Quotes & Sayings About Reprieve

In his state of complete powerlessness the individual perceives the time he has left to live as a brief reprieve. — Theodor Adorno

People think of travel, of movement, as a kind of reprieve from life. But they're wrong. Movement isn't a reprieve. There is no reprieve. Movement is our permanent state. — Adam Ross

A moment is such a slight thing, I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve. Once, — Marilynne Robinson

But the fact is, death is not a confrontation. It is simply an event in the sequence of nature's ongoing rhythms. Not death but disease is the real enemy, disease the malign force that requires confrontation. Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost. Even the confrontation with disease should be approached with the realization that many of the sicknesses of our species are simply conveyances for the inexorable journey by which each of us is returned to the same state of physical, and perhaps spiritual, nonexistence from which we emerged at conception. Every triumph over some major pathology, no matter how ringing the victory, is only a reprieve from the inevitable end. — Sherwin B. Nuland

I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing. I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve. — Marilynne Robinson

She was like a reprieve; like Eurydice, gifted back to Orpheus from the darkness for a brief miraculous moment. I wanted, so intensely it took my breath away, to reach out and lay a hand on her soft dark head, to pull her tightly against me and feel her slight and warm and breathing, as if by protecting her hard enough I could somehow undo time and protect Katy, too. — Tana French

I love going out of my way, beyond what I know, and finding my way back a few extra miles, by another trail, with a compass that argues with the map ... nights alone in motels in remote western towns where I know no one and no one I know knows where I am, nights with strange paintings and floral spreads and cable television that furnish a reprieve from my own biography, when in Benjamin's terms, I have lost myself though I know where I am. Moments when I say to myself as feet or car clear a crest or round a bend, I have never seen this place before. Times when some architectural detail on vista that has escaped me these many years says to me that I never did know where I was, even when I was home. — Rebecca Solnit

Sometimes, when you are worn down, day after day, relentlessly, with no reprieve for years piled on years, sometimes you lose everything but the ability to cry. — Leila Sales

... prison was at best, only a temporary reprieve from life,for two reasons. First, life creeps back into prison. There are always places to go further down, even when you've been taken off the board;life goes on, even if it's life under a microscope or life in cage. And second, if you just hang in there, some day they're going to have to let you out. — Neil Gaiman

Certain parts of me became a little bit forgotten, a little bit numb, a little bit dead, and it was nice to have some dead places in me for a little while, to lose a little bit of my broken mind. — Dexter Palmer

We drank because we're drunks. We never get better. We get a daily reprieve based on our spiritual condition, and that's it. — Stephen King

A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance. — Iris Murdoch

You were never a distraction to me, Sam. You were always my reprieve. — Aly Martinez

It was scary," she said. "Win was scary." "He also saved your life." "Yes." "It's what Win does. He's good at it - the best I've ever seen. Everything with him is black and white. He has no moral ambiguities. If you cross the line, there is no reprieve, no mercy, no chance to talk your way out of it. You're dead. Period. Those men came to harm you. Win wasn't interested in rehabilitating them. They made their choice. The moment they entered your apartment they were doomed." "It sounds like the theory of massive retaliation," she said. "You kill one of ours, we kill ten of yours." "Colder," Myron said. "Win's not interested in teaching a lesson. He sees it as extermination. They're no more than pestering fleas to him. — Harlan Coben

For myself the delay may be compared with a reprieve; for in confidence I assure you, with the world it would obtain little credit that my movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution: so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life nearly consumed in public cares, to quit a peaceful abode for an Ocean of difficulties, without that competency of political skill, abilities and inclination which is necessary to manage the helm. — George Washington

The reprieve doesn't last long though; within a couple of hours the waves are back up to 70 feet. A 70 foot wave has an angled face of well over 100 feet. The Seastate has reached levels that no one on the boat, and few people one earth, have ever seen. When the Contship Holland finally limped into port several days later, one of the officers stepped off and swore he would never set foot on another ship again. — Sebastian Junger

And then something happened. It was a fragment of time, a breath of time. It was like being in a car in pouring rain and driving under an overpass, and for just that second there is a profound, powerful sense of reprieve- the utter silence of non-rain. — Jaclyn Moriarty

