Quotes & Sayings About Realizing What You Have Lost

We believe deep down that we've lost something precious and are seeking it outside ourselves, never realizing that we are carrying it within us wherever we go. — Tsoknyi Rinpoche

All this history ... ,' Danny says, then trails off. Lost in it. Feeling it connect. Realizing the weight of the world comes largely from its past. — David Levithan

I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another. — Jean Cocteau

I come to reality, realizing that Levi is still staring at me, and I'm lost somewhere in my brain. I clearly took a wrong turn at the frontal lobe and got lost somewhere in the sensory cortex. — Anonymous

Only a numskull is pleased at being a so-called "success" with women, only a dunderhead is puffed up by it. A real man is much more likely to be dismayed at realizing that a woman has lost her heart to him when he can't reciprocate her feelings. — Stefan Zweig

We're not in Khlong Prem Prison yet. So let's assume we're winning.
But inwardly, Anderson wonders. There are too many variables in play, and it makes him nervous. He remembers a time in Missouri when the Grahamites rioted. There had been tension, some small speeches, and then it had simply erupted in field burning. No one had seen the violence coming. Not a single intelligence officer had anticipated the cauldron boiling beneath the surface.
Anderson had ended up perched atop a grain silo, choking on the smoke of HiGro fields going up in sheets of flame, firing steadily at rioters on the ground with a spring rifle he'd salvaged from a slow-moving security guard, and all the while he had wondered how everyone had missed the signs. They lost the facility because of that blindness. And now it is the same. A sudden eruption, and the surprise of realizing that the world he understands is not the one he actually inhabits. — Paolo Bacigalupi

You thought you were found but you realize that you were lost, and someday you may discover that you're lost now. — Walter Kirn

When it came to a man's soul, Noah (Wild Card) thought that maybe his uncle (Jordan, Elite Ops commander) was finally realizing that once a man lost his soul to a woman, it was gone forever. And life wasn't much worth living without her. — Lora Leigh

I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn't know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Part of dedicating your life to studying literature is realizing that storytelling is more than just make-believe and that make-believe is far more important that we all pretend -- make believe -- it is. One way or another books tell the stories of their readers. But telling our lives is not the same as shaping them, whittling them away. Suddenly Jill had lost control. Her books had taken over and were in charge. — Laurie Frankel

God's grace is freely available but in order to receive it you have to realize you are lost without it. — David Jeremiah

She logged in and read a few of her old posts, smiling at the issues she had raged about and shaking her head at how some of the rants now seemed pretentious and judgmental. She had grown so much without even realizing she had. Mythili typed out the draft, spicing it up subtly and after a last read, she published it. Admiring the brand new post on her main page, she realized she missed writing. She had barely written anything since her last by-line. Typing this out, she felt like she was back with a long-lost friend who understood her. It was like snuggling up in a warm blanket when a thunderstorm raged outside. — Shweta Ganesh Kumar

When Jesus warns us not to store up treasures on earth, it's not just because wealth might be lost; it's because wealth will always be lost. Either it leaves us while we live, or we leave it when we die. No exceptions ... Realizing its value is temporary should radically affect our investment strategy ... According to Jesus, storing up earthly treasures isn't simply wrong. It's just plain stupid. — Randy Alcorn

Our true joy is like those sunglasses we've been looking for all over, suddenly realizing they've been propped on our head during our entire search. They're already there, quietly waiting for us to reach up and realize they were never lost at all. — Kelly Corbet

If Christians do not develop their own tools of analysis , then when issues come up that they want to understand, they'll reach over and borrow someone else's tools- whatever concepts are generally accepted in their general field or in the culture at large.
But when they do that, Os Guiness writes, they don't realize that "They are borrowing not an isolated tool, but a whole philosophical toolbox laden with tools which have their own particular bias to every problem." They may even end up absorbing an entire set of alien principles without even realizing it.
In other words, not only do we fail to be salt and light to a lost culture, but we ourselves may end up being shaped by our culture. — Nancy Pearcey

Death is not like going to sleep, it's more like waking up from a dream and realizing the person you were in the dream wasn't you, the problems you had in the dream weren't your problems and waking up from the dream to this world is like going back to sleep again and waking up in a dream world, forgetting who we are again and getting lost in the dream character, the character who we think we are and who has problems. Waking up in a dream and realizing we are not the dream character but the dreamer is enlightenment. — Emmanuel Diogu

It's all about realizing what you're doing to hold yourself back, like through hatred or fear or nihilism or eating gluten. You identify the things you want, and you finally allow yourself to take them-'

