Quotes & Sayings About Separations

There are no separations - only connections. There are no deaths - only transformations. — Debasish Mridha

Life is a series of meetings and separations. — Santosh Kalwar

Tomorrow, Reader and Other Reader, if you are together, if you lie down in the same bed like a settled couple, each will turn on the lamp at the side of the bed and sink into his or her book; two parallel readings will accompany the approach of sleep; first you, then you will turn out the light; returning from separated universes, you will find each other fleetingly in the darkness, where all separations are erased, before divergent dreams draw you again, one to one side, and one to the other. But do not wax ironic on this prospect of conjugal harmony: what happier image of a couple could you set against it? — Italo Calvino

Moreover that which is called, far too harshly in certain cases, the ingratitude of children, is not always a thing so deserving of reproach as it is supposed. It is the ingratitude of nature. Nature, as we have elsewhere said, "looks before her." Nature divides living beings into those who are arriving and those who are departing. Those who are departing are turned towards the shadows, those who are arriving towards the light. Hence a gulf which is fatal on the part of the old, and involuntary on the part of the young. This breach, at first insensible, increases slowly, like all separations of branches. The boughs, without becoming detached from the trunk, grow away from it. It is no fault of theirs. Youth goes where there is joy, festivals, vivid lights, love. Old age goes towards the end. They do not lose sight of each other, but there is no longer a close connection. Young people feel the cooling off of life; old people, that of the tomb. Let us not blame these poor children. — Victor Hugo

So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless. — Jamaica Kincaid

People look forward to weekends for connections, revisions and separations even though many of these activities are accompanied by bruises and even a spot of blood, for excitement runs high on Friday or Saturday. — Toni Morrison

I read old novels. The reason is simple: I prefer proper endings. Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and miraculous restorations, tragic separations and unhoped-for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled; these, in my view, constitute an ending worth the wait. They should come after adventures, perils, dangers and dilemmas, and wind everything up nice and neatly. Endings like this are to be found more commonly in old novels than new ones, so I read old novels. — Diane Setterfield

She needs to leave him alone when he wants to be left alone. But then, do they meet in order for him to be left alone? Do they take trains and aeroplanesand drive for hours so that he should be left alone? If what he wants is to be left alone, then why do they meet at all? Everybody worries so about separation, but the problem is not the separations; it is how they are when they're together. — Ahdaf Soueif

And all at once he saw before him a precipice, as it were without bottom. He was a patrician, a military tribune, a powerful man; but above every power of that world to which he belonged was a madman whose will and malignity it was impossible to foresee. Only such people as the Christians might cease to reckon with Nero or fear him, people for whom this whole world, with its separations and sufferings, was as nothing; people for whom death itself was as nothing. All others had to tremble before him. The terrors of the time in which they lived showed themselves to Vinicius in all their monstrous extent ... Vinicius felt, for the first time in life, that either the world must change and be transformed, or life would become impossible altogether. He understood also this, which a moment before had been dark to him, that in such times only Christians could be happy. — Henryk Sienkiewicz

I have no desire to change things because I am the youngest in my family. I like meeting new people when I travel: these brief and inconsequential encounters have the thrill of beginnings and the sadness of separations. — Edouard Leve

I've lived through deaths in my family and I've lived through separations in my family so those are the big ones. Those are the ones that press the biggest buttons in human beings' lives. — Charlotte Rampling

I suppose that the media and their portrayal of Islam and the almost tribal separations and divisions of the Muslims are the greatest issues confronting Muslims in the United Kingdom. — Cat Stevens

Sometimes it seems to me that God 's way of dealing with me is not to let me see much of my friends, those who are most to me in the spiritual life, lest I should forget that the invisible bond is the only reality. That is the only way I can reconcile myself to the inevitable separations of life and death. — Lucy Larcom

It was too heartbreaking to live with so many separations. — David Levithan

Greed, fear, lust, hate, jealousy, these are part of reality too ... bundles of consciousness wrapped tightly, barbs on which you can injure yourself, volatile energies that serve as separations between yourself and perfect stillness. — Frederick Lenz