A man sentenced to death obtained a reprieve by assuring the king he would teach his majesty's horse to fly within the year - on the condition that if he didn't succeed, he would be put to death at the end of the year. "Within a year," the man explained later, "the king may die, or I may die, or the horse may die. Furthermore, in a year, who knows? Maybe the horse will learn to fly." My philosophy is like that man's. I take the long-range view. — Bernard Baruch

We had a short reprieve as Dad cupped Mom's face and ran
his hands down her neck, over her shoulders. "Helena, are you
hurt?"
She waved that away. "I'm fine." She smiled briefly, then
turned hard eyes on us. Each of us took a healthy step
backward and not a single one of us felt any less manly for the
wise retreat. — Alyxandra Harvey

Each time a new baby is born there is a possibility of reprieve. Each child is a new being, a potential prophet, a new spiritual prince, a new spark of light precipitated into the outer darkness. — R.D. Laing

There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life. — Charlotte Bronte

This was home: running along a razor's edge of self-induced terror, calculating mortality against probability.
Assignments were the reprieve. When she was abroad, although she would do whatever was necessary to get the job done, there was a degree of normalcy, sanity, purpose, and the destructive forces propelling her to gamble with her life were dormant. — Taylor Stevens

If I catch you, I might do anything. I might strip the skin from your bones as I drain you dry. Or I might drag you into my chambers and have you pleasure me in ways you cannot even imagine. I might even take mercy on you, and that would be the cruelest injustice of all, because for you, it would only be a temporary reprieve. — Nenia Campbell

While Victoria wasn't a bear, she was the embodiment of everything else he'd desired in a mate. There was no one better suited for him, and he'd long decided her tenacity in the face of danger only made her braver than his powerful clan sisters. Victoria had been made for him, a gift from the stars, and he'd never regret a day of heeding Heldreth and Talbot's advice. Visiting Creag Morden hadn't merely granted him a reprieve from his duties: a holiday in her kingdom had brought him to the love of his life. And nothing would ever make him take her for granted. — Vivienne Savage

The heart's actions
are neither the sentence nor its reprieve.
Salt hay and thistles, above the cold granite.
One bird singing back to another because it can't not. — Jane Hirshfield

Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time. — Mason Cooley

For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve - like the soul's version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable. — Laini Taylor

Loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve - like the soul's version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable. And — Laini Taylor

It always catches people by surprise, the moment of their death, even when they should see it coming. They always think they're special, somehow expect a reprieve. But no one's special. — Joe Abercrombie

What I have sought in love is a reprieve from the itch of consciousness -- to transcend myself and my human imperfections -- but this has yet to happen. — Melissa Broder

Many of us understand giving, but some of us may still be confused about the meaning of forgiveness. Some people may go through life in a groveling mode, mistakenly believing they have to receive forgiveness from others. Forgiveness offers more than a reprieve granted to us by another person. True forgiveness is a process of giving up the false for the true and allows us to rid our thinking of rigid ideas. We can develop the flexibility to change our mind and our behavior patterns to higher and greater expressions and find new avenues to freedom. — John Templeton

You don't know what the story is about when you're in the middle of it. All you can do is keep walking. At the beginning, you have buoyancy and a little arrogance. The journey looks beautiful and bright, and you are filled with resolve and silver strength, sure that you will face it with optimism and chutzpah. And the end is beautiful. You are wiser, better, deeper. The end is revelation, resolution, a soft place to land. But, oh, the middle. The middle is fog, exhaustion, loneliness, the daily battle against despair and the nagging fear that tomorrow will be just like today, only you'll be wearier and less able to defend yourself against it. All you can ask for, in the middle, are sweet moments of reprieve in the company of people you love. For a few hours, you'll feel protected by the goodness of friendship and life around the table, and that's the best thing I can imagine. — Shauna Niequist

There was one sure way to avoid being assigned an impromptu chore in our house - be it taking out the trash or cleaning your room - and that was to have your face buried in a book. Like churches during the Middle Ages, books conferred instant sanctuary. Once you entered one, you couldn't be disturbed. They didn't give you immunity from prosecution if you'd done something wrong - just a temporary reprieve. But we quickly learned you had to both look and be completely engrossed - just flipping pages didn't count. — Will Schwalbe

