Seemingly Quotes & Sayings

Life had taught him to be profoundly suspicious of coincidence, and it had similarly taught him to view any seemingly random conjunction of events or persons as coincidence and thus be suspicious of that, as well. — Donna Leon

I love to ask people questions. I want to know everything about them, even things that may be seemingly socially inappropriate. — Lela Loren

We want to know. We want to know who we are and what we are capable of.

I want to know.

And yet we were dragged into another war. Another seemingly inevitable and gruesome legacy passed down, along with soma. — Jeno Marz

God prepares leaders in a crockpot, not a microwave. More important than the awaited goal is the work God does in us while we wait. Waiting deepens and matures us, levels our perspective, and broadens our understanding. Tests of time determine whether we can endure seasons of seemingly unfruitful preparation, and indicate whether we can recognize and seize the opportunities that come our way. — John C. Maxwell

Those who have overcome self-will and become instruments to do God's work can accomplish tasks which are seemingly impossible, but they experience no feeling of self achievement. I now know myself to be a part of the infinite cosmos, not separate from other souls or God. My illusory self is dead; the real self controls the garment of clay and uses it for God's work. — Peace Pilgrim

Nobody could catch cold by the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody wanted strength. Sea air was healing, softening, relaxing
fortifying and bracing
seemingly just as was wanted
sometimes one, sometimes the other. If the sea breeze failed, the seabath was the certain corrective; and where bathing disagreed, the sea air alone was evidently designed by nature for the cure. — Jane Austen

The thing I have learned through the years is that one idea 'doth' not a novel make. A novel must be several seemingly unrelated ideas that somehow magically come together to create the fabric of the story. — Katherine Paterson

I don't have any trouble believing that you would avoid something seemingly perfect because you're in something you really want to prove to yourself you can do right. — Alison Pill

The ignorant Looker-on can't imagine what the Limner means by those seemingly rude Lines and Scrawls, which he intends for the Rudiments of a Picture, and the Figures of Mathematick Operation are Nonsense, and Dashes at a Venture, to one uninstructed in Mechanicks. We are in the Dark to one another's Purposes and Intendments; and there are a thousand Intrigues in our little Matters, which will not presently confess their Design, even to sagacious Inquisitors — Joseph Glanvill

Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon's unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals. — Walt Disney

I hope you're proud of yourself for the times you've said "yes," when all it meant was extra work for you and was seemingly helpful only to someone else. — Fred Rogers

With so much reading ahead of you, the temptation might be to speed up. But in fact it's essential to slow down and read every word. Because one important thing that can be learned by reading slowly is the seemingly obvious but oddly underappreciated fact that language is the medium we use in much the same way a composer uses notes, the way a painter uses paint. I realize it may seem obvious, but it's surprising how easily we lose sight of the fact that words are the raw material out of which literature is crafted. — Francine Prose

There are times in our lives when the Lord calls us to seize the opportunities presented us. When we must, no matter how hard or fearful, summon the courage to step out into the unknown, brave the darkness, and embrace the dawn. With the Lord's help, though, such seemingly impossible feats become not only attainable, but essential. — Kathleen Morgan

I had spent my childhood and the better part of my early adulthood trying to understand my mother. She had been an extraordinarily difficult person, spiteful and full of rage, with a temper that could flare, seemingly out of nowhere, scorching everything and everyone who got in its way. [pp. 40-41] — Dani Shapiro

The ignorant man sees only the unsurmountable wall of death, hiding, seemingly forever, his cherished friends. But the man of unattachment, he who loves others as expressions of the Lord, understands that at death the dear ones have only returned for a breathing-space of joy in Him. The — Paramahansa Yogananda

There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep. — John Irving

The parasail's winch turned, winding up the line, pulling Ally and Serena lower and closer to him in a steady pull. A funny feeling seized him as he watched her. Logically, he knew she kept getting closer, but he suddenly knew she'd never arrive. She'd be suspended out on the end of that line for eternity, seemingly within reach, yet somehow distant. His breath stopped. — Linda Morris

In 2011 India's Test team was crowned as world cricket's leading side for the first time in its history. The foundations for this global domination can be traced to a decade earlier, when a career-defining performance by VVS Laxman helped to turn a whole series on its head as India, in the face of a seemingly unassailable deficit, staged an unbelievable recovery to go on and overpower what many considered to be the finest cricket team ever assembled. — Dave Wilson