I thought living in London, my favorite city, would be wonderful, but I worried about the impact the move would have on my career. I discussed my options with Bill Setterstrom of the bank's personnel department. Bill had been in the navy and viewed family separations as fairly normal. At first, he suggested that I stay at my job in New York. I pointed out that Pat was not being assigned to a battleship at sea where I could not follow. "In fact," I said, "this is London, Bill, and I want to go!"
In the end, he offered me six months' leave of absence "to enjoy your new baby and living in London. — Mary Robertson

Toward Florence he was specially drawn by the fact that Alfieri now lived there; but, as often happens after such separations, the reunion was a disappointment. Alfieri, indeed, warmly welcomed his friend; but he was engrossed in his dawning passion for the Countess of Albany, and — Edith Wharton

They say a man's inspiration is visual, but for a woman, it's the narrative.
Abandon both the narrative and the visual. Close your eyes, measure your breath.
Dead weight is sloughed off, dust swept away, forms dissolve into one atmosphere.
The rib cage opens, the lungs fill, the breast rises.
Waves sweep up the body on their swell, rocking it rhythmically.
Feet planted, the back arches, the pelvis reaches forward.
Oxygen kindles a flame, sprawling through the belly, and gathering in a warm blaze.
The hand reaches to meet the sensation.
Calligraphy spills from the inkwell.
Open your eyes, sharpen your focus, and exclaim:
There are no separations. — Craig Thompson

I wanted to drag them all out, flay us all, destroy all the artificial separations of history. You'd merely done what I had, after all
split from two cells into four then eight then sixteen until you've accumulated all your arms and legs and organs and pushed yourself into the world
so fucking what? You honkey, nigger, spic, dyke, cunt. If I cry out, who will hear me? — Kelly J. Cogswell

You'll always love the person, if you're sensible. But you get a lot of people, especially in divorces and separations, doing a lot of damage to themselves, because they can't figure out that they actually still love this person, but not in their original way. — David Whyte

Every fundamental order is a spatial order. One speaks of the constitution of a country or a piece of earth as of its fundamental order, its Nomos. Now, the true, actual fundamental order touches in its essential core upon particular spatial boundaries and separations, upon particular quantities and a particular partition of the earth. At the beginning of every great epoch there stands a great land-appropriation. In particular, every significant alteration and every resituating of the image of the earth is bound up with world-political alterations and with a new division of the earth, with a new land-appropriation. — Carl Schmitt

We are taught that these are dualisms: Jewish/Arab, public/private, visible/invisible, Black/white, privilege/oppression, pride/shame. But these are false separations that don't exist. — Daisy Hernandez

Stations and airports are rehearsals for separations by death. — Anais Nin

The danger for the writer who is spurred by the religious view of the world is that he will consider this to be two operations instead of one. He will try to enshrine the mystery without the fact, and there will follow a further set of separations which are inimical to art. Judgement will be separated from vision, nature from grace, and reason from imagination.
They are separations which we see in our society and which exist in our writing. They are separations which faith tends to heal if we realize that faith is a 'walking in darkness' and not a theological solution to mystery. The poet is traditionally a blind man, but the Christian poet, and storyteller as well, is like the blind man whom Christ touched... — Flannery O'Connor

Many man's scruples lie almost wholly about obedience to authority and compliance with indifferent customs, but very seldom about the dangers of disobedience and unpeaceableness and rending in pieces the Church of Christ by needless separations and endless divisions. — John Tillotson

I hate flossing, I wish I just had one long curvy tooth. They didn't have to make separations for me. — Mitch Hedberg

Like many who'd married in the war, my parents were finding it hard to survive the peace. This wasn't because they had discovered that they didn't love each other once their life together wasn't spiced with constant separations and the threat of death. Far from it. But they hadn't chosen each other so much against the social grain that they were tense, self-conscious, embattled, as though something was supposed to go wrong. Their families didn't like their marriage, nor did the village. — Lorna Sage