Alzheimer's disease locks all the doors and exits. There is no reprieve, no escape. — Patti Davis

Probably my eating disorder [is the hardest obstacle]. It ruled my life for years, and I didn't know how I could live with it forever, but I didn't know how I could live without it. It was a struggle to recover from, and it's only a daily reprieve, but as long as I stay spiritually centered, I don't veer off track or
get tempted. — Ashley Rickards

I brought soup just in case you changed your mind. Are the pains easing up at all?" He manfully kept the hopeful note out of his tone.
"All the activity must have set them off. They seem to be getting farther apart, and they're shorter in duration. From all the research I've done, that means false labor."
He felt like a man given a reprieve right before a death sentence, but he kept his features expressionless. He wanted her to count on him, and she couldn't do that if she knew he was petrified of delivering a baby.
"Will you try to eat something?" He walked farther into the room and set the tray on the end table. "It might help."
She flashed him a
smile that told him he didn't know what he was talking about, but she picked up the bowl of soup and spoon, sank down in the middle of the bed, tailor fashion, her back against the headboard, and regarded him steadily. — Christine Feehan

She is my reprieve. My air. Spencer Locke is the one slice of happy I have in this shit pie I call life. — L.B. Simmons

After that, he couldn't be sure how it happened, but she wasn't crying anymore and he wasn't thinking. At all. His hands were underneath her sweater, touching every inch of her warm, smooth skin; they were kissing like two condemned people suddenly given a reprieve; and his feeling of calm morphed into happiness so intense, he'd swear his blood was singing. — Trinity Faegen

Teaching is a distraction and a burden, but it's also an incredible stimulus. And a reprieve, in a way. When you're trying to work on something and it's not going anywhere, you can go to school and there's a two-and-a-half-hour block of time in which you can accomplish something. — Marilynne Robinson

What the bloody hell are you doing in my bed with my sister?
I'm extremely hot, Teag said the first thing he thought of. He was incredibly hot, and his answer had thrown Julian off, giving him at least a moment's reprieve. He had wondered if something like this might happen.
You're hot? Julian sounded confused. Are you hot yourself or is it like being near something hot? — Wendy Clements

What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapor-filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent.
The world is somnolent and cool, in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance.
But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment ...
What a soft thoughtful time.
In this illusory gloom, like a night-blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of color. — Vera Nazarian

My wife runs the charity Reprieve, and so rendition, droning, and capital punishment are very much the topics of our dinner table because of that. — Nick Harkaway

The Lord said that He was giving us a new president who is better than we deserve. He represents a reprieve from a New World Order that the Church is not prepared to face at this time ... — Paul Cain

In the darkness with no ember, cold coals bear no flaming tinder. All the shadows, man resemble. In the darkness, wise men tremble. Prodigious foes made thee for pointless sake of prosaic power. Visited upon thyself no vestige of vision by late nights hour. In the stillness of normal eve, in longing for the night's reprieve. In air and earth arise a faint and subtle shift, tis follies gift. With tremulous breath, whisper faintly from thy spirits tower. 'Woe to me!', thy soul says. Cometh nigh, The Rez. — Kel Kade

All I want to convey to anyone who is suffering while they're young is that sometimes you get a reprieve when you're older. Maybe it's just your perception that changes, but somehow it eases up, because life ebbs and flows. When you're ebbing, maybe you're strengthening your perspective of the world. And when you're flowing, maybe you can use everything to create, to write, to sing, act, and eventually stand taller and see farther. — Cyndi Lauper

I was at the bottom of the sea, the pressure dense, crushing, inexorable. Dead silence strained against my eardrums. The darkness was without reprieve. No mental adjustment could make it less absolute. It was impenetrable - black painted over black painted over black. — Haruki Murakami

He had never taken a woman like Bride. One who wasn't biting and clawing at him as she demanded he please her. Something inside him relished the rarity of this.
The gentleness.
In a life where violence and territory and blood wars reigned, it was nice to have a reprieve. A tender lover's touch.
The human side of him craved this.
It craved her. - Vane — Sherrilyn Kenyon