Daily life is an ongoing adaptation process of imprinting our memory's storage center with useful data and the ceaseless expurgation of undesirable facts, exfoliation of destructive thoughts, and weeding out annoying emotional quirks that seemingly sprout out of thin air. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I believe the devil exists in those little, seemingly unnoticeable moments when we choose to value our own insecurities over the service of others. — Chris Matakas

I made my way to the control room, where I had the most mind-numbing communication that I've ever experienced with a man. And no, I am not a chauvinist. But if you're a woman, you must realize by now your propensity toward largely complex and seemingly illogical thought processes, making you capable of inflicting unusually cruel amounts of distress upon the relatively simple mind of a man. Personally, I'd take that as a compliment. — Mixerman

Tall, broad-shouldered, every inch of him seemingly corded with muscle, he was a male blooded with power. He paused in a dusty shaft of sunlight, his silver hair gleaming. As if his delicately pointed ears and slightly elongated canines weren't enough to scare the living shit out of everyone in that alley, including the now-whimpering madwoman behind Celaena, a wicked-looking tattoo was etched down the left side of his harsh face, the whorls of black ink stark against his sun-kissed skin. — Sarah J. Maas

Business is a string of seemingly impossible problems looking for solutions. Each problem you solve creates a new barrier to entry for your next competitor. — Jon Oringer

For all the value that the true, the truthful, the selfless may deserve, it would still be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life might have to be ascribed to deception, selfishness, and lust. It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of these good and revered things is precisely that they are insidiously related, tied to, and involved with these wicked, seemingly opposite things - maybe even one with them in essence. Maybe! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Character is developed one positive action at a time. Therefore nothing is actually trivial in our lives. To grow in character development, pay attention to seemingly trivial matters. Someone who grows from each minor life event will eventually reach high levels of character perfection. — Zelig Pliskin

St. Augustine is not only the oldest continuously-occupied European settlement on the American continent, it is also perhaps the most haunted city in the United States. Seemingly every spot in this city has some ghostly hidden history, right below the surface. Just by strolling through the historic streets you can hear the whispers of the long-dead. — James Caskey

In the Reintegration System, a problem or unwanted state of mind is viewed as a distinct part of the personality and reintegrated as such into the unity of one's being.
Every seemingly challenging part of our personality was initially part of the highest intention for our being. It is over time that it degraded and became a lower state of delusion. Our aim is to target such parts and work them back into the wholeness of our being. — Nebo D. Lukovich

Lying is a full time occupation, even if you tell just one, because once you tell it, you're stuck with it. If you want to do it right, you have to visualize it, conjure the graphics, tone, and sequence of action, then relate it purposefully in the midst of seemingly spontaneous dialogue. The more actual the lie becomes to the listener, the more actual it becomes to the teller, which is scariest of all. Some people really get to believing their own lies. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so. — Kurt Vonnegut

Here, as elsewhere, the gain of creation consists always in the growth of individual minds, which live and aspire, as flowers bloom and birds sing, in the midst of morasses; and in the continual development of that thought, the thought of human destiny, which is given to eternity adequately to express, and which ages of failure only seemingly impede. — Margaret Fuller

The Why's of suffering keep us shrouded in a seemingly bottomless void of abstraction where God is reduced to a finite ethical agent, a limited psychological personality, whose purposes measure on the same scale as ours. — Tullian Tchividjian

What's so incredibly amusing with photography is that while seemingly an art of the surface, it catches things I haven't even noticed. And it pains me not to have seen things in all their depth. — Jacques-Henri Lartigue

Enjoyment of life is not based on enjoyable circumstances. It is an attitude of the heart, a decision to enjoy everything because everything - even little, seemingly insignificant things - have a part in the overall "big picture" of life. — Joyce Meyer

Young people ... have more compassion and tenderness toward the elderly than most middle-aged adults. Nothing
not avarice, not pride, not scrupulousness, not impulsiveness
so disillusions a youth about her parents as the seemingly inhumane way they treat her grandparents. — Louise J. Kaplan

Perhaps the most powerful and appealing aspect of another's words, however, is simply their convenience. Whether distilled in the briefest apophthegm, or spread out across some voluminous tome, the thought is ready-made, the heavy lifting done. It's there to be used like a weapon or tool, and as time wanders on, seemingly leaving us fewer and fewer new things to say, it becomes ever more useful. As technology moves forward, as well, it also becomes much easier. Indeed, in this "information age" where so much is available to so many so quickly that enlightenment nearly verges on light pollution, it can sometimes appear that expression has been reduced to nothing more than a mad race to unearth and claim references. As such, the citation is also there to be donned, like some article of fashion from which we may reap the praise of discriminating taste without ever exerting ourself in the actual toil of manufacture. — Jasper Siegel Seneschal