William lost the end of her diatribe as a garbage truck rolled by outside — Kristopher Jansma

She did not want to be that woman - the one of whom they spoke. She had never planned to be that woman. Somehow, it had happened, however ... somehow, she had lost her way and, without realizing it, she had chosen this staid, boring life instead of a different, more adventurous one. — Sarah MacLean

I felt sort of sad that I couldn't remember the last time, before tonight, that I'd paid such close attention to the sky. It felt like that must be some kind of sign that I'd lost my innocence and grown up without even realizing it. — Tara Altebrando

All around the world, we are gazing skyward waiting for God ...
Never realizing that God is waiting for us. — Dan Brown

He nods, then squints across the room. "Not all those who wander are lost," he says. He's still squinting. I wonder if he's practiced this squint - a squint-stare off into the metaphysical distance. I'm realizing he's kind of handsome. But then again, it might just be that he cares about something.
"What is that?" I ask. "Did Jesus Christ say that?"
"No," he says. "Bilbo Baggins said that. — Patrick Somerville

You can't cure people of their character,' she read.
After this he had crossed something out then gone on, 'You can't even change yourself. Experiments in that direction soon deteriorate into bitter, infuriated struggles. You haul yourself over the wall and glimpse new country. Good! You can never again be what you were! But even as you are congratulating yourself you discover tied to one leg the string of Christmas cards, gas bills, air letters and family snaps which will never allow you to be anyone else. A forty-year-old woman holds up a doll she has kept in a cardboard box under a bed since she was a child. She touches its clothes, which are falling to pieces; works tenderly its loose arm. The expression that trembles on the edge of realizing itself in the slackening muscles of her lips and jaw is indescribably sad. How are you to explain to her that she has lost nothing by living the intervening years of her life? How is she to explain that to you? — M. John Harrison

Daisuke was of course equipped with conversation that, even if they went further, would allow him to retreat as if nothing had happened. He had always wondered at the conversations recorded in Western novels, for to him they were too bald, too self indulgent, and moreover, too unsubtly rich. However they read in the original, he thought they reflected a taste that could not be translated into Japanese. Therefore, he had not the slightest intention of using imported phrases to develop his relationship with Michiyo. Between the two of them at least, ordinary words sufficed perfectly well. But the danger was of slipping from point A to point B without realizing it. Daisuke managed to stand his ground only by a hair's breadth. When he left, Michiyo saw him to the entranceway and said, "Do come again, please? It's so lonely. — Soseki Natsume

Alannah?" He held her limp body waiting for a response. "Don't do this." He put his hand over the other cut whispering his words and healing it as well. "Alannah?" His voice begged, as he held her face in his hand Still no response. He looked at the ground she had laid on realizing that she had lost a lot of blood. Then from the corner of his eye he saw the rise and fall of her chest and let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. She still lives. — B.C. Morin

But there is a limit to thinking about even a small piece of something monumental. You still see the shadow of the whole rearing up behind you, and you become lost in your thoughts in part from the panic of realizing the size of that imagined leviathan. — Jeff VanderMeer

I think I've always been extremely conscious of the kind of empowerment that comes from realizing that you're in a position to express yourself. And the fact is that - and this is the thing about punk rock - that everyone is in a position to create culture, and that point has never been lost on me. To me, that's an important political aspect of doing this, and trying to live in a way that's about dialogue as opposed to like spectacle — J. Robbins

Respectability and security are subtle traps on life's journey. Those who are drawn to extremes are often nearer to renewal and self-discovery. Those trapped in the bland middle region of respectability are lost without ever realizing it. — John O'Donohue

Americans, like people everywhere, are in thrall to their visions of the past, rarely realizing the extent to which their understanding of history shapes behavior in the here and now. Historical understanding defines people's very sense of what is thinkable and achievable. As a result, many have lost the ability to imagine a world that is substantially different from and better than what exists today. — Oliver Stone

In her remorse, she was also willing to admit that she was sad for another reason. She no longer had a reason to see or spend time with Wesley. She would lose her dream house to him and him to the house. It seemed almost tragic how everything had panned out and it made her consider more strongly than she had before that maybe it was a sign that she should take Jerry back. She'd lost her dream and was realizing quickly that in the end that's all it had ever been and maybe it was time that she finally woke up. — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

I was outclassed and outgunned, and I was only realizing it when it was too late to do a damn thing about it. A heart could only break so many times before the cause was lost. — R.K. Lilley