Retreats Quotes & Sayings

I like to take writing retreats within a day's drive of home. Less travel time means more time for writing, which is the name of the game here. — Kate Klise

We win because we hire the smartest people. We improve our products based on feedback, until they're the best. We have retreats each year where we think about where the world is heading. — Bill Gates

The standards for what is "normal" have become so formalized and yet so restrictive that people need a break from that horrible feeling of never being able to measure up to whatever it is they think will make them acceptable to other people and therefore to themselves. People get sick with this idea of change; I have been sick with it. We search for transformation in retreats, juice fasts, drugs and alcohol, obsessive exercise, extreme sports, sex. We are all trying to escape our existence, hoping that a better version of us is waiting just behind that promotion, that perfect relationship, that award or accolade, that musical performance, that dress size, that raucous night at a party, that hot night with a new lover. Everyone needs to be pursuing something, right? Otherwise, who are we? How about, quite simply, people? How about human? — Emily Rapp

Fiction; inner thoughts of Elisha
True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved. — William Wordsworth

The north coast of Brittany is eaten into bays from which the sea retreats to considerable distances, and is fringed with reefs and islands. It is a favourite resort of Parisians throughout its stretch, from Dinard to Plestin. — Sabine Baring-Gould

No matter how often I pray, how many retreats I make, or how hard I try, I still sin. It is something that I bump up against daily. — James Martin

Out of the brown mouth into a slanted easterly rain they head south along the shore, pushed toward it on a light chop, all but the pilot huddling under plastic sheeting that covers lumber, nails, window casings and plantains - the women sharing a seat, Reese behind them and the boatman behind him in a narrow-running balance. The land retreats as the dory crosses a wide bight toward the next point, rising and dropping on larger waves while a seaside village of thatch and palm passes thin and blurry in the drizzled distance. Two miles later another village appears, much the same but longer along the curve and then, past the point, the coast is tangled in mangrove, grass and sea grape. The passengers peer out of the plastic at a rain-erased horizon as the dory slices and slows in equal measure and the boatman bails with a cut jug the rolling puddle at his feet. — Michael Jarvis

I think they'd barely recognize us as brothers and sisters. If we told them, church is on Sundays, and we have an awesome band...if the found out 1/6th of the earth's population claimed to be Christians, I'm not sure they could reconcile the suffering happening on our watch while we're living in excess...

But listen, early church, we have a monthly event called 'Mocha chicks', we have choir practice every Wednesday, we organize retreats with door prizes, we're raising $3 million for an outdoor amphitheater, we have catchy t-shirts, we don't smoke or say the f-word, we go to bible study every semester...

the local church would be the heartbeat of the city. — Jen Hatmaker

We were young and the focus on human suffering gave our retreats gravitas. But suffering is not the goal, it is the beginning of the path. Now in the retreat I teach, I also encourage participants to awaken to their innate joy. From the very beginning I encourage them to allow the moments of joy and well-being to deepen, to spread throughout their body and mind. Many of us are conditioned to fear joy and happiness, yet joy is necessary for awakening. As the Persian mystic Rumi instructs us, 'When you go to a garden, do you look at thorns or flowers? Spend more time with roses and jasmine. — Jack Kornfield

Every November on National Adoption Day, courts set aside time to finalize adoptions from foster care that might otherwise be delayed for months, and communities celebrate adoption with retreats, proclamations, and other events. National Adoption Day was started in 2000 and has grown each year. In 2004, courts and community organizations finalized the adoptions of more than 3,400 children from foster care as part of 200 National Adoption Day events in 37 states. — Natalie Nichols Gillespie

The thing that comes most frequently to me on yoga retreats is excruciating pain in my hips. — Taiye Selasi

Monopathy, or over-specialisation, eventually retreats into defending what one has learnt rather than making new connections. The initial spurt of learning gives out, and the expert is left, like an animal, merely defending his territory. — Robert Twigger

There are moments in life when a man retreats defensively, when he must give ground, when he must surrender less important positions in order to protect the more important ones. But should it come to the very last, the most important one, at this point a man must halt and stand firm if he doesn't want to begin life all over again with idle hands and a feeling of being shipwrecked. — Milan Kundera

Time ... advances like the slowest tide, but retreats like the swiftest torrent. — Charles Caleb Colton

To withdraw isn't a sign of weakness ... It is a sign that a man knows the limits of his capabilities and the most probable outcome of the future. One who retreats to fight another day isn't running away, but looking for another road towards the same destination. — Lionel Suggs

