Quotes & Sayings About The Middle Way

The explanation for her absence had been staring him in the face all the while, but he hadn't wanted to acknowledge it: The affair meant nothing to her. He'd been the only one bewitched body and soul. For her, he'd been but a temporary source of entertainment, a way to pass the otherwise tedious hours in the middle of an ocean.
He'd been the one to press for a continuation of their affair beyond the voyage. He'd been the one to offer his heart, his hand, his every last secret. She never even gave her real name.
And, of course, never showed her face. — Sherry Thomas

The intention of this way of life [voluntary simplicity] is not to dogmatically live with less. It's a more demanding intention of living with balance. This is a middle way that moves between the extremes of poverty and indulgence. — Duane Elgin

All Christian religions are outer-directed. "Who can I convert?" "Let's go to this country and make them Christians." "Wear this." "Do that." "No, don't worship that way. Worship this way or I'll kill you - for the good of your soul, of course." Meanwhile, followers of Eastern religions are sitting in the middle of their minds, experiencing a bliss and a level of consciousness that Western man can't begin to approach. — George Carlin

There were a lot of botched kills throughout the eastern part of Kentucky when the work fell outside his control. Six or seven years ago, a man from Perry County was shot point blank in the head and left for dead in the middle of downtown. Problem was, the bullet had traveled between the man's scalp and his skull halfway across his head and exited the same way it had entered on the other side. The whole thing had left him with only fingernail-sized contusions on both sides of his head. He identified the guy who shot him and saw him arrested and convicted of attempted murder.
Now, it's true that a situation like that was a rare one, but part of doing a job right was minimizing the chance for something to go wrong. — Sheldon Lee Compton

In the middle of a grocery store, two children were horsing around (one holding the other in a headlock) when the mother turned abruptly to give them a stern reprimand.
'You two are old enough to know better than to behave this way in public! Could you - at least for the time we're in this store - mind your manners enough to act like an adult?'
The children took less than a moment to consider their mother's question before facing each other and engaging in the following conversation:
'I hate you.'
'I hate you too.'
'Let's get a divorce.'
'Okay.'
Perhaps 'act like an adult' isn't such good advice anymore. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Right now we're in the middle of a cultural war between the Muslims and the Western world. The politicians get in the way, but if you put two people together in a room, they can talk it out and work it out, just like Anna and the King. — Sandy Duncan

Making a record is a lot like surgery without an anesthetic. You first have to cut yourself up the middle. Then you have to rip out every single organ, every single part and lay them on a table. You then need to examine the parts, and the reality of the situation hits you. You find yourself saying things like "I didn't know that part was so ugly." Or "I better get a professional opinion about that." You go to bed hollow and then back into the operating room the next day ... facing every fear, every disgusting thing you hate about yourself. Then you pop it all back in, sew yourself shut and perform ... you perform like your life depended on it
and in those perfect moments you find beauty you never knew existed. You find yourself and you friends all over again, you find something to fight for, something to love. Something to show the world. — Gerard Way

You don't have to become an investment banker as a way of demonstrating that education has worked for you. But librarians have to believe in the values of high culture. Not just high culture but middle culture, low culture, kinds of exciting eye-catching crap of all kinds. Everyone needs that. — Francis Spufford

In fact, it works the other way: A government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class and those who hope to join it. — Mitch Daniels

Broadway! Broad-way! I don't aspire to the middle. I aspire to the tip-tip-top of it all. — Billy Porter

My phone buzzes. It's from Karou: a list of conversation openers that I won't be needing. - a) Hi. I'm Zuzana. I'm actually a marionette brought to life by the Blue Fairy, and the only way I can gain a soul is if a human falls in love with me. Help a puppet out? - b) Hi. I'm Zuzana. The touch of my lips imparts immortality. Just sayin'. - c) Hi. I'm Zuzana. I think I might like you. — Laini Taylor

The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich. — Robert Reich

...And indeed it did take me a long time for me to find someone I wanted to marry. But I'm so glad I waited. What I know about Pete and me is that the flame will never go out. I do not look up from tossing the salad and think, Oh, God, how the hell did I ever get here? I do not look a the back of his head and think, I don't know you at all. I wake up with my pal, and go to sleep with my lover. He still thrills me, not only sexually but because of the way he regards the life that unfolds around him. I am interested in what he says about me and the children and our respective jobs, but I am also interested in what he says about the Middle East and the migratory patterns of monarchs and the amount of nutmeg that should be grated into the mashed potatoes and the impact that being a thwarted artist had on the life of Hitler. I believe he is a truly honest and awake and kind individual. If we live more than once, I want to find him again. — Elizabeth Berg

