Take The Plunge Quotes & Sayings

I am always torn. Between control and chaos; passion and tranquility. Between what's fated and what I want. Part of me longs to take the plunge, to dive off headfirst and let the feeling of control evaporate on the wind. And part of me wants to be in a place where I'd never have to worry about that choice
or any choice. Where peace and calm are the only things I'd feel. — Jocelyn Davies

We plunge ourselves into enormous debt and then take two and three jobs to stay afloat. We uproot our families with unnecessary moves just so we can have a more prestigious house. We grasp and grab and never have enough. And most destructive of all, our flashy cars and sports spectaculars and backyard pools have a way of crowding out much interest in civil rights or inner city poverty or the starved masses of India. Greed has a way of severing the cords of compassion. Richard J. Foster, 1981 — Catherine Whitmire

Intellect and love are made of two different materials. Intellect ties people in knots and risks nothing, but love dissolves all tangles and risks everything. Intellect is always cautious and advises, "Beware too much ecstasy," whereas Love says, "Oh never mind. Take the plunge!" Intellect does not easily break down, whereas love can effortlessly reduce itself to rubble. But treasures are hidden amongst ruins. A broken heart hides treasure. (5) — Various

Give me a hot coal glowing bright red,
Give me an ember sizzling with heat,
These are the jewels made from my beak.
We fly between the flames and never get singed
We plunge through the smoke and never cringe.
The secrets of fire, its strange winds, its rages,
We know it all as it rampages
Through forests, through canyons,
Up hillsides and down.
We track it.
We'll find it.
Take coals by the pound.
We'll yarp in the heart of the hottest flame
Then bring back its coals an make them tame.
For we are the colliers brave and beyond all
We are the owls of the colliering chaw! — Kathryn Lasky

The Palestinian society is split into two - those who are openly calling for Israel's destruction like Hamas, and those who are not calling openly for Israel's destruction but refuse to confront those who do. They're timid, they're afraid to actually stand up to these killers. They're afraid, maybe for their own sake, for their own political hides, sometimes for their own physical safety. And they don't take that necessary plunge. — Benjamin Netanyahu

Intellect ties people in knots and risks nothing, but love dissolves all tangles and risks everything. Intellect is always cautious and advises, 'Beware too much ecstasy,' whereas love says, 'Oh, never mind! Take the plunge!' Intellect does not easily break down, whereas love can effortlessly reduce itself to rubble. But treasures are hidden among ruins. A broken heart hides treasures. — Elif Shafak

Nearer:breath of my breath:take not they tingling
limbs from me:make my pain their crazy meal
letting they tigers of smooth sweetness steal
slowly in dumb blossoms of new mingling:
deeper:blood of my blood:with upwardcringing
swiftness plunge these leopards of white ream
this pith of darkness:carve an evilfringing
flower of madness on gritted lips
and on sprawled eyes squirming with light insane
chisel the killing flame that dizzily grips.
Querying greys between mouthed houses curl
thirstily. Dead stars stink. dawn. Inane,
the poetic carcass of a girl — E. E. Cummings

It's funny: as a director, there are movies you make because you're passionate about getting your vision across, and you know that you're vision is different than anybody else. In those cases, you take the plunge, and it works, or it doesn't. You make the stylistic choices based on how you feel about the material. — Michael Lehmann

If you wait until the right time to have a child you'll die childless, and I think film making is very much the same thing. You just have to take the plunge and just start shooting something even if it's bad. — James Cameron

Sheila taught me a survival technique for getting through seemingly intolerable situations-boring lunches, stern lectures on attitude or time management, those necessary breakup conversations, and the like: maintaining eye contact, keep your face inscrutable and masklike, with your faintest hint at a Gioconda smile. Keep this up as long as you possibly can, and just as you feel you are about to crack and take a letter opener and plunge it into someone's neck, fold your hands in your lap, one nestled inside the other, like those of a supplicant in a priory. Now, with the index finger of your inner hand, write on the palm of the other, very discreetly and undetectably, "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you ... " over and over again as you pretend to listen. You will find that this brings a spontaneous look of interest and pleased engagement to your countenance. Continue and repeat as necessary. — David Rakoff