I have become intrigued with the combining of seemingly unrelated ideas or images, or the drawing upon the many, sometimes dissimilar, meanings a word might have. — John Barton

Although all of us desire happiness, few of us reach that goal because of the seemingly endless cycle of expectation and disappointment. — Tarthang Tulku

God's intentions could be discerned by the careful study of even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant events. And the past weeks' events were anything but small and insignificant. — Ann Leckie

The vast majority of chatter surrounding parenthood is junk. All of these seemingly divisive decisions - like pain meds in labor, newborn sleep arrangements, and scheduling - are often phrased as moral imperatives from both sides. Screw that. Take care of your kid. Do what works. — J.J. Keith

During the 1919 solar eclipse, people go out to measure the positions of the stars and they find exactly what Einstein predicted. Einstein gets a telegram saying this, and somebody asked him, Professor Einstein, what would you have said if the observations didn't agree with what your prediction of general relativity said should be happening? And Einstein said, "I'd be sorry for the dear lord; the theory is correct." What he meant by that is the math is just so elegant, so beautiful, so powerful, that almost seemingly it can't possibly be wrong. — Rivka Galchen

inert and seemingly lifeless. — Barbara Taylor Bradford

That level of trust was what being in command was truly about
being able to lead someone not only down an unknown path, but also a seemingly wrong path, if the need called for doing so. — Dave Galanter

Never be paralyzed by your fears of a future that no one can foretell, even if predictions lead you to the seemingly obvious, and often disparaging, conclusions. That — R.A. Salvatore

The strength of the script, for me, was that you're really left, right till the end, to know what's happening. This seemingly perfect, happy, kooky real relationship slowly turns into something horrifying, but you get there through a filter of reality with all of it. — Harry Treadaway

For today we hear seemingly normal people, even those with a level head on their shoulders, blithely speaking of love as though it were some frothy feeling of no real consequence. — Pauline Reage

We are being spoilt in Aladdin's cave today, and each goal seemingly better than the last. — Ray Hudson

Apart from the seemingly magical internet, life in broad material terms isn't so different from what it was in 1953 ... The wonders portrayed in THE JETSONS, the space-age television cartoon from the 1960s, have not come to pass ... Life is better and we have more stuff, but the pace of change has slowed down compared to what people saw two or three generations ago. — Tyler Cowen

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION How much work did you do today that you will be proud of tomorrow? I don't mean just how you handled the big things, but also how you addressed the little, seemingly insignificant ones. Did you make progress on what matters most to you, or did you allow the buzz, busyness, and expectations of others to squelch your passion and focus? I've been asking these questions of others and myself each day for more than a decade, and they are the main reason I originally felt compelled to write Die Empty. Through my work I've encountered many teams of brilliant, sharp, amazing, talented people who have at some point "settled in" or begun coasting on past success. Unfortunately, — Todd Henry

The Divine may come to life in individual man, may reveal itself from within individual man; but it attains its earthly fullness only where, having awakened to an awareness of their universal being, individual beings open themselves to one another, disclose themselves to one another, help one another; where immediacy is established between one human being and another; where the sublime stronghold of the individual is unbolted, and man breaks free to meet other man. Where this takes place, where the eternal rises in the Between, the seemingly empty space: that true place of realization is community, and true community is that relationship in which the Divine comes to its realization between man and man. These — Martin Buber

I was raised to believe that God has a plan for everyone and that seemingly random twists of fate are all a part of His plan. My mother - a small woman with auburn hair and a sense of optimism that ran as deep as the cosmos - told me that everything in life happened for a purpose. She said all things were part of God's Plan, even the most disheartening setbacks, and in the end, everything worked out for the best. If something went wrong, she said, you didn't let it get you down: You stepped away from it, stepped over it, and moved on. Later on, she added, something good will happen and you'll find yourself thinking - If I hadn't had that problem back then, then this better thing that did happen wouldn't have happened to me. — Ronald Reagan

I was suffering, seemingly, from some extraordinary fault in my relation to reality, something so uniquely wrong that it compelled me to perceive, at rare intervals, large blocks of otherwise perfectly normal personal experience displaced from their proper positions in Time. — J.W. Dunne