It has been my experience that immediately after certain traumatic separations - leaving one's family to go to war, for instance, or upon the death of a family member, or after parting from one's beloved with no assurances of reunion - there is a strange calmness, almost a sense of relief, as if the worst has happened and nothing else need be dreaded. — Dan Simmons

If death were the exception and not the rule, and we were not so swiftly to follow, these separations would be intolerably sad. We know no more of our next change of life than we knew of this before we were born into it; but that which we call death is merely change, who can doubt? — Celia Thaxter

When there is nothing to catch
And nothing is catching you,
You are free;

From all your separations! — Sayantan Sen

I certainly should have,' he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally-accepted bit of nonsense it is, that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights. — Christopher Isherwood

My abiding theme is separations. — Judith Rossner

When I was younger, I craved friendship and closeness. I make bonds without acknowledging how quickly and permanently they would break. I took people lives' personally. I felt their friends could be my friends, their parents could be their parents. But after awhile, I had to stop. It was too heartbreaking to live with too many separations. — David Levithan

But if these unavoidable separations cause you a measure of pain, they also increase your longing for her, and perhaps that isn't a bad thing, you decide, for you spend your days in the thrall of breathless anticipation, agitated and alert, counting the hours until you can see her and hold her again. Intense. That is the word you use to describe yourself now. You are intense. Your feelings are intense. Your life has become increasingly intense. — Paul Auster

Human infants begin to develop specific attachments to particular people around the third quarter of their first year of life. This is the time at which the infant begins to protest if handed to a stranger and tends to cling to the mother or other adults with whom he is familiar. The mother usually provides a secure base to which the infant can return, and, when she is present, the infant is bolder in both exploration and play than when she is absent. If the attachment figure removes herself, even briefly, the infant usually protests. Longer separations, as when children have been admitted to hospital, cause a regular sequence of responses first described by Bowlby. Angry protest is succeeded by a period of despair in which the infant is quietly miserable and apathetic. After a further period, the infant becomes detached and appears no longer to care about the absent attachment — Anthony Storr

Contradictions are the impossible chasms that create forever separations. God is the forever bridge that creates impossible reunions. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

When thought is in bondage the truth is hidden, for everything is murky and unclear, and the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness. What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations? — Sengcan

Even when we have realized oneness and nothingness, we still have our personal lives to manage, bodies to take care of, and mouths to feed, and you will know which one is yours and which ones are others', so you won't put food into another person's mouth when you are hungry. Also you won't kiss a rattlesnake or hug a cactus no matter how strong an affinity you feel toward them. But at the same time, we know these apparent separations are functional, not fundamental, and should be recognized as such without mistaking one for the other. I would call this apparent separation "functional ego," or you can call it your "character," which is the collection of your beliefs, habits, and other people's expectations. — Ilchi Lee

Can anyone actually find a replacement for a lost loved one?
Isn't there a difference between things and human beings? — Honeya

Forgiveness is not a matter of feeling superior, of feeling sorry for our parents because they didn't' know any better. It comes when we understand that as humans we all do the very best we can, and we can't ask for more than that. Forgiveness is making the choice to find no more value in anger, and to see that we are all God's light, all joined, and the separations we feel are only part of the illusions of the ego. — Gerald Jampolsky

My work cuts through racial, class, geographic, and ethnic separations to directly connect to the heart, mind, and emotion with people. — Lily Yeh

She always answered the questions in a vague fashion, partly because she didn't want to discuss the matter, and partly because she didn't know exactly how she did feel. Only that she had known, always, that life would be like this, because this was how it was for every British India family, and the children absorbed and accepted the fact that, from an early age, long separations and partings would, eventually, be inevitable. — Rosamunde Pilcher

Our brain comes hard-wired with an urge to play, one that hurls us into sociability. A child's play both demands and creates its own safe space, one in which she can confront threats, fears, and dangers, but always come through whole. Play offers a child a natural way to manage feared separations or abandonment, rendering them instead opportunities for mastery and self-discovery. — Daniel Goleman

