Seizing Quotes & Sayings

The inflection point at which we have arrived is one in which we are increasingly seizing the keys to all creation, as astonding as that might seem. — Joel Garreau

Parisians had no doubt that, should the Huguenots succeed in seizing power in France, as it was obvious they were trying to do, the Catholic population would be either forced to convert or suffer annihilation. But — Nancy Goldstone

By denying its musical and artistic merit, hip hop's critics get to have it both ways: they can deny the legitimate artistic standing of rap while seizing on its pervasive influence as an art form to prove what a terrible effect it has on youth. — Michael Eric Dyson

It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

More women speaking up and seizing the helm of power can create its own momentum. It can change the culture that helps perpetuate those external forces. — Nancy Birdsall

Begin by seizing something which your opponent holds dear; then he will be amenable to your will. — Sun Tzu

Beans, beans, they're good for your heart," I said cheerily, seizing the opening. "The more you eat, the more you fart. The more you fart, the better you feel - so let's have beans for every meal! — Diana Gabaldon

When you live in the present, the past is forgotten & the future takes care of itself. — Mandy Hale

Thought Has joys apart, even in blackest woe, And seizing some fine thread of verity Knows momentary godhead. — George Eliot

He who has once begun to live by robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others; — Niccolo Machiavelli

But above all he must refrain from seizing the property of others, because a man is quicker to forget the death of his father than the loss of his patrimony. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Much of the success of life depends upon keeping one's mind open to opportunity and seizing it when it comes. — Alice Foote MacDougall

Life ... as God intended it enables us to live above the drag of fear, superstition, shame, pessimism, guilt, anxiety, worry, and all the negativity that keeps people from seizing each day as a gift from Him. — Charles R. Swindoll

Seizing on a piece of business, I become tiny, eager, efficient: roiled water I cannot see into. — James Richardson

Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. The nature of these rules allows violence to be inflicted on violence and the resurgence of new forces that are sufficiently strong to dominate those in power. Rules are empty in themselves, violent and unfinalized; they are impersonal and can be bent to any purpose. The successes of history belong to those who are capable of seizing these rules, to replace those who had used them, to disguise themselves so as to pervert them, invert their meaning, and redirect them against those who had initially imposed them; controlling this complex mechanism, they will make it function so as to overcome the rulers through their own rules. — Michel Foucault

After seizing state power, the victors have a powerful interest in moving the revolution out of the streets and into the museums and schoolbooks as quick as possible, lest the people decide to repeat the experience. — James C. Scott

There's a big difference between seeing an opportunity and seizing an opportunity — Jim Moore

The attempt at introspective analysis ... is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see the darkness. — William James

People think that the destructive theories that nowadays go by the name "socialism" are of recent origin. This is a mistake: these theories were contemporaneous with the first Economists. While they employed the all-powerful government of their dreams as an instrument to change the forms of society, socialists imagined seizing the same power to undermine its base. — Alexis De Tocqueville

As much as he hated the travel, he loved the writing - the virtuous delights of organizing a disorganized country, stripping away the inessential and the second-rate, classifying all that remained in neat, terse paragraphs. He cribbed from other guidebooks, seizing small kernels of value and discarding the rest. — Anne Tyler

Seizing an imaginary microphone, Dennis adopts a limp Estuary accent: 'Masturbating's changed a lot since I were a lad, Brian. In my day, we masturbated for the sheer love of it. Day and night we did it, all the kids on our estate, masturbating on the old waste ground, masturbating up against the wall of the house ... I remember me mam coming out and shouting, "Stop that masturbating and come in for your tea! You'll never amount to anything if all you think about is masturbating!" Masturbating crazy we were. Your young masturbators today, though, it's all about the money, it's all about agents and endorsements. Sometimes I worry that the masturbating's in danger of being squeezed out altogether. — Paul Murray

But yet he may live and enjoy, by seizing and appropriating the productions of the faculties of his fellow men. This is the origin of plunder. Now, — Frederic Bastiat

And now she has you seizing control of my army."
"Your army? I thought this was Gaunt's."
"So did he. — Michael J. Sullivan

In the classic outline of a failed coup, the plotters had sought to oust the president without first securing the support of the military and the civil service, and without seizing the headquarters of the state broadcaster. — Tim Shipman

By seizing every opportunity for kindness, forgiveness, healing, and love that crosses my path each day, I hope that my death, although perhaps sad for some, will be gracefully concluded. — Lisa J. Shultz