The hippocampus is the structure where memory is supposedly controlled. It is the most plastic part of the brain; it is also the part that is assumed to absorb all the damage from repeated insults like the chronic stress we experience daily from small doses of negative feelings - as opposed to the invigorating "good stress" of the tiger popping up occasionally in your living room. You can rationalize all you want; the hippocampus takes the insult of chronic stress seriously, incurring irreversible atrophy. Contrary to popular belief, these small, seemingly harmless stressors do not strengthen you; they can amputate part of your self. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Having a book is somewhat like having a baby, as many woman writers have observed before me: the conception, the long preparation, the wait, the growing heaviness (not of body in this case but of the spirit and the manuscript) toward the end, the initial delight at the sight of the product, fully formed and seemingly perfect, and then the usual postpartum depression. What will people whose opinion I care about, and those whose views I don't value but have weight in the world of reader, think of it? — Doris Grumbach

The world was made before English language, and seemingly upon a different design. — Robert Louis Stevenson

The universe is a trillion, trillion threads moving in seemingly unrelated directions. Yet when you look at them together, they create a remarkable tapestry. — Richard Paul Evans

Laugh at yourself and at life. Not in the spirit of derision or whining self-pity, but as a remedy, a miracle drug, that will ease your pain, cure your depression, and help you to put in perspective that seemingly terrible defeat ... Never take yourself too seriously. — Og Mandino

Indeed, Urcheon of Erlenwald made a strange request of King Roegner, a strange reward to demand when the king offered him his wish. But let us not pretend we've never heard of such requests, of the Law of Surprise, as old as humanity itself. Of the price a man who saves another can demand, of the granting of a seemingly impossible wish. 'You will give me the first thing that comes to greet you. — Andrzej Sapkowski

It's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information. — William Gibson

Scarlett Johansson was wonderful in 'Lost in Translation,' and then, seemingly within a couple of weeks, she became completely Hollywoodised. I was shocked. I didn't recognise her. I hope to God it's just a phase. — Ian Holm

Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and seemingly, that of the wildest odes, [has] a logic of its own as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets ... there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

She strived for perfection. She loved setting herself tasks, sometimes impossible ones, to prove to her heart that underneath every seemingly ugly thing there was something beautiful inside. — Cecelia Ahern

is good enough? In these times the terms good and God are seemingly synonymous. We believe that what is generally accepted as good must be aligned with God's will. Generosity, humility, and justice are good. Selfishness, arrogance, and cruelty are evil. The distinction seems pretty straightforward. But is that all there is to it? If good is so obvious, why does Hebrews 5:14 teach that we must have discernment to recognize it? — John Bevere

We know summer is the height of of being alive. We don't believe in God or the prospect of an afterlife mostly, so we know that we're only given eighty summers or so per lifetime, and each one has to be better then the last, has to encompass a trip to that arts center up at Bard, a seemingly mellow game of badminton over at some yahoo's Vermont cottage, and a cool, wet, slightly dangerous kayak trip down an unforgiving river. Otherwise, how would you know that you have lived your summertime best? What is you missed out on some morsel of shaded nirvana? — Gary Shteyngart

I'm really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious. — Errol Morris

All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy. When it was over, the host of the planetary systems still lived on, with here and there a casualty, and here and there among the stars a new planetary birth, and here and there a fresh disaster. — Olaf Stapledon

Oh, we talk of progress, but what we really desire is the perpetuation of the present. With its seemingly endless excesses, its ravenous appetites. Ever the same rules, ever the same game. — Steven Erikson

I was always decoding. I was hyperalert.
Being hyperalert is a lasting thing. Being a watcher. Noticing emotional shirts, infinitesimally small tremors that flit over another person's face, the jab in a seemingly innocuous word, the quickening in a walk, an abrupt gesture - the way, say, a jacket is tossed over a chair. — Delia Ephron

Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story of Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all. — Donald Miller

On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble - for the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone - was a great iron spike or stake. On going to the back I saw, graven in great Russian letters: 'The dead travel fast. — Bram Stoker

Marie clasped her hands together and looked vulnerable. Payne flinched. "The only time you don't tell me something is when you think it's dangerous, because being a fragile, sheltered noblewoman, I might faint at the thought of experiencing physical harm like a common person." She sighed, and seemingly from nowhere, produced an enormous cast-iron frying pan easily one hundred centimeters in diameter. "And then," she said sadly, "I have to damage one of the good pans by smacking it against your thick, common skull until you tell me - — Phil Foglio

Everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations, so that a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings ... To capture some of this - I suppose that's lyricism. — Josef Sudek