Third, and relatedly, Notes Day was led from within. Many companies hire outside consulting firms to organize their all-staff retreats, and I understand why: Doing them well is a monumental, enormously time-consuming undertaking. But that our own people made Notes Day happen was, I believe, key to its success. Not only did they drive the discussion in meaningful ways, but their involvement also paid its own dividends. Seeing — Ed Catmull

One of the innate dilemmas of biography is that life is not much like a book. It rarely contains a clearly stated thesis, coherently developed. Life sprawls, stumbles, advances, retreats, gropes for the light switch, and once in a while makes intuitive leaps whose import is barely understood until later, if ever, by the leaper. Life seems to me an improvisation. — Jan Swafford

Today we often feel we must "get away" from our daily routine in order to worship God, but that is only because we haven't learned to practice his presence all the time. Brother Lawrence found it easy to worship God through the common tasks of life; he didn't have to go away for special spiritual retreats. — Rick Warren

...without moving a muscle in his face, slips away; retreats, I think, to that sheltered place where his stories are kept. Perhaps we all have our places. — Pete Dexter

I'm hosting weekend retreats all over America. It is like a 24-hour slumber party for moms. We laugh, eat, play games, get massages, win prizes, talk about parenting and even cry a bit. — Lisa Whelchel

Our language, once homely and colloquial, seeks to aggrandize our meanest activities with polysyllabic terms or it retreats from frankness into a stammering verbosity. — Mary McCarthy

Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible. — Janice Rogers Brown

Many have given up. They stay home and watch the TV screen, living on the earnings of their parents, cousins, bothers, or uncles, and only leave the house to go to the movies or to the nearest bar. "How're you making it?" on may ask, running into them along the block, or in the bar. "Oh, I'm TV-ing it"; with the saddest, sweetest, most shamefaced of smiles, and from a great distance. This distance one is compelled to respect; anyone who has traveled so far will not easily be dragged again into the world. There are further retreats, of course, than the TV screen or the bar. There are those who are simply sitting on their stoops, "stoned," animated for a moment only, and hideously, by the approach of someone who may lend them the money for a "fix." Or by the approach of someone from whom they can purchase it, one of the shrewd ones, on the way to prison or just coming out. — James Baldwin

It was only by escaping into the desert that Moses and the Jews were able to solidify their identity and reemerge as a social and political force.
Jesus spent his forty days in the wilderness, and Mohammed, too, fled Mecca at a time of great peril for a period of retreat. He and just a handful of his most devoted supporters used this period to deepen their bonds, to understand who they were and what they stood for, to let time work its good. Then this little band of believers reemerged to conquer Mecca and the Arabian Peninsula and later, after Mohammed's death, to defeat the Byzantines and the Persian empire, spreading Islam over vast territories. Around the world every mythology has a hero who retreats, even to Hades itself in the case of Odysseus, to find himself. — Robert Greene

In monasteries, seminaries, retreats and synagogues, they fear hell and seek paradise. Those who know the mysteries of God never let that seed be planted in their souls. — Omar Khayyam

The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances. — Joseph McCabe

There are few retreats, that can escape the penetrating eye of avarice. — Thomas Clarkson

You see, even after decades of therapy and workshops and retreats and twelve-steps and meditation and even experiencing a very weird session of rebirthings, even after rappeling down mountains and walking over hot coals and jumping out of airplanes and watching elephant races and climbing the Great Wall of China, and even after floating down the Amazon and taking ayahuasca with an ex-husband and a witch doctor and speaking in tongues and fasting (both nutritional and verbal), I remained pelted and plagued by feelings of uncertainty and despair. Yes, even after sleeping with a senator, and waking up next to a dead friend, and celebrating Michael Jackson's last Christmas with him and his kids, I still did not feel - how shall I put this? - mentally sound. — Carrie Fisher

Today, information: pulverized, nonhierarchized, dealing with everything: nothing is protected from information and at the same time nothing is open to reflection -> Encyclopedias are impossible -> I would say: the more information grows, the more knowledge retreats and therefore the more decision is partial (terroristic, dogmatic) -> "I don't know," "I refuse to judge": as scandalous as an agrammatical sentence: doesn't belong to the language of the discourse. Variations on the "I don't know." The obligation to "be interested" in everything that is imposed on you by the world: prohibition of noninterest, even if provisional ... — Roland Barthes