Technology is the means by which we have decommissioned natural selection and are seizing control. We are no longer to be victims of some blind evolutionary process where sentient beings are massacred by entropy. — Jason Silva

If we could honestly promise young couples that we knew how to give them offspring with superior character, why should we assume they would decline? Common sense tells us that if scientists find ways to greatly improve human capabilities, there will no stopping the public from happily seizing them. — James D. Watson

Can you make a house of cards?" she asked.
"Yes," Violet said, and went on looking. This way Violet had of seizing first not the most obvious sense of what people said to her but some other, interior echo or reverse side of it was a thing that baffled and frustrated her husband, who sought in her sybilline responses to ordinary questions some truth he was sure Violet knew but couldn't quite enunciate. With his father-in-law's help, he had filled volumes with his searchings. Her children, though, hardly noticed it. Nora shifted from foot to foot for a moment waiting for the promised structure, and when it didn't appear forgot it. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed. — John Crowley

Salvation is from our side a choice, from the divine side it is a seizing upon, an apprehending, a conquest by the Most High God. Our 'accepting' and 'willing' are reactions rather than actions. The right of determination must always remain with God. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

I believe I had a delirious idea of seizing the red-hot poker out of the fire, and running him through with it. — Charles Dickens

Returning home on the evening of his engagement he had bewildered Mrs. Tims by seizing her as she stood in front of the kitchen-stove, a frying-pan full of sausages in her hand, and waltzing her round the kitchen, frying-pan and all. Subsequently five of the six sausages had been recovered; but the sixth was not retrieved until the next morning when, in dusting, Mrs. Tims discovered it on the mantelpiece. — Herbert Jenkins

When Abbess Ebba received tidings of the near approach of the pagan hordes, who had already wrecked vengeance upon ecclesiastics, monks, and consecrated virgins, she summoned her nuns to Chapter, and in a moving discourse exhorted them to preserve at any cost the treasure of their chastity. Then seizing a razor, and calling upon her daughters to follow her heroic example, she mutilated her face in order to inspire the barbarian invaders with horror at the sight. The nuns without exception courageously followed the example of their abbess. When the Danes broke into the cloister and saw the nuns with faces thus disfigured, they fled in panic. Their leaders, burning with rage, sent back some of their number to set fire to the monastery, and thus the heroic martyrs perished in the common ruin of their house. — Michael Barrett

The longer you delay in seizing the treasure, the more likely you'll lose it. The time to act is now. — Michael Hyatt

Government does not grow by seizing our freedoms, but by assuming our responsibilities. — Mike Cloud

Fire is like greed, my comrade. It spreads across the world, thinking only of itself, seizing everything it sees, and ruining everyone's fun. — Lemony Snicket

Authors are magpies, echoing each other's words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters. — Bergen Evans

Life is very persistent and very ingenious in seizing every opportunity. — Joseph Wood Krutch

I wanted to say two further things to you today: irony: Do not let yourself be governed by it, especially not in unproductive moments. In productive ones try to make use of it as one more means of seizing life. Used purely, it is itself pure, and one need not be ashamed of it; and when you feel too familiar with it, when you fear the growing intimacy with it, then turn towards great and serious subjects, before which it becomes small and helpless. Seek for the depth of things: there irony never descends - and when you have thus brought it to the edge of greatness, test at the same time whether this mode of perception springs from a necessity of your being. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Thanks to his complex convictions, made strong with the forces of animus and anima, the alchemist believes he is seizing the soul of the world, participating in the soul of the world. Thus, from the world to the man, alchemy is a problem of souls. — Gaston Bachelard

Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible modes of transition from one situation to another. — Robert Nozick

He'd never thought he would feel that way again. Ready to brave any sorrow just to keep her at his side. Perhaps the impulse wasn't logical or reasoned, but it was real and true. It was choosing hope rather than despair. Seizing the one sparkling possibility in a roomful of someones. — Tessa Dare

Life is a treasure-chest of opportunities, choices, and time. Unfortunately, the choice many people make is to argue about the details of the chest instead of seizing the treasure within it. — Steve Maraboli

When we let our mind relax, a moment will come when we rest without thoughts. This stable state is like an ocean without waves. Within this stability a thought arises. This thought is like a wave which forms on the surface of the ocean. When we leave this thought alone, do nothing with it, not "seizing" it, it subsides by itself into the mind where it came from. — Bokar Rinpoche