Take the stupidest thing you've ever done. At least it's done. It's over. It's gone. We can all learn from our mistakes and heal and move on. But it's harder to learn or heal or move on from something that hasn't happened; something we don't know and is therefore indefinable; something which could very easily have been the best thing in our lives, if only we'd taken the plunge, if only we'd held our breath and stood up and done it, if only we'd said yes. — Danny Wallace

Thus it is that four strangers sit in the red chairs, strip off their socks, plunge their feet into the ink-baths, and hold hands under an amphibian stare. This is the first act of anyone entering Palimpsest: Orlande will take your coats, sit you down, and make you family. She will fold you four together like Quartos. She will draw you each a card - look, for you it is the Broken Ship reversed, which signifies Perversion, a Long Journey without Enlightenment, Gout - and tie your hands together with red yarn. Wherever you go in Palimpsest, you are bound to these strangers who happened onto Orlande's salon just when you did, and you will go nowhere, eat no capon or dormouse, drink no oversweet port that they do not also taste, and they will visit no whore that you do not also feel beneath you, and until that ink washes from your feet - which, given that Orlande is a creature of the marsh and no stranger to mud, will be some time - you cannot breathe but that they breathe also. — Catherynne M Valente

Plunge a sponge into Lake Erie. Did you absorb every drop? Take a deep breath. Did you suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere? Pluck a pine needle from a tree in Yosemite. Did you deplete the forest of foliage? Watch an ocean wave crash against the beach. Will there never be another one? Of course there will. No sooner will one wave crash into the sand than another appears. Then another, then another. This is a picture of God's sufficient grace. Grace is simply another word for God's tumbling, rumbling reservoir of strength and protection. It comes at us not occasionally or miserly but constantly and aggressively, wave upon wave. We've barely regained our balance from one breaker, and then, bam, here comes another. — Max Lucado

As long as I hold it as long as I use it, the knife lives, lives in order to take life, but it has to be commanded, it has to have me to tell it to kill, and it wants to, it wants to plunge and thrust and cut and stab and gouge, but I have to want it to as well, my will has to join with its will.
I'm the one who allows it and I'm the one responsible. — Patrick Ness

The fact is that the more we take flight upward [to God], the more our words are confined to the ideas we are capable of forming; so that now as we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing. — Pope Dionysius

It's go time.' He takes my elbow and gentles me down the planks with such tenderness that I am suddenly very afraid. But there's no sense making the plunge slow and unbearable. I take a running leap down the pier- ... -and launch over the water. It's my favorite moment: when I'm one toe away from flight and my body takes over. The choice is made, but the consequence is still just an inky shimmer beneath me. And I'm flying, I'm rushing to meet my own reflection- — Karen Russell

Being romantic and egoistic at the same time is a deadly combination. One characteristic won't allow you to be alone and the other won't allow you to take the first step. Most of the time these kinds of people weep silently with tears trying to take deep plunge from the barricade of eyelids, while heart strongly controlling the emotions not to be visible to others. — Bibhu Datta Rout

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Now I ask you to make your sacrifice. Take a gamble. I took the plunge and I'm glad of it. — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

The mind is a powerful force. It can enslave us or empower us. It can plunge us into the depths of misery or take us to the heights of ecstasy. Learn to use the power wisely. — David Cuschieri

I keep thinking about the fragmented quality of human awareness: You take your blindness for granted most of the time then suddenly it stuns you: how little you see as you plunge ahead from minute to minute, day to day, year to year - vision cut down to the arc of a flickering flashlight, never sure how your words and acts are affecting someone else because you never really see that someone as he is. I know we should find even the most serene life unendurable were we to possess to any real degree those extrasensory perceptions which our grandmothers believed in... — Lillian E. Smith

