Retrieved From Quotes & Sayings

Three things cannot be retrieved:
The arrow once sped from the bow
The word spoken in haste
The missed opportunity.
Ali, the Lion of Islam. — Idries Shah

Like a battalion of marines at roll call, her neck hairs marshaled to five-alarm status. She stumbled back to her desk, jerked open the botton drawer, retrieved a pair of Nighthawk binoculars, fixed the scopes on him, and fiddled with the focus. Gotcha. Hair the colour of coal. Chocolate brown eyes. A five-o'clock shadow ringing his craggy jawline. Handsome as the day was long ...
He sauntered towards her, oozing charisma from every pore. Charlee forgot to breathe. And then he committed the gravest sin of all, knocking her world helter-skelter. The scoundrel smiled. — Lori Wilde

The telling and the hearing of a story is not a simple act. The one who tells must reach down into deeper layers of the self, reviving old feelings, reviewing the past. Whatever is retrieved is reworked into a new form, one that narrates events and gives the listener a path through these events that leads to some fragment of wisdom. The one who hears takes the story in, even to a place not visible or conscious to the mind, yet there. In this inner place a story from another life suffers a subtle change. As it enters the memory of the listener it is augmented by reflection, by other memories, and even the body hearing and responding in the moment of the telling. By such transmissions, consciousness is woven. — Susan Griffin

I knew something as I watched: almost everyone was saying goodbye to me. I was becoming one of the many little-girl-losts. They would go back to their homes and put me to rest, a letter from the past never to be reopened or reread. And I could say goodbye to them, wish them well, bless them somehow for their good thoughts. A handshake in the street, a dropped item picked up and retrieved and handed back, or a friendly wave from the distant window, a nod, a smile, a moment when the eyes lock over the antics of a child. — Alice Sebold

I wonder if any of them can tell from just looking at me that all I am is the sum total of my pain, a raw woundedness so extreme that it might be terminal. It might be terminal velocity, the speed of the sound of a girl falling down to a place from where she can't be retrieved. What if I am stuck down here for good? — Elizabeth Wurtzel

After getting her settled safely on the couch, I retrieved a sterile razor blade from the kit in the closet, along with alcohol swabs, gloves, and gauze. A fluffy white towel came from the bathroom. — Lucian Bane

Take one more step and I'll put an arrow through you."
Will tried to model his voice on the quiet, threatening tone Halt had used. He had retrieved several of his arrows from the nearest target and now he had one of them ready, laid on the bowstring. Halt glanced around approvingly.
"Good idea," he said. "Aim for the left calf. It's a very painful wound. — John Flanagan

The place didn't look the same but it felt the same; sensations clutched and transformed me. I stood outside some concrete and plate-glass tower-block, picked a handful of eucalyptus leaves from a branch, crushed them in my hand, smelt, and tears came to my eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, on a pavement awash with packaged American matrons, crying not in grief but in wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once. — Penelope Lively

This book is a work of fiction that was given to a pirate after it was retrieved from the future by exotically beautiful Eastern European girls. Then diabolical Eastern European scientists worked tirelessly to ensure that every name, character, place, and incident in the world which, even remotely, resembled one within the book was "erased." (How? Ninjas.) If any similarity still exists, it's purely accidental (and suggests you live in an alternate dimension). Any lingering resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental and highly unlikely. — James Marshall

To demonstrate, Pepperberg carried Alex on her arm to a tall wooden perch in the middle of the room. She then retrieved a green key and a small green cup from a basket on a shelf. She held up the two items to Alex's eye. "What's same?" she asked. She looked at Alex nose-to-beak. Without hesitation, Alex's beak opened: "Co-lor." "What's different?" Pepperberg asked. "Shape," Alex said. Since he lacked lips and only slightly opened his beak to reply, the words seemed to come from the air around him, as if a ventriloquist were speaking. But the words - and what can only be called the thoughts - were entirely his. — Virginia Morell

Madam Li nods. She reaches over the table for Chinatsu's hand. It would look like a gesture of sympathy for a friend. Chinatsu uncurls her right hand and allows the money to be retrieved. The initial wedge of money that Madam Li takes now is more than she ever takes later on. It almost entirely depletes the stash of money she's been saving for years. The woman's magician-eyes are framed by the steam snaking from their tea. Cat-green, they are striking and marred by yellow jelly spots in the whites.
'You no drink you no eat. What you, pregnant?'
'Would I be here?'
Madam Li screws her chin back into her neck. The chair creaks as she sits back, spine straight. 'Well, if you not going eat drink speaking truth, fuck off.'
Chinatsu's eyebrows flick up. She bursts out laughing. — Sarah Dobbs