The Beats, like their successors in the Sixties, have often been described as 'idealists'. But fantasies of total gratification are not the product of idealism. They arise from a narcissism that, finding the world unequal to its desires, retreats into a realm of heedless self-absorption. Modesty, convention, and self-restraint then appear as the enemies rather than as the allies of humanity. In this sense, the Beat generation marks a step away from civilization. — Roger Kimball

Part of me wanted to disappear into a cave in India, and I did end up going on retreats there, but, don't ask me why, I always felt very strongly that the point for me was to find a way to live a truly spiritual life in the modern day world and be able to work with all the positive aspects of our cultural and technological advancements. — Linus Roache

How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer them suitable nesting retreats! — John Burroughs

When pride retreats from a man, humility begins to dwell in him, and the more pride is diminished, so much more does humility grow. The one gives way to the other as to its opposite. Darkness departs and light appears. Pride is darkness, but humility is light. — Tikhon Of Zadonsk

Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die. — Frank Herbert

Because identifying so completely with someone else can only happen by abandoning yourself, ... panics and retreats abruptly from these connections. Connect and cut. — Chris Kraus

How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal. — E. M. Forster

And the reason is found in the first lie-the lie which you hold as the truth about God-that God cannot be trusted; that God's love cannot be depended upon; that God's acceptance of you is conditional; that the ultimate outcome is thus in doubt. For if you cannot depend on God's love to always be there, on whose love can you depend? If God retreats and withdraws when you do not perform properly, will not mere mortals also? — Neale Donald Walsch

Ours is an age where ethics has become obsolete. It is superseded by science, deleted by philosophy and dismissed as emotive by psychology. It is drowned in compassion, evaporates into aesthetics and retreats before relativism. The usual moral distinctions between good and bad are simply drowned in a maudlin emotion in which we feel more sympathy for the murderer than for the murdered, for the adulterer than for the betrayed, and in which we have actually begun to believe that the real guilty party, the one who somehow caused it all, is the victim, and not the perpetrator of the crime. — Robert Fitch

People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills, when it is possible for you to retreat into yourself any time you want. There — Arianna Huffington

The desire to experience new kinds of community led a number of thoughtful and idealistic people to reject the patterns of vocation, family life and religion with which they had grown up. Their attempt to establish new patterns of social bonding in uncontaminated rural retreats can be seen as a secular monasticism, but they often discovered that to abolish the boundaries of authority, family and property created a whole series of problems which they did not have the spiritual and personal resources to solve.

At their best, such groups have opened up new horizons of discipleship, but they have often learned some hard lessons about the intractable sinfulness and selfishness of partly-redeemed human nature. — Ian Breward

I like the idea of going to one of those retreats where you don't speak - like, silence for five days. — Madonna Ciccone

Sandy illustrated the depraved mentality of an oligarchic and corporate elite that, as conditions worsen, retreats into self-contained gated communities, guts basic services, and abandons the wider population. — Chris Hedges

Are you sometimes scared, or happy, just like that, out of the blue, apropos of nothing? You hurry out on some stupid errand, and suddenly you feel a thrill of improbablem intense, boundless joy? Or it happens that everything seems to be in its rightful placem your beloved is sleeping sweetly next to you, you're young and full of as much energy as a puppy - and suddenly you feel you're suspended in emptiness, and a leaden sorrow clamps down on your heart, as though you were dead. Not only that, but as though you had never been alive. And sometimes you look at yourself in the mirror, and you can't remember who that chap is, or why he's there at all. Then your own reflection turns around and walks away, and you watch silently as it retreats. [..] It happens because something ineffable is reaching for us - we never know where and when it will show up and start tugging on our sleave. — Max Frei

My earliest experiences in meditation were in a context of intensive retreats. — Sharon Salzberg

That's what fascinates me about these writers' retreats: You're in these small spaces with small groups of people, and all of the sudden, the spotlight is shining on you harder than it normally is. — Lynn Coady

The silences here are retreats of sound, like the retreat of the surf before a tidal wave: sound draining away, down slopes of acoustic passage, to gather, someplace else, to a great surge of noise. — Thomas Pynchon

Yes, My Son, man is a piece of wood, that can be used for everything, from the moment he's born until the moment he dies, he's always ready to obey, send him there and he goes, tell him to halt and he stops, tell him to turn back and he retreats, whether in peace or in war, man, generally speaking, is the best thing that could have happened to the gods, And the wood from which I'm made, since I'm a man, what use will it be put to, since I'm Your son, You will be the spoon I shall dip into humanity and bring out laden with men who shall believe in the new god I intend to become, Laden with men You will devour, There's no need for Me to devour those who devour themselves. — Jose Saramago