You have a tendency to just remember the bad times and bad moments. I think that often it's the way of life. Yet the rewards we got from it were fantastic and we played a lot of shows to sellout audiences in I don't know how many cities. I just think we didn't realise how insane it was until we were actually right in the middle of it and couldn't stop. We just couldn't stop. — Dave Gahan

Ultimately, I hoped the tiny-house guy was similar to me: a sane person without a big agenda, who simply wanted a way to make sense of the world, to create a new map with a big X in the middle labeled "Home," even if that meant shrinking his world down to the size of an area rug. — Dee Williams

Sunshine, I ... Starla's voice broke off as she entered the room and caught sight of him standing naked in the corner. She eyed him in an odd, detached way, as if he were an interesting piece of furniture.
Talon and modesty were strangers, but the way she stared at him made him damned uncomfortable. In spite of the sunlight, Talon grabbed the pink blanket off the bed and clutched it to his middle.
You know, Sunshine, you need to find a man like that to marry. Someone so well hung that even after three or four kids, he'd still be wall to wall.
Talon gaped.
Sunshine laughed. Starla, you're embarrassing him. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Funerals weren't just about the dead. They were about the dead leaving this world to reside with God, someone Mother wasn't seeing eye to eye with at the moment, if she ever had, and I couldn't shake the concern that in the middle of the service she would spring from her pew and find some way to spite him. — William Kent Krueger

I knew I was in love with Lorri when I started to wake up in the middle of the night furious and cursing her for making me feel the way she did. It was pain beyond belief. Nothing has ever hurt me that way. I tried to sleep as much as possible just to escape. I was grinding my teeth down to nubs. Now, years later, it's exactly the opposite. Now there is no pain, yet she still makes my heart explode. Now there is only fun and love and silliness. She drives me to frenzy, because I can never get enough. — Damien Echols

Daily routine is the great balm that keeps her spirits up and holds her life together, warding off the existential fright that can take you by ambush anytime you're dithering or at a loss, reminding you of the magnitude of the void you are sitting on. Keeping busy is the middle-class way - a practical way and a good way. — A.S.A Harrison

I've read and traveled a lot in the Middle East, and I built on eyewitness accounts of horrific executions that would shape a boy's character and beliefs if he watched his father die that way. These are the stuff of which nightmares are made. — Terry Hayes

The question then was not what other countries were doing, but why. Why did these countries have this consensus around rigor? In the education superpowers, every child knew the importance of an education. These countries had experienced national failure in recent memory; they knew what an existential crisis felt like. In many U.S. schools, however, the priorities were muddled beyond recognition. Sports were central to American students' lives and school cultures in a way in which they were not in most education superpowers. Exchange students agreed almost universally on this point. Nine out of ten international students I surveyed said that U.S. kids placed a higher priority on sports, and six out of ten American exchange students agreed with them. Even in middle school, other researchers had found, American students spent double the amount of time playing sports as Koreans. — Amanda Ripley

When you reach the middle of your career ladder, turn it the other way around and slide down to the top — Benny Bellamacina

The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that's how I fear Canadians. — Maria Semple

Returning the Pencil to Its Tray Everything is fine - the first bits of sun are on the yellow flowers behind the low wall, people in cars are on their way to work, and I will never have to write again. Just looking around will suffice from here on in. Who said I had to always play the secretary of the interior? And I am getting good at being blank, staring at all the zeroes in the air. It must have been all the time spent in the kayak this summer that brought this out, the yellow one which went nicely with the pale blue life jacket - the sudden, tippy buoyancy of the launch, then the exertion, striking into the wind against the short waves, but the best was drifting back, the paddle resting athwart the craft, and me mindless in the middle of time. Not even that dark cormorant perched on the No Wake sign, his narrow head raised as if he were looking over something, not even that inquisitive little fellow could bring me to write another word. — Billy Collins

Middle school is kind of like Middle-earth. It's a magical journey filled with elves, dwarves, hobbits, queens, kings, and a few corrupt wizards. Word to the wise: pick your traveling companions well. Ones with the courage and moral fiber to persevere. Ones who wield their lip gloss like magic wands when confronted with danger. This way, when you pass through the congested hallways rife with pernicious diversion, you achieve your desired destination - or at least your next class.
-CeCee, Lucy and CeCee's How to Survive (and Thrive) in Middle School — Kimberly Dana