Why do things happen at all? What is it that stops the world simply ... seizing up?"
... "Do you know?"
... "I don't know the answer, no. Sometimes I think it's the only question, and that all the other questions are tributaries that flow into it ... Might the answer be 'love'? — David Mitchell

The quest for seizing that amygdala moment, those crushing seconds of unbearable, incapacitating shock, seizing these moments and not letting them go, dragging them out for as long as is operationally necessary, that, said Sid, is the aim of the Bucha effect. — Jon Ronson

Umar, despite his strong character and impressive personality, had lost control of himself for a short while, his emotions seizing him so strongly that it brought out a heretofore unsuspected fragility, causing him to react like a child refusing the ruling of God, of reality, of life. By contrast, Abu Bakr, who was normally so sensitive, who wept so abundantly and so intensely when he read the Quran, had received the news of the Prophet's death with deep sorrow but also with extraordinary calm and unsuspected inner strength. At that particular moment, the two men's roles were inverted, thus showing that through his departure the Prophet offered us a final teaching: in the bright depths of spirituality, sensitivity can produce a degree of strength of being that nothing can disturb. Conversely, the strongest personality, if it forgets itself for a moment, can become vulnerable and fragile. The — Tariq Ramadan

Broad access to opportunity is the key to a truly equitable America. No matter who you are or where you grew up, Black Faces in White Places provides a blueprint to seizing opportunities at hand - and expanding opportunity for your entire community. — Angela Glover Blackwell

Time is something that cannot be bought, it cannot be wagered with God, and it is not in endless supply. Time is simply how you live your life. — Craig Sager

And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind is closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and do it gladly so. — Julius Caesar

They fought their first action in March of 1775. Embarked on eight small ships, they sailed to the Bahamas and captured a British fort near Nassau, seizing gunpowder and supplies. Later, during the Revolutionary War, Marines fought several engagements in their distinctive green coats, such as helping George Washington to cross the Delaware River, and assisting John Paul Jones on the Bonhomme Richard to capture the British frigate Serapis during their famous sea fight. — Tom Clancy

God and religion before every thing!' Dante cried. 'God and religion before the world.'
Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with a crash.
'Very well then,' he shouted hoarsely, 'if it comes to that, no God for Ireland!'
'John! John!' cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve.
Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside a cobweb.
'No God for Ireland!' he cried, 'We have had too much God in Ireland. Away with God! — James Joyce

Young men!" he snorted to Erak. "They think a pretty face can cure every ill."
"Some of us can remember back that far. Halt," Erak told him with a grin. "I suppose that's all far behind an old hack like you. Svengal told me you were settling down. Some plump, motherly widow seizing her last chance with a broken-down old gray bear, is she?"
Erak, of course, had been told by Svengal that Halt had recently married a great beauty. But he enjoyed getting a reaction from the smaller man. Halt's one-eyed stare locked onto the Oberjarl.
"When we get back, I'd advise you not to refer to Pauline as a 'plump, motherly widow' in her hearing. She's very good with that dagger she carries and you need your ears to keep that ridiculous helmet of yours in place. — John Flanagan

Jackson began raids into Florida, arguing it was a sanctuary for escaped slaves and for marauding Indians. Florida, he said, was essential to the defense of the United States. It was that classic modern preface to a war of conquest. Thus began the Seminole War of 1818, leading to the American acquisition of Florida. It appears on classroom maps politely as "Florida Purchase, 1819" - but it came from Andrew Jackson's military campaign across the Florida border, burning Seminole villages, seizing Spanish forts, until Spain was "persuaded" to sell. He acted, he said, by the "immutable laws of self-defense. — Howard Zinn

If I've sounded a wee bit overwrought in recent columns, it's because America is seizing up before our eyes. And I'm a little bewildered by how many Americans can't see it. I see that chap at LaGuardia with Don't Tread on Me on his chest and government bureaucrats in his pants. And I wonder if America's exceptional attitudinal swagger isn't providing a discreet cover for the withering of liberty. Sometimes an in-your-face attitude blinds you to what's going on under your nose. — Mark Steyn

I'm passionate about restoring the efficacy of American democracy, making capitalism sustainable, prioritizing advances in technology, and seizing the opportunities to use that kind of innovation to help usher in a new economy that doesn't rely on carbon-spewing fossil fuels. — Al Gore

Time and time again does the pride of man influence his very own fall. While denying it, one gradually starts to believe that he is the authority, or that he possesses great moral dominion over others, yet it is spiritually unwarranted. By that point he loses steam; in result, he falsely begins trying to prove that unwarranted dominion by seizing the role of a condemner. — Criss Jami