Culture consists of connections, not of separations: to specialize is to isolate. — Carlos Fuentes

Our lives are full of separations that shake us up, force us to attend to our emotional selves and to learn new ways of being in the world. Although many of our losses are painful, they encourage our gains. The lesson life is trying to teach us is that, regardless of the challenges and changes in the physical world, we will abide in peace by aligning ourselves with our inner changelessness. The power of God in us is more than equal to any moment-no matter what it brings. We live in a loving, supportive universe that is always saying yes to us. — Susan L. Taylor

We take too much for granted when it comes to separations and reunions, and pay the price for not understanding the natural human imperative to make and continually remake secure connections with our most important others. Don't take my word for this. Check your own launchings and landings. Play with them. Perform them properly, and then improperly or not at all. Compare the difference. Experience for yourself. — Stan Tatkin

If people who say they love their children meant it, would there be war? And would there be division of nationalities - would there be these separations? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

She is leaving him, not all at once, which would be painful enough, but in a wrenching succession of separations. One moment she is here, and then she is gone again, and each journey takes her a little farther from his reach. He cannot follow her, and he wonders where she goes when she leaves. — Debra Dean

A few minutes after they left, Harold bought the blanket from his bed, surrounded himself with his stuffed-toy animals, and built a fort out of them. Children project souls into their favorite stuffed animals and commune with them in the way adults commune with religious icons. Years later he would remember a happy childhood, but it was interwoven with painful separations, confusions, misapprehensions, traumas, and mysteries. This is why all biographies are inadequate; they can never capture the inner currents. This is why self knowledge is limited. Only a few remarkable people can sense the way early experience has built models in the brain. Later in life we build fictions and theories to paper over the mystery of what is happening deep inside, but in childhood, the inexplicableness of the world is still vivid and fresh, and sometimes hits with terrifying force. — David Brooks

But there was always a shortfall, wasn't there? Between the match that the Holy One, blessed be He, envisioned and the reality of the situation under the chuppah. Between commandment and observance, heaven and earth, husband and wife, Zion and Jew. They called that shortfall 'the world.' Only when Messiah came would the breach be closed, all separations, distinctions, and distances collapsed. Until then, thanks be unto His Name, sparks, bright sparks, might leap across the gap, as between electric poles. And we must be grateful for their momentary light. — Michael Chabon

Sign of old age: distress at all leave-takings, all separations. And the sadness of memories, because I'm aware they're condemned to death. — Simone De Beauvoir

One reason I avoid the American TV talk show circuit, when I'm over there, is that the tabloids and the gossip mill are always churning with new, true, or untrue stories about new loves, old loves, pending marriages, divorces, trial separations, flings and affairs with people of every description. I'm not into any of that. — George Harrison

We are all one Energy Stream, but what makes the separations or distinguishes the differences is perspective. You are a unique and individual perspective. — Esther Hicks

Fences work and the walls work and separations work. They afford to any nation the delay of entry. — Duncan Hunter

In colleges, there are no gender separations in courses of study, and students can freely choose their majors. There are no male and female math classes. But women generally choose college courses that pay less in the labor market. Those are the choices that women themselves make. Those choices contribute to the pay gap ... — Phyllis Schlafly

We lost not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety
and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it would always be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal. — Judith Viorst

The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace unique; the everyday eternal. — George Sheehan

It's a Buddhist concept. Nonduality. It's about oneness, about how things that seem to be separate are really connected to one another. There are no separations ... This is not just a piece of wood. This is also the clouds that brought the rain that watered the tree, and the birds that nested in it and the squirrels that fed on its nuts. It is also the food my grandparents fed me that made me strong enough to cut the tree, and it's the steel in the axe I used. And it's how you know your fox, which allowed you to carve him yesterday. And it's the story you will tell your children when you give this to them. All these things are separate but also one, inseparable. Do you see? — Sara Pennypacker