From deep within the solar system a large planetoid was headed Earth's way. It was on a collision course and it was unbelievably massive - possibly the size of Mars itself. Had there been humans on Earth then they would have spotted this intruder millions of miles out. They would have watched it grow in size night after night. Soon it would have filled the sky. There would have been no escape, no reprieve. Instantly they would have been staring doom in its face as - at an oblique angle - the planetoid squashed the young Earth. — Jay Barbree

One thing evangelicals want is a reprieve from intolerance against their beliefs, values, and practices. — Ronald H. Nash

The house is eerily quiet. All this time I thought silence would be a welcome reprieve, but it's less comforting than I imagined. The house feels so much bigger and colder than it ever has. — Hannah Harrington

Instead, I had been pushed further and further into a fate from which no escape or reprieve seemed possible. And so there came a moment when I stopped struggling, when I decided that I would cease making any more plans to return to the old days. I made up my mind to look upon the present as exactly what it was: it was all I had. To add to my sense that my curse had turned into a blessing, not only was I free - I was no longer alone. — Laila Lalami

Anyway I know only too well that all life is nothing but a brief reprieve from death. — Simone De Beauvoir

Asher," she said, placing a hand on his chest and pushing him back until he was lying on the bed and she was lying beside him. "Kiss me." Thanking God for yet another reprieve, he rolled on top of her, bracing on his elbows as he palmed her cheek with fierce tenderness. "You terrify me." She smiled, wiggling beneath him before pushing her pelvis up against his. "I'm harmless." "You're lethal." "I'm waiting." And then his mouth claimed hers, and she didn't have to wait anymore. — Katy Regnery

When you commit your life to something and it doesn't work out, it is a tough place to be. Suicide can be the spiritual reprieve of a faithless person. I knew I could always just end it, and there was solace in that. — Marc Maron

Don't quit.
When your latest efforts fail, don't quit. When your performance is scoffed and ridiculed, don't quit. When you're told you have no talent, don't quit. When you come in dead last, don't quit. When it seems an uphill fight to keep going, don't quit. When you can't see any possible way to achieve your goals, don't quit. When your last supporter is you alone, don't quit. When discouragement and depression seem your constant companion, don't quit. When you feel like quitting, don't quit.
Time and time again you will crave relief from the harsh fight of trying to succeed. You will falsely think that quitting will bring peace and reprieve, but alas, only regret and disappointment await the quitter. Victory means never ever ever quitting.
So don't quit.
Do not quit. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Set yourself a goal so difficult that death will seem like a welcome reprieve. — Chuck Palahniuk

If Arnold is elected, you know who I'd feel sorry for? The people on death row. Imagine, you're about to be executed, the governor calls, you think it's your reprieve, and you hear 'Hasta la vista, baby.' — Jay Leno

You know the hurt is coming, but there's this reprieve just long enough to get your hopes up, to make you think that maybe, just maybe, this time you dodged it. But then it comes anyway. — Don Aker

On the night of the winter solstice, when the dead get their annual reprieve, they go up to the 24-hour donut shop and wedding chapel to get hitched. Marriage is a good and proper pursuit for dead people. For a while, it relieves the dark, shuddering loneliness of the afterlife. — Rachel Swirsky

The sympathetic angel reached out and the moment she touched him, he gasped. This was no angel. There was no reprieve. ~ Michael O'Mara, from Angel's Blues — Rhonda Tibbs

I had been living with dialysis for three years or so, and the new kidney felt like a reprieve, a new gift of life. I felt alive again and I guess that has had an effect on my use of colour. — Peter Wright

I don't accept defeat as final. Only death is final - and even then I hope for a reprieve. — Phil Gramm

She is all I could ever ask for, she is perfect, and right now, with those big, green eyes and pillowy lips and alabaster thighs, the idea of doing this for the rest of our lives doesn't seem all that daunting. She's the last reprieve. The stay of execution. She gives me hope. But times are tough for dreamers. And even if my dream is a simple one - all I want is for Her to be in love with me forever - I know it's still a long shot. Life ruins everything. — Pete Wentz

It's like being on Death Row in an American jail. You are waiting for the door handle to turn, not knowing whether it's a reprieve or just your final breakfast before being executed. — Howard Wilkinson

Whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish. — Elizabeth Bowen

I get to work with incredibly talented young filmmakers and students, and their attitudes and relationship with film is still so pure. That re-inspires me and reminds me why I got into it and what I love about film, and allows me a little reprieve from the business side of it. And it rekindles my love of film. — James Franco

Do not be misled by the fact that you are at liberty and relatively free; that for the moment you are not under lock and key: you have simply been granted a reprieve. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

With THC in your system, you don't dream. And you need to. Otherwise it is like losing one of your senses. Dreams are part of your wholeness ... when you're dreaming, you're not the one calling the shots. So it's a reprieve ... the dream world had rules in it. You couldn't read a clock in your dreams. It would not give you the time. If the lights were on in a room, you could not turn them off in a dream ... in indigenous tribes all over the world, the dream world was like church. [p. 247] — Anne Lamott

Something is funny, most of all, because it's true, and because the velocity of insight into this truth exceeds our normal standards. Something is funny because it's outside our accepted boundary of decorum. Something is funny because it defies our expectations. Something is funny because it offers a temporary reprieve from the hardship of seeing the world as it actually is. Something is funny because it is able to suggest gently that even the worst of our circumstances and sins is subject to eventual mercy. — Steve Almond

It was what his mother would have done in the circumstances. Boiled some fresh water, warmed the pot and counted out the spoonfuls of tea. Setting domestic order against the chaos, in the hope of winning some temporary reprieve from the vale of tears. — Clive Barker

[W]hen you're dreaming, you're not the one calling the shots. So it's a reprieve. — Anne Lamott

We are not cured of alcoholism. What we have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our daily activities. — William Griffith Wilson

The birds had been given everything they needed. A home in the thin, pure air: a moment of weightlessness, a reprieve from the gravity of life — Vanessa Diffenbaugh

I hated Sundays as a kid. From the moment I woke up, I could feel Monday looming, could feel another school week all piled up and ready to smother me. How was I supposed to enjoy a day of freedom while drowning in dread like that? It was impossible. A pit would form in my chest and gut - this indescribably emptiness that I knew should be filled with fun, but instead left me casting about for something to do.
Knowing I should be having fun was a huge part of the problem. knowing that this was a rare day off, a welcome reprieve, and here I was miserable and fighting against it. Maybe this was why Fridays at school were better than Sundays not in school. I was happier doing what I hated, knowing a Saturday was coming, than I was on a perfectly free Sunday with a Monday right around the corner. — Hugh Howey

She had known it all the time: I'm so enormously exhausted, so utterly, basically tired, and in fibre of myself, that to know I haven't got to go through with living is like a reprieve. How extraordinary! And every one of these people, with the possible exception of this exuberant young man, is terrified that the machine is going to crash, and yet we all trooped obediently into it. So perhaps we all feel the same way? — Doris Lessing

We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve. — Victor Hugo

Blackthorne, beside the gates, was still turmoiled by his boundless joy at her reprieve and he remembered how his own will had been stretched that night of his near-seppuku, when he had had to get up as a man and walk home as a man unsupported, and became samurai. And he watched her, despising the need for this courage, yet understanding it, even honoring it. — James Clavell

There is no reprieve when you have a broken mind; cease-fires are rare. Even on good days,
you know everything could change on a dime. Fear is your constant shadow — Barbara Claypole White

We've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation. — Tom Stoppard

It's not just that," Chief Porter said. "A guy who once would have raped and killed a woman, now a lot of times he also has to cut off her lips and mail them to us or take her eyes for a souvenir and keep them in his freezer at home. There's more flamboyant craziness these days." Giving the buttered cinnamon roll a reprieve, Ozzie said, "Maybe it's all these superhero movies with all their supervillains. Some psychopath who used to be satisfied raping and murdering, these days he thinks that he should be in a Batman movie, he wants to be the Joker or the Penguin." "No real-life bad guy wants to be the Penguin," I assured him. "Norman Bates was happy just dressing up like his mother and stabbing people," Chief Porter said, "but Hannibal Lecter has to cut off their faces and eat their livers with fava beans. The role models have become more intense. — Dean Koontz