Libraries really are the gates to the future. So it is unfortunate that, round the world, we observe local authorities seizing the opportunity to close libraries as an easy way to save money, without realising that they are stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closing the gates that should be open. — Neil Gaiman

Au contraire, he's the person you wanted to be. One who was less arrogant, and undisciplined as a youth. One who was less like me. The Jean-Luc Picard you wanted to be, the one who did not fight the Nausicaan, had quite a different career from the one you remember. That Picard never had a brush with death, never came face to face with his own mortality, never realised how fragile life is or how important each moment must be. So his life never came into focus. He drifted for much of his career, with no plan or agenda, going from one assignment to the next, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves. He never lead the away team on Milika Three to save the ambassador, or take charge of the Stargazer's Bridge when its Captain was killed. And no one ever offered him a command. He learned to play it safe. And he never, ever got noticed by anyone. — Q

Then also pretexts for seizing property are never wanting, and one who begins to live by rapine will always find some reason for taking the goods of others, whereas causes for taking life are rarer and more quickly destroyed. — Niccolo Machiavelli

And I, God-hated,
I could not rest
Content seizing the rocks merely
And shattering them to smithereens, I must
Undermine her too, her peace.
So she is hell's demanded sacrifice.
Devil, now help me shorten the time of dread.
Let what must happen happen now,
Let her fate break around my head,
Let her come to perdition as I do. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Cyborg writing must not be about the Fall, the imagination of a once-upon-a-time wholeness before language, before writing, before Man. Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other. — Donna J. Haraway

Art can model the more difficult dynamic of transfiguring one's life, but at some point the dynamic reverses itself: life models, or forces, the existential crisis by which art - great art - is fully experienced. There is a fluidity between art and life, then, in the same way that there is, in the best lives, a fluidity between mind and matter, self and soul, life and death. Experience seems to stream clearly through some lives, rather than getting slowed and clogged up in the drift-waste of ego, or stagnating in little inlets of despair, envy, rage. It has to do with seizing and releasing as a single gesture. It has to do with standing in relation to life and death ... owning an emptiness that, because you have claimed it, has become a source of light, wearing your wound that, like a ramshackle house on some high exposed hill, sings with the hard wind that is steadily destroying it. — Christian Wiman

Look, look,' cried the count, seizing the young man's hands - look, for on my soul it is curious. Here is a man who had resigned himself to his fate, who was going to the scaffold to die - like a coward, it is true, but he was about to die without resistance. Do you know what gave him strength? - do you know what consoled him? It was, that another partook of his punishment - that another partook of his anguish - that another was to die before him. Lead two sheep to the butcher's, two oxen to the slaughterhouse, and make one of them understand that his companion will not die; the sheep will bleat for pleasure, the ox will bellow with joy. But man - man, who God created in his own image - man, upon whom God has laid his first, his sole commandment, to love his neighbour - man, to whom God has given a voice to express his thoughts - what is his first cry when he hears his fellowman is saved? A blasphemy. Honour to man, this masterpiece of nature, this king of the creation! — Alexandre Dumas

A detective with his murder mystery, a chemist seeking the structure of a new compound, use little of the formal and logical modes of reasoning. Through a series of intuitions, surmises, fancies, they stumble upon the right explanation, and have a knack of seizing it when it once comes within reach. — Gilbert N. Lewis

You are alive today, and no matter what your condition, make a mark here and now. Opportunity is at every moment, seizing it is pleasure. — Angelo Sotira

For most women, being seen, having others pay attention to you, is imagined and experienced as more desirable and more powerful than commanding an army or seizing control of the means of production and reproduction. — Phyllis Chesler

By seizing the formerly little-known Height 102.0 - the Mamayev Hill - the Red Army fought its way to the fascists' den - Berlin. We are proud to say that our victory in Stalingrad radically changed the whole situation in the Second World War. And this victory meant that our Motherland had withstood one of the most difficult tests in its history. — Aleksandr Vasilevsky

If you are seizing on a new business opportunity, deliberately move your customers' expectations up a few notches and consistently over-deliver on your promises - you will leave your competitors struggling to catch up. — Richard Branson