It chances that I'd a letter myself by today's post, from Uncle Jonas Henry.' He chuckled. 'Seemingly he's as throng as he can be, and a trifle hackled with me for loitering here. I shall have to post off to Huddersfield next week, sir - and a bear-garden jaw I'll get when I arrive there, if I know Jonas Henry! — Georgette Heyer

Liberation from ego is what we shramanas are seeking, O Exalted One. If I were your disciple, O Venerable One, I'm afraid it might befall me that my ego would be pacified and liberated only seemingly, only illusorily, that in reality it would survive and grow great, for then I would make the teaching, my discipleship, my love for you, and the community of the monks into my ego! — Hermann Hesse

Childbearing is the most consistent of human events. Male and female alike, we have all been gestated inside a woman's body. As a phenomenon, childbearing is seemingly eternal and universal, yet like no other it highlights the gender divide, the singularity of individual experience and sociocultural diversities. — Joan Raphael-Leff

Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves. — Dale Carnegie

The first time that I entered through the double-locked doors of the psych ward I was terrified, believing for no real reason that such places harbored evil souls ready to assault me at any moment. But once inside I found it to be the slowest-moving place on Earth, and I saw that these patients were unique only in that time had stopped inside their wounds, which were seemingly never to heal. The pain was so thick and palpable in the psych ward that a visitor could breathe it like the heavy humidity of summer air, and I soon realized that the challenge would not be to defend myself from patients, but to defend myself against my own increasing indifference toward them. What originally struck me as cryptic in chapter fifty-nine was now mundane: they are turned inward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. — Hope Jahren

Improvisation was the blood and bone of jazz, and in the classic, New Orleans jazz it was collective improvisation in which each performer, seemingly going his own melodic way, played in harmony, dissonance, or counterpoint with the improvisations of his colleagues. Quite unlike ragtime, which was written down in many cases by its composers and could be repeated note for note (if not expression for expression) by others, jazz was a performer's not a composer's art. — Russell Lynes

It seems that the hurdle you have to jump over is everyone's informed opinion. When you're a young playwright, you're probably too precarious in your own technique to understand that when these seemingly informed opinions are contradicting each other, it becomes this paralyzing monolith. — Richard Greenberg

The misery of other people is only an abstraction [ ... ] something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one's own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence. — Nicole Krauss

In the tide pool I was riveted by fat pink sea stars sitting like satisfied gangsters and seemingly unconcerned by their exposure; gulls would peck at them but the sea stars simply grew replacement limbs. — Mary Ellen Hannibal

Seemingly by design, the American legal system encourages defense counsel to be as mendacious as possible. As Monroe Freedman, a legal ethicist and former dean of Hofstra Law School, has written, "The attorney is obligated to attack, if he can, the reliability or credibility of an opposing witness whom he knows to be truthful." It's an essential component of our adversarial system of justice, based on the theory that justice is best achieved not through a third-party investigation directed by an impartial judge but, instead, through vigorous disputation by the interested parties: trial by verbal combat. The — Jon Krakauer

The truth of faith is a slender, glowing element that runs through even the seemingly ordinary and undramatic moments of existence. Even at low intensity, it is a steady source of illumination. Such religious truth is powerful even when it seems faint, even when it seems obscured by the larger events of history. — Eugene Kennedy

To live a fulfilling life is an endurance event, and the only way to get to the finish line is to focus on the present, checking from moment to moment that I am still heading in the right direction. The Atlantic taught me that no matter how huge and seemingly impossible the task, anybody can achieve extraordinary things, by simply taking it one stroke at a time. — Roz Savage

The United States inherited a seemingly inexhaustible fortune in natural resources, yet it has responded to its environment with a dismaying mixture of materialism and inertia. The nation was virtually founded upon a ubiquitous desire for access to land and its contents. Its amazing growth during the nineteenth century was based directly upon the exploitation - immediate, unplanned, full use of soils, minerals, forests, and rivers. Equitable access to these natural bounties rather than constitutional guarantees would be the practical basis for democracy. Subsequently, political institutions were shaped in such a way that they could facilitate the disposition of the public domain. But that expectation, as later generations ruefully observed, did not materialize. The combination of economics and government had instead produced a handful of owners and policy makers who were beyond the control of the ballot box. — Elmo Richardson

Flow is the ability to be so focused that all of life's obstacles seemingly and smoothly pass you by. — Asa Don Brown