A wrong decision isn't forever; it can always be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The most important, the longest lasting, the strongest emotional, and the most practiced memories are the ones that are embedded the deepest in the brain, and because we have retrieved them so many times previously, they are the most able to be retrieved. We all hear about people who can remember their youth, their phone number, or street address from 70 years ago, but they cannot recall what they had for breakfast. The memory of this morning's breakfast wasn't rehearsed, and wasn't very important, so it fades away quickly. — Daniel Levitin

Three Things
Three things cannot be retrieved:
The arrow once sped from the bow
The word spoken in haste
The missed opportunity.
(Ali the Lion, Caliph of Islam, son-in-law of Mohammed the Prophet), — Idries Shah

Few societies have been stable enough and resilient enough to renew themselves in recognizable forms over long stretches of time. History is littered with civilizations that have been utterly destroyed. Everywhere, the self-assured confidence of priests, scribes and intellectuals has been mocked by unexpected events, leaving all their prayers, records and treatises wholly forgotten unless they are retrieved from oblivion by future archaeologists and historians. — John N. Gray

The vampire gagged. The muscles of its neck constricted, widened, constricted again, and it disgorged a six-inch-long metal cylinder onto my desk. The bloodsucker grasped it, twisted the cylinder's halves apart, and retrieved a roll of papers. "Photographs," Ghastek said, handing me a couple of sheets from the roll.
"That's disgusting."
"He is thirty years old," Ghastek said. "All his internal organs, with the exception of the heart, atrophied long ago. The throat makes for a very good storage cavity. People seem to prefer it to the anus."
Translation: be happy I didn't pull it out of my ass. Thank the gods for small favors. — Ilona Andrews

For example, students of policy have noted that the availability heuristic
helps explain why some issues are highly salient in the public's mind while
others are neglected. People tend to assess the relative importance of
issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory - and this is
largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media — Daniel Kahneman

AuthorLastName, FirstInitial. (Date of publication). Title of the article. Title of the Scholarly Journal, volume number, page range if applicable. Retrieved from URL. — Roger Doan

Inexorable self, carried like the superfluous and tiresome piece of luggage which it is impossible to lose; franked with the customs' stamp of every frontier, retrieved exasperatingly from the disaster where everything else is lost, companion of the dislocation of cancelled sailings and missed connections, witness of every catastrophe, survivor of all voyages and situations ... I — Anna Kavan

Since 1969, more than 30,000 specimens of stone from outer space that have survived their headlong plunge through the earth's atmosphere have been recovered from the southern continent. One of them, retrieved in 2003, has been proven, thanks to a remarkable analysis by spectrograph, to have once been part of the planet Mars. — David Roberts

The answer was straightforward: instances of the class will be retrieved from memory, and if retrieval is easy and fluent, the category will be judged to be large. We defined the availability heuristic as the process of judging frequency by the ease with which instances come to mind. — Daniel Kahneman

Now, along with the guns I'd retrieved from my personal storage unit, I felt totally prepared to write a scholarly book on the Middle East.--Titus Ray, Chapter 9 — Luana Ehrlich

I believe that spiritual resistance
the ability to stand firm at the center of our convictions when everything around us asks us to concede, that our capacity to face the harsh measures of a life, comes from the deep quiet of listening to the land, the river the rocks. There is a resonance of humility that has evolved with the earth. It is the best retrieved in solitude amidst the stillness of days in the desert. — Terry Tempest Williams

Tears came to my eyes when I read of a mere boy in one of our eastern cities who noticed a vagrant asleep on a sidewalk and who then went to his own room, retrieved his own pillow, and placed it beneath the head of that one whom he knew not. Perhaps there came from the precious past the welcome words: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me' (Matt. 25:40). — Thomas S. Monson

The first surprise is that people's guesses are much more accurate than they would be by chance. I find this astonishing. A sense of cognitive ease is apparently generated by a very faint signal from the associative machine, which "knows" that the three words are coherent (share an association) long before the association is retrieved. — Daniel Kahneman