Then I take a dump. Feel better. Take off my clothes and step into the pool. Ice water. But great. I walk along toward the deep end of the pool, the water rising inch by inch, chilling me. Then I plunge below the water. It's restful. The world doesn't know where I am. I come up, swim to the far edge, find the ledge, sit there. It must be about the 9th or 10th race. The horses are still running. I plunge again into the water, being aware of my stupid whiteness, of my age hanging onto me like a leech. Still, it's OK. I should have been dead 40 years ago. I rise to the top, swim to the far edge, get out. — Charles Bukowski

Laisha had got a glimpse of the vast ocean that lay before her. She could either eatch it recede from her sight or plunge into it. It was not possible to take the risk of plunging headlong into the ocean. No one viewed the ocean to be drowned into it. Everyone caught only a glimpse of it, exulted in having got this farand returned home with renewed zest. The knowledge that the ocean existed was overwhelming enough. One could wallow in the idea that there was indeed a further possibility, but one merely desisted. it was not right to acknowledge that one was also frightened of it. — Anuradha Bhattacharyya

Time is running out. The seconds are ticking away toward midnight. The human race is about to take the fatal plunge ... Is there any authority left? Is there a path we can follow? Can we find a code book that will give us the key to our dilemmas? We do have authoritative source material. It is found in the ancient and historic Book we call the Bible. — Billy Graham

Yeah. I guess we were both willing to do that, Gavin. I was ready to take that plunge and never look back. Never. I was ready to risk everything for you, to push away the overwhelming fear I had because I knew you and I are worth it. We fell in love in a second. I was barely able to blink, and you had my entire world upside-down. I was scared you weren't ... real. I was scared no one could be as magnetic as you are to me. It still scares me. You still scare me." Pausing, Emily shook her head.
"Then I saw Gina, and all my fears came back. My heart wanted to believe you, but my head wouldn't allow it after I'd already taken that risk on us. I'm so sorry, Gavin. I don't know what else to say other than I love you and need you with everything inside me — Gail McHugh

Writing is like bungee jumping for the soul ... you take a deep breath, plunge into the abyss and hope the rope tethering you to the real world doesn't snap. — Judy Croome

Dont be a life spectator.. take the plunge. — Max McKeown

Pressure makes people react in different ways. Some people plunge in, and others take the way out. — Ron Moody

Who then was the orthodox, who the freethinker? Where lay the true position, the true state of man? Should he descend into the all-consuming all-equalizing chaos, that ascetic-libertine state; or should he take his stand on the "Critical-Subjective," where empty bombast and a bourgeois strictness of morals contradicted each other? Ah, the principles and points of view constantly did that; it became so hard for Hans Castorp's civilian responsibility to distinguish between opposed positions, or even to keep the premises apart from each other and clear in his mind, that the temptation grew well-nigh irresistible to plunge head foremost into Naphtha's "morally chaotic All. — Thomas Mann

Almost ready, sir,' said the sweating, harassed bosun. 'I'm working the cunt-splice myself.'
'Well,' said Jack, hurrying off to where the stern-chaser hung poised above the Sophie's quarter-deck, ready to plunge through her bottom if gravity could but have its way, 'a simple thing like a cunt-splice will not take a man of war's bosun long, I believe. — Patrick O'Brian

I always liked to take the plunge, you know, I'd jump in at the deep end and hope that I'd find land somehow, or hope I'd float or survive. That's more or less the way I've gone through my life. — Anthony Hopkins

Like a flying bird you came into my life. Your love was the strength that let me take the plunge. I didn't think that I would ever be this way but you have changed all things for me. — Kimberly Johnson

In the spiritual life it is not necessary to have a complete map of the path in order to begin traveling. On the contrary, having such complete knowledge may actually hinder rather than help the onward march. The deeper secrets of spiritual life are unraveled to those who take risks and who make bold experiments with it. They are not meant for the idler who seeks guarantees at every step. Those who speculate from the shore about the ocean shall know only its surface, but those who would know the depths of the ocean must be willing to plunge into it. — Meher Baba

Lighted advertisements went running up dark red facades and dissipating again. He would pass girls; he would turn to look; but the prettier the face, the harder it was to take the plunge. — Vladimir Nabokov