In the mirror the brow furrowed in confusion, this was not her soul that she saw in the reflection. The eyes filled with tears of anguish. The face aches with despair.
Then the being retreats to her solitude, deliciously succumbing to the dissociation — Tina J. Richardson

The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue — Mao Zedong

The average age in the U.S. is now thirty-three, whereas Mexico gets younger and younger, retreats deeper and deeper into adolescence. Mexico is fifteen. Mexico is wearing a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt and wandering around Tijuana looking for a job, for a date, for something to put on her face to take care of the acne. — Richard Rodriguez

A revolution does not march a straight line. It wanders where it can, retreats before superior forces, advances wherever it has room, attacks whenever the enemy retreats or bluffs, and above all, is possessed of enormous patience. — Mao Zedong

No man is an island, as they say. No. I've tried it. I've gone on retreats at various times in my life for three or four or five days. I was desperate to get out of there and talk to somebody. But I fly fish a lot, and I can only do that really by myself. I find I'm never lonesome when I'm on a river, far from it, but it's a lonely practice. — Liam Neeson

As with Steinitz, Fischer's genius has often been concealed by controversies away from the board. Like Lasker, Fischer has raised chess to new financial heights despite frequent retreats from serious play. And, like Capablanca, Fischer is recognized by millions of non-players and has won the game many new enthusiasts. — Andrew Soltis

I'm often asked if I think the beginning writer of fiction can benefit from writing classes or seminars. The people who ask are, all too often, looking for a magic bullet or a secret ingredient or possibly Dumbo's magic feather, none of which can be found in classrooms or at writing retreats, no matter how enticing the brochures may be. — Stephen King

I laugh hard enough to shake the mattress, but the poor man doesn't even notice. He's too busy grabbing a condom from the nightstand drawer. Too busy stroking his cock as he sheathes himself. Too busy guiding that huge dick to my entrance and falling forward onto one elbow. The penetration is swift. One second I'm achingly empty, the next I'm deliciously full. Blake moans against my neck and drives his hips forward. Then he retreats, a slow, torturous withdrawal until only his tip is inside me, an unbearable tease. My inner muscles clamp tight, trying to draw him in again, but he stays in that position for a moment, his gaze locking with mine. — Sarina Bowen

I said before that McDonald's serves a kind of comfort food, but after a few bites I'm more inclined to think they're selling something more schematic than that
something more like a signifier of comfort food. So you eat more and eat more quickly, hoping somehow to catch up to the original idea of a cheeseburger or French fry as it retreats over the horizon. And so it goes, bite after bite, until you feel not satisfied exactly, but simply, regrettably, full. — Michael Pollan

Male passivity is a disease that robs a man of his purpose while it destroys marriages, ruins families, and spoils legacies. A passive man doesn't engage; he retreats. He neglects personal responsibility. At its core, passivity is cowardice. — Dennis Rainey

She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats. — Bernhard Schlink

Man must be able to escape civilization if he is to survive. Some of his greatest needs are for refuges and retreats where he can recapture for a day or a week the primitive conditions of life. — William O. Douglas

Honorable retreats are no ways inferior to brave charges, as having less fortune, more of discipline, and as much valor. — Christopher Hart

The ancients could communicate with the gods in two ways. First, it was (and is) possible to go into a trance and visit the gods in their celestial retreats, as the great shamans have always done. More easily, and less dangerously, they could let the gods speak through code, that is, divination, using dice, entrails, bird patterns, yarrow sticks, cards. — Rachel Pollack

Jobs had not tempered his way of dealing with employees. "He applied charm or public humiliation in a way that in most cases proved to be pretty effective," Tribble recalled. But sometimes it wasn't. One engineer, David Paulsen, put in ninety-hour weeks for the first ten months at NeXT. He quit when "Steve walked in one Friday afternoon and told us how unimpressed he was with what we were doing." When Business Week asked him why he treated employees so harshly, Jobs said it made the company better. "Part of my responsibility is to be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected." But he still had his spirit and charisma. There were plenty of field trips, visits by akido masters, and off-site retreats. — Walter Isaacson

I have hundreds of poems memorized. Mostly by others, but also my own. I use the poems when I lead retreats for management groups on topics like creating teams, or coming up with a more entrepreneurial system, or creating more excitement. — David Whyte