A little group of thatched cottages in the middle of the village had an orchard attached; and I remember well the peculiar purity of the blue sky seen through the white clusters of apple blossom in spring. I remember being moonstruck looking at it one morning early on my way to school. It meant something for me; what, I couldn't say. It gave me such an unease at heart, some reaching out towards perfection such as impels men into religion, some sense of the transcendence of things, of the fragility of our hold on life. — A. L. Rowse

My mother had demonstrated that the best way to defeat the numbing ambivalence of middle age is to surprise yourself - by pulling off some cartwheel of thought or action never even imagined at a younger age. — Gail Sheehy

People expect girls from good middle-class families to be smart
but what they mean by smart for a girl is to have nice handwriting and a neat locker and to do her homework on time. They don't expect ideas or much in the way of real thought. — Adelle Waldman

I settled on the floor and whispered to Sam, "I want you to listen to me, if you can." I leaned the side of my face against his ruff and remembered the golden wood he had shown me so long ago. I remembered the way the yellow leaves, the color of Sam's eyes, fluttered and twisted, crashing butterflies, on their way to the ground. The slender white trunks of the birches, creamy and smooth as human skin. I remembered Sam standing in the middle of the wood, his arms stretched out, a dark, solid form in the dream of the trees. His coming to me, me punching his chest, the soft kiss. I remembered every kiss we'd ever had, and I remembered every time I'd curled in his human arms. I remembered the soft warmth of his breath on the back of my neck while we slept.
I remembered Sam. — Maggie Stiefvater

Even though we're not the most punk rock band, the way we've done things is pretty punk rock. Just kinda say it with a big middle finger to the record labels and do it ourselves. — Brandon Thomas

Bilbo's Last Song

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
Beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
The wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
Beneath the ever-bending sky,
But islands lie behind the Sun
That I shall raise ere all is done;
Lands there are to west of West,
Where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
Beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
And beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
And fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast! — J.R.R. Tolkien

A tall, thin, middle-aged man with a long, gray Jovian beard stood outside the Hermitage Museum with an expression of absolute shattered regret.
Tatiana instantly reacted to his face. What could make a man look this way? He was standing next to the back of a military truck, watching young men carry wooden crates down the ramp from the Winter Palace. It was these crates the man looked at with such profound heartbreak, as if they were his vanishing first love.
"Who is that man?" she asked, tremendously affected by his expression.
"The curator of the Hermitage."
"Why is he looking at the crates that way?"
Alexander said, "They are his life's sole passion. He doesn't know if he is ever going to see them again. — Paullina Simons

We liked the idea that it was a low-tech future. But everything always repeats the past. If you look today and look at something in the middle east where you got people getting beheaded it's like the crusades with Twitter. It's crazy, human nature does the same thing. In a way, even though you're in the future people wanted order so this sort of system rose up. — Alfred Gough

Prudence is not hesitation, procrastination, or moderation. It is not driving in the middle of the road. It is not the way of ambivalence, indecision, or safety. — John Ortberg

She looked as if she were in the middle of posing for an unbelievably glamorous photo shoot. Then again, she always did. It was her talent. Clary, however, was staring stubbornly up into Isabelle's face and talking to her. Simon thought Clary would get her way and get Isabelle to pay attention to her eventually. That was her talent. — Cassandra Clare

You weren't designed to cure RM, but you did it anyway. You weren't designed to cross the toxic wasteland, but you did that too, and then you escaped from I don't know how many bad guys, and crossed through the middle of a war zone, and while every other group of weary, bloodied refugees is getting smaller and smaller, yours is getting bigger. You're teaching people, and you're recruiting people, and it's not because you were built that way, or because you had some kind of glorious destiny to fulfill, but because you're you. You're Kira Walker. You're not going to save the world because you're the chosen one, you're going to save it because you want to save it, and nobody in this world works harder for what they want than you do. — Dan Wells

to be all the way across the country. "Dad was on the air in the middle of a radio show broadcast live from Hollywood — James Kaplan

The rise of the global middle class will pave the way for a new golden age in Australian society. — Asher Judah