Go, fly, swim, bound descend, cross, love the unknown, love the uncertain, love what has not yet been seen, love no one, whom you are, whom you will be, leave yourself, shrug off the old lies, dare what you don't dare, it is there that you will take pleasure ... and rejoice, in the terror, follow it where you're afraid to go, go ahead, take the plunge, you're on the right trail. — Helene Cixous

The day after the British entered the war Henry James wrote a friend:
The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness ... is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words. — Paul Fussell

His point is that when the two seem incompatible we often hang onto the plan, ignore the warnings reality offers us, and so plunge into trouble. Afraid of the darkness of the unknown, the spaces in which we see only dimly, we often choose the darkness of closed eyes, of obliviousness. Gonzalez adds, "Researchers point out that people tend to take any information as confirmation of their mental models. We are by nature optimists, if optimism means that we believe we see the world as it is. And under the influence of a plan, it's easy to see what we want to see." It's the job of writers and explorers to see more, to travel light when it comes to preconception, — Rebecca Solnit

Keep only those things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest. By doing this, you can reset your life and embark on a new lifestyle. — Marie Kondo

It did not occur to me that absence of human companionship does not assure solitude. It may, on the contrary, plunge one into an environment compared with which New York or London would appear deserts. For we take memory and imagination with us. The seabirds that scream overhead or waddle along the margins of the surf; the grotesque forms of twisted cedars; the rustle of sea-grass in the wind; the interminable percussion of the breakers; the dead infinity of the sand itself - there can be no solitude, in the sense of freedom from disturbances of thought, in the presence of such things. They draw us back into the maelstrom. ("Absolute Evil") — Julian Hawthorne

You need to know a lot about what's going on, but when it comes to making the work, I take almost an anti-intellectual stance. You've got to be stupid enough, in some ways, to plunge into something that you have no idea what it's about. If you know what you're going to do before you do it, you just end up illustrating an idea ... — Tim Zuck

But if I hope to understand in order to accept things - the act of surrender will never happen. I must take the plunge all at once, a plunge that includes comprehension and especially incomprehension. And who am I to dare to think? What I have to do is surrender. How is it done? I know however that only by walking do you know how to walk and - miracle - find yourself walking. — Clarice Lispector

We ought not, as soon as we leave church, to plunge into business unsuited to church, but as soon as we get home, we should take the Scriptures into our hands, and call our wife and children to join us in putting together what we have heard in church. — Saint John Chrysostom

I drank from the bottle again and it was a scary plunge because I always wanted to take too much. It hurt, but it was also impressive, like being in the hands of a bigger force. And because of that, a relief. — James Franco

As I write this, I am sixty-four years old, with, I hope, many more years to live and lots more to do. And, by the way, no face work. I know you're thinking, "No kidding." But cosmetic surgery just doesn't work on a man. Were I to take the plunge, no one would ever say, "Whoa, who's that really hot thirty-eight-year-old dude?" They'd say, "Who's that sixty-four-year-old who's been in a fire?" Being — Martin Short

Split your skull - a hatchet works well enough. Take a more delicate instrument - a scalpel, perhaps - and make a hand-sized slit; it doesn't matter where. Reach in (no glove needed), plunge down to the very bottom, pinch the inside layer of membrane and yank, hard.
If it feels like you've just turned your brain inside out, you have. Writing is brain surgery, pure and simple. — Chila Woychik

Plunge, scoundrel, rogue, monster - for such I take thee to be - plunge, I say, into the mare magnum of their histories; and if thou shalt find that any squire ever said or thought what thou hast said now, I will let thee nail it on my forehead, and give me, over and above, four sound slaps in the face. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

If I could have any superpower, right now, I'd choose the ability to reach through glass. One thin, little pane is all that separates me from bliss ... of the midnight-snack variety, to be exact. The chocolate bar hangs halfway to freedom but refuses to take the plunge, as if the vending machine is mocking me, taunting me. As if it knows I'm powerless. — Tera Lynn Childs

We must take a plunge into the darkness before we can fully appreciate the light. — Shane Claiborne