Sorrow is not a raven perched persistently above a chamber door. Sorrow is a thing with teeth, and while in time it retreats, it comes back at the whisper of it's name. — Dean Koontz

Certain gardens are described as retreats when they are really attacks. — Ian Hamilton Finlay

A general who advances without thought of personal glory, and retreats without a care for disgrace, who thinks only of protecting the people and benefiting his ruler - such a man is a treasure beyond price to his country. — Sun Tzu

Roots of the weed sucked first life from the genesis of earth and hold the essence of it still. Always the weed returns; the cultured plant retreats before it. — Beryl Markham

The life of Dumas is not only a monument of endeavour and success, it is a sort of labyrinth as well. It abounds in pseudonyms and disguises, in sudden and unexpected appearances and retreats as unexpected and sudden, in scandals and in rumours, in mysteries and traps and ambuscades of every kind. — William Ernest Henley

These (literary) studies are the food of youth, and consolation of age; they adorn prosperity, and are the comfort and refuge of adversity; they are pleasant at home, and are no incumbrance abroad; they accompany us at night, in our travels, and in our rural retreats. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

She wandered through the meadow courtyard, only to find that each animal wasn't really in the meadow courtyard at all. It was no wonder they couldn't see her, because they couldn't see themselves. They might be walking, but they didn't feel the ground beneath their feet, paws, or talons. They were numb to the present moment, escaping into the retreats of their minds. They complained about being alone, and yet there was a meadow courtyard full of animals who were doing the same things and feeling the same way. — Anna Patrick

The journey that 'In Praise of Slowness' has made since publication shows how far this message resonates. The book has been translated into more than 30 languages. It appears on reading lists from business schools to yoga retreats. Rabbis, priests and imams have quoted from it in their sermons. — Carl Honore

Think of your attacks as the ocean during a storm. Waves come and crash. They beat on the sand over and over. Slamming into anything on its way. But then, the storm retreats. The water is calm and the waves slowly come and go. Every attack rises and falls. You either have to hold on," he squeezes my shoulders, "or stop it before the storm comes. — Lindsay Paige

He has forgotten how to hope. This hell of the present is his Kingdom at last. All problems recover their sharp edge. Abstract evidence retreats before the poetry of forms and colors. Spiritual conflicts become embodied and return to the abject and magnificent shelter of man's heart. None of them is settled. But all are transfigured. — Albert Camus

Is there some particular reason that you're here?" ...
"Not this again."
"Not what again?" said Clary.
"Every time I annoy him, he retreats into his No Mundanes Allowed tree house." Simon pointed at Jace. — Cassandra Clare

'Original Sin' is one of those ideas that has been circulating for several years at the Marvel retreats we have a couple times a year. We have all these ideas floating around for a bit before we figure out how to align them. — Jason Aaron

I think I first got into acting through church. I would go to these church retreats, and they would tell us to make a skit or make a video and present it to the rest of the group. And I started doing that. And I fell in love with it. — Ki Hong Lee

Every morning, after a few sips of coffee and a bit of small talk, each of us retreats with our books, and travels centuries away from this place. — Yxta Maya Murray

At some point, our faith and our words must become our actions and lives. Do we talk more about God than we obey him? We aren't going to get to heaven and have God say, "Thanks for talking about doing so much for me with your friends. That was awesome!" Many of us have sat in Bible studies or retreats or church talking about what we want to change and how we want to live for God, only to go home and back to the routine of life. Change is a funny thing. It takes change to change. — Jennie Allen

In my opinion, it was chiefly owing to their deep contemplation in their silent retreats in the days of youth that the old Indian orators acquired the habit of carefully arranging their thoughts.
They listened to the warbling of birds and noted the grandeur and the beauties of the forest. The majestic clouds - which appear like mountains of granite floating in the air - the golden tints of a summer evening sky, and the changes of nature, possessed a mysterious significance.
All of this combined to furnish ample matter for reflection to the contemplating youth. — Francis Assikinack

THE UNIVERSE PROCEEDS out of what it has been and into what it will be, inexorably, unstoppably, at the rate of one second per second, one year per year, forever. At right angles to its forward progress lie the past and the future. The future, that is to say, does not lie "ahead" of the present in the stream of time, but at a right angle to it: the future of any present moment can be projected as far as you like outward from it, infinitely in fact, but when the universe has proceeded further, and a new present moment has succeeded this one, the future of this one retreats with it into the what-has-been, forever outdated. It is similar but more complicated with the past. — John Crowley