I stopped right in the middle of the road. There was no traffic. Before heading back towards my flat to get the number I paused for a while, I don't know how long, and stood in what had been the marksmen's sightlines. I turned the palms of my hands outwards, closed my eyes and thought about that memory of just before the accident, being buffeted by wind. Remembering it sent a tingling from the top of my legs to my shoulders and right up into my neck. It lasted for just a moment-but while it did it felt not-neutral. I felt different, intense: both intense and serene at the same time. I remember feeling this way very well: standing there, passive, with my palms turned outwards, feeling intense and serene. — Tom McCarthy

There is no way of finding the middle ground, even with the best intentions of the world. Our most sensible policy is to stall. — Yitzhak Rabin

Don't put one foot in your job and the other in your dream, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It's just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you've made up your mind which way to go. — Kurt Vonnegut

Always strive to aim for the highest peak of the goals in life you have set, this way if you manage to reach even half way toward a goal, landing in the middle is not such a bad place to end up. — Victoria Addino

I lost Ike,' Aunt Josephine said, 'and I lost Lake Lachrymose. I mean, I didn't really lose it, of course. It's still down in the valley. But I grew up on its shores. I used to swim in it every day. I know which beaches were sandy and which were rocky. I knew all the islands in the middle of its waters and all the caves alongside it's shore. Lake Lachrymose felt like a friend to me. But when it took poor Ike away from me I was too afraid to go near it anymore. I stopped swimming in it. I never went to the beach again. I even put away all my books about it. The only way I can bear to look at it is from the Wide Window in the Library. — Lemony Snicket

It ends or it doesn't.
That's what you say. That's
how you get through it.
The tunnel, the night,
the pain, the love.
It ends or it doesn't.
If the sun never comes up,
you find a way to live
without it.
If they don't come back,
you sleep in the middle of the bed,
learn how to make enough coffee
for yourself alone.
Adapt. Adjust.
It ends or it doesn't.
It ends or it doesn't.
We do not perish. — Caitlyn Siehl

Way back in the old days, say in Europe of the Middle Ages, you had an aristocracy, and they could afford to pay for musicians. The kings and queens had musicians in the castles, and that developed into symphony orchestras and what we call "Classical music" now. — Pete Seeger

Where's your dad now?" Thomas asked.
"He's gone."
The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed the power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night, watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared. But the reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word gone shake the foundation of the house. — Sherman Alexie

I believe a solid, really strong middle-class is the key to making the country in the best way. — Matt Damon

I find television, and particularly live television, very romantic: the idea that there is this small group of people, way up high, in a skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan, beaming this signal out into the night. — Aaron Sorkin

With a four-string, the middle range is less of an option. That kind of 5th that you play on those A and D strings isn't there. So a lot of traditional rock sounds, you can't play them. But to be honest, there was no particular intention when I started playing with four strings. It just worked out that way and it sounded cool. — Bill Orcutt

This president's committed to taking steps to move the Middle East peace process forward, to bringing the two parties to the table to negotiate a lasting peace. That is the only way that a two-state solution can be achieved that provides the security that Israel deserves and needs and the sovereignty that the Palestinian people seek. — Jay Carney

I think I was a behavior problem, mostly, but in a fun way. I tried to tell jokes. I was the middle kid, so I was always looking for attention and trying to be the one that equalized everything. — Timothy Simons

Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night. — Haruki Murakami

I flung open the door. I got a momentary flash of about a hundred and fifteen cats of all sizes and colours scrapping in the middle of the room, and then they all shot past me with a rush and out of the front door; and all that was left of the mobscene was the head of a whacking big fish, lying on the carpet and staring up at me in a rather austere sort of way, as if it wanted a written explanation and apology. — P.G. Wodehouse

As animals, we walk the earth. As bearers of divine essence, we are among the stars. As human beings, we are caught in the middle, seeking to reconcile the paradox of how to make our way upon earth while striving for something more permanent and more profound. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Ella is much younger. Maybe thirty. I don't know. And you certainly can't tell from the way she dresses. Middle of winter she finds a way to show her belly button. And she's got four hundred of these little elastic bands that can only pass for a skirt if you never move your legs. Top that with this unbelievable iridescent red hair and you've got one hot seventeen-year-old. At least that's what she thinks. — Francine Pascal

We need to get the government out of the way. Inflation hits the middle class and the poor the most. Those are the people who are losing it. We don't have enough competition. There's a doctor monopoly out there. We need alternative health care freely available to the people. They ought to be able to make their own choices and not controlled by the FDA preventing them to use some of the medications. — Ron Paul