There is absolutely no experience, however terrible, or heartbreaking, or unjust, or cruel, or evil, which you can meet in the course of your earthly life, that can harm you if you but let Me teach you how to accept it with joy; and to react to it triumphantly as I did myself, with love and forgiveness and with willingness to bear the results of wrong done by others. Every trial, every test, every difficulty and seemingly wrong experience through which you may have to pass, is only another opportunity granted to you of conquering an evil thing and bringing out of it something to the lasting praise and glory of God. — Hannah Hurnard

Eroticism is therefore seemingly most clearly manifest at the intersection between the formal and the intimate. — Alain De Botton

My experience from 20 years of Africa is that the seemingly impossible is possible. — Hans Rosling

The human-made world is mostly beyond our comprehension. Our daily survival depends on seemingly magical gizmos that provide our food, water, clothing, comfort, transportation, education, well-being, and amusement. — Mark Frauenfelder

Why shouldn't you strengthen your own vibrations through fellowship with people seeking Self-realization, and by group meditation with them? This practice will fortify your own spiritual convictions you will find that many seemingly insuperable barriers in your life will crumble and dissolve in the waters of meditation. Your devotion and love for God will commingle with the devotion and love of others. Divine bliss will radiate from you, helping all persons you meet. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Ironically, it seems that it is by the means of seemingly perfunctory daily rituals and routines that we enhance the personal relationships that nourish and sustain us. — Kathleen Norris

You have games on there?" he asks.
"Yeah," I answer for her. "She's become a checkers fanatic. Shelley, show him how it works."
While Shelley slowly taps the screen with her knuckles, Alex watches, seemingly fascinated.
When the checkers screen comes up, Shelley nudges Alex's hand.
"You go first," he says.
She shakes her head.
"She wants you to go first," I tell him.
"Cool." He taps the screen.
I watch, getting all mushy inside, as this tough guy plays quietly with my big sister.
"Do you mind if I make a snack for her?" I say, desperate to leave the room.
"Nah, go ahead," he says, his concentration on the game.
"You don't have to let her win," I say before leaving. "She can hold her own in checkers."
"Uh, thanks for the vote of confidence, but I am tryin' to win," Alex says. He has a genuine grin on his face, without trying to act cocky or cool. — Simone Elkeles

Singlehood is about finding and committing to the love of your life. I'm talking about the literal love of your life. Being in a place of self-sufficiency, strength, independence, comfort, confidence, and happiness is what matters. No relationship, no matter how seemingly perfect and compatible you are, can give you these things. You have to find them within. You have to bring them to your relationship. Because in the end, you don't have to be alone to be single. And being single doesn't mean that you are alone. — Elisa Lorello

Think about what artists, novelists and poets have in common: the ability to engage in metaphorical thinking, linking seemingly unrelated ideas, such as, 'It is the east, and Juliet is the Sun.' — Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

It is immediately apparent, however, that this sense-world, this seemingly real external universe - though it may be useful and valid in other respects - cannot be the external world, but only the Self's projected picture of it ... The evidence of the senses, then, cannot be accepted as evidence of the nature of ultimate reality; useful servants, they are dangerous guides. — Evelyn Underhill

He could have swept me into his arms, kissed my mouth in a fit of passion, and begged me to be his bride, and whatever deep thirst I had hidden in the heart of me still would not be slaked. Amazing, unfathomable man that he was, I had hoped that he could breathe life into me. It took the touch of his lips to convince me that he was only a man.
True, he stirred something in me- sweetly, tenderly, even graciously- but when his kindness brushed up against my soul, it did not begin to ease the ache of the seemingly bottomless fissure that still gaped. — Nicole Baart

I did not study science at school until I was 13, when I was totally turned on by a seemingly dreary old teacher who suddenly, unannounced, manufactured a huge explosion in the middle of a totally boring monologue. From then on, all of his class wanted to make explosions. — Robert Winston

God has a timetable when seemingly miraculous happens. — Cliffie Stone

to support this privileged class as long as they kept up their end of the bargain with effective rituals. But after 650, deforestation, erosion, and soil exhaustion began reducing crop yields. The working classes, the farmers and monument builders, may have suffered increasing hunger and disease, even as the rulers hogged an ever-larger share of resources. The society was heading for a crisis. Diamond writes: "We have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities." (If this sounds familiar, I would note that archaeology is thick with cautionary tales that speak directly to the twenty-first century.) — Douglas Preston

The Japanese poet Masahide once wrote,"The barn has burnt down - now I can see the moon." I now understand what that means. Life can truly begin after a fire when all is seemingly lost. All of the unnecessary has been burned away. — Kenn Bivins