled notes from a battlefield. I'm still struggling to escape the sinister fingers on this conspiracy. I'm still waging war against the discontentment that rages in my life. I can see contentment in the distance, like a hazy oasis, but I have to pick my way through a minefield to get there. I'm not the contented man God wants me to be, but I'm fighting to get there. I'm writing this book the hope that you'll join me in the fight. — Stephen Altrogge