Let me give you some advice here: People who want to have the sex talk with you will act the same way as people who want to murder you. First they get you in their car, so they're in control and you can't escape. Then they drive you someplace in the middle of nowhere. — Flynn Meaney

Balance will be found along the middle way. — Notes From Nowhere

And yet viewing several depictions of even an imaginary city, is enlightening in a way," Leibniz said. "Each painter can view the city from only one standpoint at a time, so he will move about the place, and paint it from a hilltop on one side, then a tower on the other, then from a grand intersection in the middle
all in the same canvas. When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe
for he sees it from every point of view at once. By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient. — Neal Stephenson

It doesn't always happen according to the way you have planned things out but I feel if you have covered most of the aspects, it does help out there in the middle. — Sachin Tendulkar

Was it really that fucking great to be gay? Ever since he got too fucked up to drive home and he'd crashed at Day and God's place after their cookout this summer. Green was in Miami testifying in a Federal case, so he didn't have his usual designated driver. Shit. He'd heard his lieutenants going at it in the middle of the night. It was so loud and violent, but wildly erotic. He didn't know if they forgot he was downstairs or if they just didn't give a fuck. He remembered being hard as goddamn stone lying there, and feeling like a pervert for listening. But since then, he hadn't been able to get the sounds out of his head. The sounds of furious passion and uninhibited ecstasy. The way God roared his lover's name when he ca - " "Time — A.E. Via

Sheila's about the only young girl in this place and she naturally assumes that she ought to have it all her own way with the young things in trousers. Naturally it annoys her when a woman, who in her view is middle-aged and who has already two husbands to her credit, comes along and licks her on her own ground. [...] No, I think it's age daring to defeat youth that annoys her so much! — Agatha Christie

I wanted everything for him. I wanted to see him achieve every dream, embrace every desire. I wanted to protect him from anyone who would cause him harm or a moments pain, tear them apart with my bare hands. Never let him out of my sight, even as I wanted him to stretch out his wings as far as they could go and soar. And at the bottom, top and middle of it all, I just wanted to stand there, just that way forever. Not disturb him. Just look at him and love him. Do nothing but simply love him for everything he is, a creation too perfect to be anything but God's gift to the rest of us. — Joey W. Hill

I could not even imagine any place of secondary importance for myself, and for that very reason I quite contentedly occupied the most insignificant one in real life. Either a hero or dirt - there was no middle way. That turned out to be my undoing, for while wallowing in dirt I consoled myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and the hero overlaid the dirt: an ordinary mortal, as it were, was ashamed to wallow in dirt, but a hero was too exalted a person to be entirely covered in dirt, and hence I could wallow in dirt with an easy conscience. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Look: if a bird were to rub its beak on a limb, you'd hear it - sure - and if a piece of water were to move an unaccustomed way, you'd feel it - that's right - and if a fox were to steal a hen, you'd see-you'd see it - even in the middle of the night; but, heaven help you, if a friend a friend - god - were to slit your throat with his - his love - hoh, you'd bleed a week to notice it. — William H Gass

When you grow up in middle America you are inculcated from the earliest age with the belief - no, the understanding - that America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth because God likes us best. It has the most perfect form of government, the most exciting sporting events, the tastiest food and amplest portions, the largest cars, the cheapest gasoline, the most abundant natural resources, the most productive farms, the most devastating nuclear arsenal and the friendliest, most decent and most patriotic folks on Earth. Countries just don't come any better. So why anyone would want to live anywhere else is practically incomprehensible. In a foreigner it is puzzling; in a native it is seditious. I used to feel this way myself. — Bill Bryson

But Sissy had a way of bringing out the "fun" side of anybody if she'd a mind to. To quote Janie Mae, "Sissy came out of my womb with her middle finger raised. — Shelly Laurenston

In the middle of the night, when Laila woke up thirsty, she found their hands still clamped together, in the white-knuckle, anxious way of children clutching balloon strings. — Khaled Hosseini

The only thing you think of is that you are in the middle and that you've got to find a way to stop it. — Ivan Allen

Okay, you're telling the truth. By the way, Nick, you have the most screwed-up life. You're either boring as all get out, or you're about to die. There's no middle ground with you. You might want to work on that. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Why would affluence make him mad?"
"Maybe he's mad that this is as good as it gets. Your big house. His good school. I think it's very difficult for kids these days, in a way. The country's very prosperity has become a burden, a dead end. Everything works, doesn't it? At least if you're white and middle class. So it must often seem to young people that they're not needed. In a sense, it's as if there's nothing more to do. — Lionel Shriver