Reflective writing produces distinct rewards. A writer does not claim to live exclusively in the moment. A pensive writer retreats into oneself in noble attempt to meld memory, thought, faith, doubt, and other strong emotions into thought capsules while exploring the inscrutable web of creation. — Kilroy J. Oldster

New Year's Eve is not about having a big party for me. It's a time of reflection, and I often go on spiritual retreats. — Monique Roffey

Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman. The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man; it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer. — William O. Douglas

He domesticated and developed the native wild flowers. He had one hill-side solidly clad with that low-growing purple verbena which mats over the hills of New Mexico. It was like a great violet velvet mantle thrown down in the sun; all the shades that the dyers and weavers of Italy and France strove for through centuries, the violet that is full of rose colour and is yet not lavender; the blue that becomes almost pink and then retreats again into sea-dark purple - the true Episcopal colour and countless variations of it. — Willa Cather

It is not quite as dark here as we thought. On the contrary, the interior is pulsating with light. It is, of course, the internal light of roots, a wandering phosphorescence, tiny veins of a light marbling the darkness, an evanescent shimmer of nightmarish substances. Likewise, when we sleep, severed from the world, straying into deep introversion, on a return journey into ourselves, we can see clearly through our closed eyelids, because thoughts are kindled in us by internal tapers and smolder erratically. This is how total regressions occur, retreats into self, journeys to the roots. This is how we branch out into anamnesis and are shaken by underground subcutaneous shivers. For it is only above ground, in the light of day, that we are a trembling, articulate bundle of tunes; in the depth we disintegrate again into black murmurs, confused purring, a multitude of unfinished stories. — Bruno Schulz

It begins with the kind of story the writers want to tell. We never sit around in those retreats and say, 'We really need to make a change. Let's change this character.' Or throw a dart at the wall and see what hits. It all begins with story. — Jason Aaron

Given the choice between grabbing a strange tongue and watching a monster poop into a giant snail shell, the face retreats and slams the door behind it — Christopher Moore

When the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when he retreats, pursue. — Mao Zedong

If economic catastrophe does come, will it be a time that draws Christians together to share every resource we have, or will it drive us apart to hide in our own basements or mountain retreats, guarding at gunpoint our private stores from others? If we faithfully use our assets for his kingdom now, rather than hoarding them, can't we trust our faithful God to provide for us then? — Randy Alcorn

What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe - why, intelligence never built a steam-engine! Circumstances built a steam-engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances. — F Scott Fitzgerald

To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat - some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn't the case with literature. Literature stimulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse. — Fernando Pessoa

In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted - Balder, Persephone - but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them. — E. M. Forster

I still go to a Christian priory for retreats. — Lionel Blue

When one illusion vanishes, another shall appear, and, still leading me forward towards an horizon that retreats as I advance, the happy prospect of futurity shall vanish only with my existence. — Maria Edgeworth

The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom. — Sun Tzu

He who advances without seeking fame,
Who retreats without escaping blame,
He whose one aim is to protect his people and serve his lord,
The man is a jewel of the Realm — Sun Tzu

I think we all have a hunger that's hard to name. A lot of people who come to my retreats have never named it before, or else they've named it in church, but they can't actually see the connection between what they're doing with food and this yearning. I call it "the flame" that they have: They yearn for big answers to live a big life. But they have to start with the most basic fears. — Geneen Roth

All these relics gave ... Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine to memory. I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by no means coveted a night's repose on one of those wide and heavy beds: shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought old-English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings, all which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight. — Charlotte Bronte

Live every day as if the Son of Man were at the door, and gear your thinking to the fleeting moment. Just how can it be redeemed? Walk as if the next step would carry you across the threshold of Heaven. Pray. That saint who advances on his knees never retreats. — Jim Elliot

Men are easily threatened. And whenever a man is threatened, when he becomes uncomfortable in places within himself that he does not understand, he naturally retreats into an arena of comfort or competence, or he dominates someone or something in order to feel powerful. Men refuse to feel the paralyzing and humbling horror of uncertainty, a horror that could drive them to trust, a horror that could release in them the power to deeply give themselves in relationship. As a result, most men feel close to no one, especially not to God, and no one feels close to them. Something good in men is stopped and needs to get moving. When good movement stops, bad movement (retreat or domination) reliably develops. — Larry Crabb