He had gathered about him what was considered by many to be the intellectual and artistic elite ... actually, a group of bored men and libertines who were glib-tongued, talking much of art, literature, and music but without any deep-seated convictions upon any subject aside from their own prejudices. Mainly concerned with their own posturing, they were creatures of fad and whim, seizing upon this writer or that composer and exalting him to the skies until he bored them, then shifting to some other. Occasionally, the artist upon whom they lavished attention were of genuine ability, but more often they possessed some obscurity that gave the dilettantes an illusion of depth and quality. In the majority of cases what was fancied to be profound was simply bad writing, bad painting, or deliberately affected obscurity. — Louis L'Amour

[Documentary photography] is unwittingly literary, because it is nothing other than an observation of contemporary life apprehended at the right moment by an artist capable of seizing it. (1928) — Pierre Mac Orlan

Is almost pleasant, at first, to be Falling. The harsh, unwavering light of the City recedes, leaving you in shadow, leaving only memories of relief, of a blessed coolness seizing your limbs. Nothing has turned yet into longing, into bitterness, into the cold that will never cease, not even in the heat of summer. — Aliette De Bodard

I think seizing the opportunity and making the most of your time is very important, and loving life. — Bindi Irwin

More chibis," said Simon gloomily. All the characters on-screen had turned into inch-high baby versions of themselves and were chasing each other around waving pots and pans. "I'm changing the channel," Simon announced, seizing the remote. "I'm tired of this anime. I can't tell what the plot is and no one ever has sex."
"Of course they don't," Clary said, taking another chip. "Anime is wholesome family entertainment."
"If you're in the mood for less wholesome entertainment, we could try the porn channels," Simon observed. "Would you rather watch The Witches of Breastwick or As I Lay Dianne? — Cassandra Clare

They were living exciting, crazy, queer lives full of poetry and camaraderie and heart-seizing crushes. I mean, not that night, but generally. That night they were bored. — Michelle Tea

Are we, intellectual sirs, not actively or passively 'producing' more and more words, more books, more articles, ceaselessly refilling the pot-boiler of speech, gorging ourselves on it rather, seizing books and 'experiences', to metamorphose them as quickly as possible into other words, plugging us in here, being plugged in there, just like Mina on her blue squared oilcloth, extending the market and the trade in words of course, but also multiplying the chances of jouissance, scraping up intensities wherever possible, and never being sufficiently dead, for we too are required to go from forty to the hundred a day, and we will never play the whore enough, we will never be dead enough — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Then it's a matter of troubleshooting, grasping the bull by the horns, seizing the nettle, coping and hoping, damning torpedoes and trying any old thing. — Kim Stanley Robinson

An apt and true reply was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride. "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor." — Saint Augustine

So it happens that we must ask ourselves, with regard to truth, not for a new criterion for it, which will be better polished than earlier ones, but, peremptorily and seizing it by the lapels, "what is truth as such," and with regard to reality, not what things are or what and how is that which is, but for what reason that X which we call Being is in the Universe, and with regard to knowledge we must not ask for its bases and limits - as Plato, Aristotle Descartes, Kant did - but for something which comes before all this: for what reason we concern ourselves with trying to know. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Why," demanded Ron, seizing her schedule, "have you outlined all Lockhart's lessons in little hearts? — J.K. Rowling

Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, "What do you mean by seizing the whole earth; because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor". — Augustine Of Hippo

When they are in power, whether in statehouses, Congress, or the White House, Republicans are magnetically drawn to practice political overreach along with scorched-earth tactics, be it through vote suppression, the K Street Project to force lobbying firms to hire only Republicans, or outing a covert CIA agent in their own administration to settle political scores, as happened to Valerie Plame. When they are out of power they focus single-mindedly on seizing up the wheels of government to prove to the American people that government just doesn't work - at least, when the GOP is out of power. These take-no-prisoners tactics flow naturally from an embittered, Manichaean mind-set. This mentality has grave implications for the health of our constitutional system. — Anonymous

Vigilance in watching opportunity, tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity, force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement - these are the martial virtues which must command success — Austin Phelps

I'm changing the channel," Simon announced, seizing the remote. "I'm tired of this anime. I cant tell what the plot is and no one ever has sex."
"Of course they dont," Clary said, taking another chip. "Anime is wholesome family entertainment."
"If you're in the mood for less wholesome entertainment we could try the porn channels," Simon observed. "Would you rather watch The Witches of Breastwick or As I Lay Dianne?"
"Give me that!" Clary grabbed for the remote ...
-Simon & Clary, pg.16 & 17- — Cassandra Clare

If people believed in eternal damnation they might not be seizing the day quite so much. — Kate Atkinson