I was terrified as only grown men and women can be when they wake in the middle of the night and begin to realize, in the absolute silence and solitude all around them, that it is not only their dream that has woken them, that it is their whole way of life. — M. Ageyev

There's always light after the dark. You have to go through that dark place to get to it, but it's there, waiting for you. It's like riding on a train through a dark tunnel. If you get so scared you jump off in the middle of the ride, then you're there, in the tunnel, stuck in the dark. You have to ride the train all the way to the end of the ride. — Han Nolan

There is not a big difference between life and taking pictures ... You're in the middle of life, you're living, making love, eating, sleeping - and photography is part of it. And I don't say this because I'm being romantic. I say this because that's just the way it happens to be. — Anders Petersen

Nina pulled the pins from her hair, shucked off the blonde wig, and tossed it on the table they'd set in the middle of the tomb. She slumped into a chair, rubbing her fingers along her scalp. "So much better," she said with a happy sigh. But Matthias could not ignore the almost greenish cast to her skin.
She was worse tonight. Either she'd run into trouble with Smeet or she'd simply overexerted herself. And yet, watching her, Matthias felt something in him ease. At least now she looked like Nina again, her brown hair in damp tangles, her eyes half-shut. Was it normal to be fascinated by the way someone slouched? — Leigh Bardugo

For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardour in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardour of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. — George Eliot

If in the middle of an air raid God sends out the gospel call to his kingdom in baptism, it will be quite clear what that kingdom is and what it means. It is a kingdom stronger than war and danger, a kingdom of power and authority, signifying eternal terror and judgment to some, and eternal joy and righteousness to others, not a kingdom of the heart, but one as wide as the earth, not transitory but eternal, a kingdom that makes a way for itself and summons men to itself to prepare its way, a kingdom for which it is worth while risking our lives. - — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When I use people I know, all of my instincts seem to go dead, and if I'm getting anywhere near myself then I can't do it. It's actually a real weakness! I hate writing personal essays, I don't think I'm especially good at it. I like just encountering [my characters], discovering them. I love the escape of just being surrounded by all these people who are nothing like people I know. But I don't find it hard to be in the middle of a different life, with a different set of habits and way of thinking and talking. That seems to come easily to me. — Jennifer Egan

So what's the point, then, if we can't be happy? Why are we doing any of this?"
"Oh, there's definitely happiness," Jack said, turning his back on the ocean and looking at her. "But it's just about moments, not ever-afters." He grinned. "Like when you're right in the middle of the ocean with your friends, with no one trying to kill you in any kind of horrifying way. You have to appreciate these moments when they happen, 'cause obviously we don't get many of them. — James Riley

The middle way is a view of life that avoids the extreme of misguided grasping born of believing there is something we can find, or buy, or cling to that will not change. And it avoids the despair and nihilism born from the mistaken belief that nothing matters, that all is meaningless. — Sharon Salzberg

I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important. — Scarlett Thomas

I really had a rough time in middle school. Middle school to me was the way most people explain high school. Then in high school I had a blast. I basically did everything that you would do in high school or in college, so it really wasn't a difficult thing to pull out. — Hayden Panettiere

Another part of Bit's unifying urban theory is sprinklers, that you can gauge a neighborhood's wealth by the way people water. If every house has an automatic system, you're looking at a six-figure mean. If the majority lug hoses around, it's more lower-middle class. And if they don't bother with the lawns ... well, that's the sort of shitburg where Bit and Julie always lived, except for that little place they rented in Wenatchee the summer Bit worked at the orchard. — Jess Walter

This is one way that wealthy Americans could really contribute. They could put hundreds of millions of dollars into the infrastructure bank, be a good investment for them, for their children, for their grandchildren, and they would directly contribute to revitalizing a big sector of middle-class wages in America and making our country more productive, so that we could create more opportunity. But I think that we could get a lot of grassroots support from, like, local chambers of commerce and other things if they understood exactly how this infrastructure bank would work. — William J. Clinton

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

There's something that's not right or not perfect or not the way we had hoped or dreamed that it was going to be. But God promises that He will use everything and every moment to ultimately take us to a new Heaven and a new Earth. For now, we're stuck in the middle. — Louie Giglio