Although his honor demanded he immediately leave Juliana, he couldn't, for the queen visited. He couldn't seek an annulment, for the king demanded he retain Juliana's lands. He would remain her husband, and even if he moved his official residence to Barton-hale and she stayed at Lofts, he would still have to meet with her at Christmastide and Easter, at harvest accounting and at Midsummer ... what pleasure he would find in the touch of her hand! What agony he would endure while away from her. So it was a painful reprieve, but a reprieve nonetheless. — Christina Dodd

help" screamed silently in her head, as if she were begging for something: a solution, a cure, a reprieve. A reprieve from what? A cure for what? A solution for what? Her breathing had become shallow. She'd felt beads of sweat at her hairline. Then she'd seen the sign. Their lease at their Newtown apartment was up. The two-bedroom unit was in an ugly, — Liane Moriarty

There is always hope for a reprieve, my friend," Stielow said. "You have to get the governor to pardon you if the courts fail on you. This is an unlikely thing, although possible. The last thing you hold on to 'til the last second is hope. Hope is what keeps us doomsmen sane, for the most part. A miracle. — Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini

Why the Albanians had created the institution of the guest, exalting it above all other human relations, even those of kinship. "Perhaps the answer lies in the democratic character of this institution," he said, setting himself to think his way through the matter. "Any ordinary man, on any day, can be raised to the lofty station of a guest. The path to that temporary deification is open to anybody at any time.[ ... ] Given that anyone at all can grasp the sceptre of the guest," he went on, "and since that sceptre, for every Albanian, surpasses even the king's sceptre, may we not assume that in the Albanian's life of danger and want, that to be a guest if only for four hours or twenty-four hours, is a kind of respite, a moment of oblivion, a truce, a reprieve, and - why not? - an escape from everyday life into some divine reality? — Ismail Kadare

When we arrived at the hospital, you were in a medically induced coma, which I was made to understand was a sort of freezing of you, a fabricated reprieve from your own body that would allow your internal organs to rest. — Jan Ellison

Caroline closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Standing on the foredeck of the merchant vessel The Dreamer, the misty salt air bit at her skin and caused her to clutch her shawl more firmly around her. She'd left the warmth and comfort of her cabin to find a reprieve from thoughts of Jack, but it was impossible. Beneath the smell of the ocean she could still detect his evocative masculine scent, a scent that heated her blood and made forgetting him impossible. — Sylvia Day

In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as delusion of reprieve. The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. No one could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken away. all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence. — Viktor E. Frankl

Miss Prendregast!" He rapped on his desk with his knuckles. "You were never in any danger!"
"Except from the wild animals."
His lids swept down as if he needed a reprieve from looking at her. "Alert me if you're attacked by a rabbit. — Christina Dodd

This, she thought, isn't just for today. It's for everything. For the heartache that still felt like a punch in the gut each time it struck, fresh as new, at unpredictable moments; for the smiling lies and the mental images she couldn't shake; for the shame of having been so naive.
For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve - like the soul's version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable.
And this, Karou thought, no longer smiling, is for the irretrievable. — Laini Taylor

Of all the many people we meet in a lifetime,it is strange that so many of us find ourselves in thrall to one
particular person. Once that face is seen,an involuntary heartache sets in for which there is no cure. All the
wonder of this world finds shape in that one person and thereafter there is no reprieve, because this kind of love
does not end,or not until death. — Rosie Alison

Necessity is harsh. Fate has no reprieve. — Euripides

Reading, writing, listening to music, skipping rope, flying kites, taking long walks along the sea, hiking in the crisp mountain air, all serve a joint purpose: these self-initiated acts free us from the drudgery of life. These forms of physical and mental exercises release the mind to roam uninhibited, such collaborative types of mind and body actions take people away from their physical pains and emotional grievances. A reprieve from the crippling grind of sameness allows personal imagination to soar. Imagination, a form of dreaming, is inherently pleasant and restorative. It is within these moments of personal introspection stolen from the industry of surviving that humankind touches upon the absolute truth of life: that there must be something more to living then merely getting by; the fundamental human condition thirsts for a way to improve upon the vestment that shelters our self-absorbed lives. — Kilroy J. Oldster

What we really have is a daily reprieve, contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Am I checking my spiritual condition daily? — Anonymous

There let her pray to the one god she worships: Death
who knows?
may just reprieve her from death. Or she may learn a last, better late than never, what a waste of breath it is to worship Death. — Sophocles