A government that seizes control of the economy for the good of the people, ends up seizing control of the people for the good of the economy — Bob Dole

We can call this power intuition, but intuition is nothing more than a sudden and immediate seizing of what is real, without the need for words or formulas. — Anonymous

anarchism is to Marxism-Leninism what Anabaptism was to the magisterial Reformation: a revolutionary movement predicated upon negating, rather than seizing control of, state power. — Mark Van Steenwyk

The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together. — T. S. Eliot

Seizing a cudgel from the nearest priest, he laid about him like a veritable demon as he forged his rapid way toward the altar. The hand of La had paused at the first noise of interruption. When she saw who the author of it was she went white. She had never been able to fathom the secret of the strange white man's escape from the dungeon in which she had locked him. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

How long will it be until the two countries I love forgive each other and move on ... I'm not even sure what there is to forgive. Something about Cuba seizing ownership of oil refineries. It's all so confusing. Why should something as ugly as oil affect friendships between nations? — Margarita Engle

If you want to be taken care and not to worry that's fine; you can join the rest of the cattle. Cattle are comfortable, that's how you recognize them. Just don't complain when they ship you off to the packing plant. They've bought and paid for the privilege. Now if you want to be free, then get this: freedom is not about being comfortable. It's about seizing and using opportunities, and using them responsibly. Freedom is not comfort. It's commitment. Commitment is the willingness to be uncomfortable. — David Gerrold

Is the result of cooperation the seizing of power? Not so: cooperation mysteriously creates more power than there was before, so that the more we work together the more power we discover is available to us. — Andy Crouch

I didn't hear the exact moment Sarren ended Zeke's life. I was just aware of his breathing, tagged at first, then seizing up, as if he could no longer gasp for her. And then, a long, agonizingly slow exhale, the last gulp departing his lungs, as Ezekiel's tortured breaths finally, irreversibly, stopped altogether.
"Good night, sweet prince." Sarren crooned, a velvet whisper.
The recording clicked off. — Julie Kagawa

Charles made an effort. "Well," he said, "right now they're preparing for the shrouds to be warped from the hounds of the mast to the channels on the sides of the ship. The deadeyes will be turned in with a left-handed thread seizing, properly whipped and capped. They'll be made taut by the throat seizings, and attached to the turnbuckles on the mizzen chains. The ratlines will be seized horizontally across the shrouds with clove hitches in between and eyes spliced at the ends. That will make the ladderway for the topmen to climb up and down the mast." He — Jay Worrall

He had been raised on a few bedrock certainties: the Victorian spirit of duty, the personal need for responsibility, for doing what had to be done. He had demonstrated his adherence to this code by taking on his father's debts, as well as the burdens of his aging and ailing mother and of his manic-depressive sister. That same code now had him at war with himself. Happiness was within his grasp, but seizing it meant abandoning his responsibility to Mayo. If he cut her loose, he could save himself. But he would also cut her lifeline. — A.M. Sperber & Eric Lax

When your happiness comes primarily from the happiness of others, you know you have moved from a 'me' experience to a 'we' experience. And the whole problem-solving and opportunity-seizing process changes. — Stephen Covey

Government power is always abused by seizing and perverting the law. And with few exceptions, government always determines what is law. — John Galt

The genes supply the motivation for warfare, [E. O.] Wilson is saying, in humans as they do in chimps, but people, blessed with the power of language, look for some objective cause of war. A society psychs itself up to go to war by agreeing that their neighbors have wronged them, whether by seizing property or failing to deliver on some promise. Religious leaders confirm that the local deity favors their cause and off go the troops. — Nicholas Wade

Take care," he said, "take care how you cut yourself. It is more dangerous that you think in this country." Then seizing the shaving glass, he went on, "And this is the wretched thing that has done the mischief. It is a foul bauble of man's vanity. Away with it!" And opening the window with one wrench of his terrible hand, he flung out the glass, which was shattered into a thousand pieces on the stones of the courtyard far below. Then he withdrew without a word. It is very annoying, for I do not see how I am to shave, unless in my watch-case or the bottom of the shaving pot, which is fortunately of metal. — Bram Stoker

No individual can be in full control of his fate-our strengths come significantly from our history, our experiences largely from the vagaries of chance. But by seizing the opportunity to leverage and frame these experiences, we gain agency over them. And this heightened agency, in turn, places us in a stronger position to deal with future experiences, even as it may alter our own sense of strengths and possibilities. — Howard Gardner