Do it now! can affect every phase of your life. It can help you do the things you should do but don't feel like doing. It can keep you from procrastinating when an unpleasant duty faces you. But it can also help you do those things that you want to do. It helps you seize those precious moments that, if lost, may never be retrieved. — Napoleon Hill

An essential design feature of the associative machine is that it represents only activated ideas. Information that is not retrieved (even unconsciously) from memory might as well not exist. — Daniel Kahneman

the form of deception being produced is a BFL, the truthful information one possesses is contextually unproblematic, the truthful information is easily accessible within memory (i.e., involves data that recently were uploaded to working memory), and any false information that might be used to construct the BFL must be retrieved from long-term memory. — Anonymous

People tend to assess the relative importance of
issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory - and this is
largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media. Frequently
mentioned topics populate the mind even as others slip away from
awareness. In turn, what the media choose to report corresponds to their
view of what is currently on the public's mind. It is no accident that
authoritarian regimes exert substantial pressure on independent media.
Because public interest is most easily aroused by dramatic events and by
celebrities, media feeding frenzies are common — Daniel Kahneman

Duties were allocated and their meeting was adjourned until after the second honey trap by Ava. Angelina and Felicity would stay at base HQ and download data and run the company and thoroughly go through all accounts retrieved from the husband's computers. It would be put into separate files for each husband, heavily encrypted and stored on a remote hard drive and a back up made daily on the company server. All figures would be inputted into excel spreadsheets and final figures would determine of each mans financial worth — Annette J. Dunlea

All my songs are based on melody, which is retrieved from my Jewish heritage. Melody will always exist no matter what the rhythmic changes there are. — Neil Diamond

You, my child, will marry well. More than once." ( ... ) The lady retrieved the cards and shuffled them back together into one stack in an attitude of dismissal.
Taking this as a sign her fortune was complete, Preshea stood. Looking particularly pleased with life, she passed over a few coins and gave Madame Spetuna a nice curtsy.
Mademoiselle Geraldine was fanning herself. "Oh, dear, oh, dear, Miss Buss. Let us hope it is widowhood and not" - she whispered the next word - "divorce that leads to your multiple marriages."
Preshea sat and sipped from a china cup. "I shouldn't worry, Headmistress. I am tolerably certain it will be widowhood. — Gail Carriger

Mrs. Seaton?" His lordship was frowning at the table, but when he looked up at her, his expression became perfectly blank - but for the mischief in his eyes. "My lord?" Anna cocked her head and wanted to stomp her foot. The earl in a playful mood was more bothersome than the earl in a grouchy mood, but at least he wasn't kissing her. He held up her right glove, twirling it by a finger, and he wasn't going to give it back, she knew, unless she marched up to him and retrieved it. "Thank you," she said, teeth not quite clenched. She walked over to him, and held out her hand, but wasn't at all prepared for him to take her hand in his, bring it to his lips, then slap the glove down lightly into her palm. "You are welcome." He snagged a third muffin from the bread box and went out the back door, whistling some complicated theme by Herr Mozart that Lord Valentine had been practicing for hours earlier in the week. Leaving — Grace Burrowes

That night, after Gansey had gone to meet Blue, Ronan retrieved one of Kavinsky's green pills from his still-unwashed pair of jeans and returned to bed. Propped up in the corner, he stretched out his hand to Chainsaw, but she ignored him. She had stolen a cheese cracker and now was very busily stacking things on top of it to make sure Ronan would never take it back. Although she kept glancing back at his outstretched hand, she pretended not to see it as she added a bottle cap, an envelope, and a sock to the pile hiding the cracker. — Maggie Stiefvater

If there is a place in heaven for Labrador Retrievers (and I trust there is or I won't go) it'll have to have a brook right smack in the middle - a brook with little thin shoals for wading and splashing; a brook with deep, still pools where they can throw themselves headlong from the bank; a brook with lots of small sticks floating that can be retrieved back to shore where they belong; a brook with muskrats and muskrat holes; a brook with green herons and wood ducks; a brook that is never twice the same with surprises that run and swim and fly; a brook that is cold enough to make the man with the dog run like the devil away from his shaking; a brook with a fine spot to get muddy and a sunny spot or two to get dry. — Gene Hill

But when Krendler's volume became intrusive, Dr. Lecter retrieved his crossbow from a corner. — Thomas Harris