That's the way it was, always will be. nothing we can do to make it different. It's a story now, and stories have endings even when you don't know- fools like me- that you're already in the middle of one, and you're already making choices... Choices that will bring you to places you'd never thought you'd be, places in your heart you'll mourn and love the rest of your life.~Mr. Dees — Lee Martin

Middle age is when anything new in the way you feel is most likely a symptom. — Laurence J. Peter

All of my lower-middle-class Boston issues rose to the surface. I don't like it when bratty, privileged old white guys speak to me like I am their mouthy niece. I got that amazing feeling you get when you know you are going to lose it in the best, most self-righteous way. I just leaned back and yelled, "FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU." Then I chased him as he tried to get away from me. — Amy Poehler

They followed the middle way of Muhammad, which included marriage, a socially useful livelihood, and a life "in the world but not of it. — Jalaluddin Rumi

So it has come, the day of testing. Without warning, without fanfare, it is here, and he is in the middle of it. In his chest his heart hammers so hard that it too, in its dumb way, must know. How will they stand up to the testing, he and his heart? — J.M. Coetzee

I am the model middle child. I am patient and I like to take care of everyone. Being called nice is a compliment. It's not a boring way to describe me. — Jennifer Garner

It is not simply that these two cities are perched side by side at the edge of the Pacific; it is that adolescence sits next to middle age, and they don't know how to relate to each other. In a way, these two cities exist in different centuries. San Diego is a post-industrial city talking about settling down, slowing down, building clean industry. Tijuana is a preindustrial city talking about changing, moving forward, growing. Yet they form a single metropolitan area. — Richard Rodriguez

Early in the 1990s, I flew alone in a dandelion-yellow, single-engine, 180-horsepower Piper Cherokee from Westchester County Airport in New York westward to the Rocky Mountains, landing and refuelling a good many times in middle-sized cities and towns along the way. — Cynthia Ozick

That was some first kiss," she said with a tired, contented expression.
I scanned her face and smiled. "Your last first kiss."
Abby blinked, and then I fell onto the mattress beside her, reaching across her bare middle. Suddenly the morning was something to look forward to. It would be our first day together, and instead of packing in poorly concealed misery, we could sleep in, spend a ridiculous amount of the morning in bed, and then just enjoy the day as a couple. That sounded pretty damn close to heaven to me. Three months ago, no one could have convinced me that I would feel that way. Now, there was nothing else I wanted more.
A big, relaxing breath moved my chest up and down, relaxing slowly as I fell asleep next to the second woman I'd ever loved. — Jamie McGuire

A bit of theory as we settle down for lunch: the waiter's treatment of Kitty is actually a kind of sandwich, with the bottom bread being the bored and slightly effete way he normally acts with customers, the middle being the crazed and abnormal way he feels around this famous nineteen-year-old girl, and the top bread being his attempt to contain and conceal this alien middle layer with some mode of behavior that at least approximates the bottom layer of boredom and effeteness that is his norm. — Jennifer Egan

People say I talk slowly. I talk in a way sometimes called laconic. The phone rings, I answer, and people ask if they've woken me up. I lose my way in the middle of sentences, leaving people hanging for minutes. I have no control over it. I'll be talking, and will be interested in what I'm saying, but then someone - I'm convinced this what happens - someone - and I wish I knew who, because I would have words for this person - for a short time, borrows my head. Like a battery is borrowed from a calculator to power a remote control, someone, always, is borrowing my head. — Dave Eggers

Americans are pushy, obnoxious, neurotic, crass - anything and everything - the full catastrophe as our friend Zorba might say. Canadians are none of that. The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that's how I fear Canadians. To Canadians, everyone is equal. Joni Mitchell is interchangeable with a secretary at open-mic night. Frank Gehry is no greater than a hack pumping out McMansions on AutoCAD. John Candy is no funnier than Uncle Lou when he gets a couple of beers in him. No wonder the only Canadians anyone's ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality. The thing Canadians don't understand is that some people are extraordinary and should be treated as such. — Maria Semple

A knot grew in his chest. All signs of weakness, nerves, stress. He looked around him at the true examples of men - at least it seemed that way. Six years ago he had graduated from New York University, around the middle of his class in film school. He quickly learned that the middle meant "unemployable. — Derek Blass

It was thought in the Middle Ages that people simply make many observations, and the observations themselves suggest the laws. But it does not work that way. It takes much more imagination than that.So the next thing we have to talk about is where the new ideas come from. Actually, it does not make any difference, as long as they come. — Richard Feynman