Quotes & Sayings About The Passing Of Someone

Passing is one of the few words in the transgender lexicon that's not a medical-legacy word. We did ever so much better with this one: it's a racist-legacy word, a legacy of the time when Africans were kidnapped from their homeland to be enslaved in the Americas. If you're not familiar with this, a hierarchy of race developed in which the lighter your skin was, the more attractive and intelligent you were considered, and someone quite light-skinned could sometimes pass for white and live in white society. — S. Bear Bergman

She told her journal about me passing by her in the parking lot, about how on that night I had touched her-literally, she felt it, reached out. What I had looked like then. How she dreamed about me. How she had fashioned the idea that a spirit could be a sort of second skin for someone, a protective layer somehow. How maybe if she was assiduous she could free us both. I would read over her shoulder as she wrote down her thoughts and wonder if anyone might believe her one day.
When she was imagining me, she felt better, less alone, more connected to something out there. To someone out there. She saw the corn field in her dreams, and a new world opening, a world where maybe she could find a foothold too.
"You're a really good poet Ruth," she imagined me saying, and her journal would release her into a daydream of being such a good poet that her words had the power to resurrect me. — Alice Sebold

You know that jerk that drives up the shoulder on the freeway, passing perhaps miles of cars stuck patiently in traffic, just knowing someone up there, eventually, will let him in?
It's the same thing!
Someone always accommodates the pushy, petulant jerk!
Someone always lets that guy with the silver Porsche Boxster in and the rest of us, stuck behind the guy letting him in, have to suffer.
It's the same with people all over.
It only takes one sucker. One push-over to mess it up for the rest of us. — Logan Ryan Smith

In Paris the cashiers sit rather than stand. They run your goods over a scanner, tally up the price, and then ask you for exact change. The story they give is that there aren't enough euros to go around. "The entire EU is short on coins."
And I say, "Really?" because there are plenty of them in Germany. I'm never asked for exact change in Spain or Holland or Italy, so I think the real problem lies with the Parisian cashiers, who are, in a word, lazy. Here in Tokyo they're not just hard working but almost violently cheerful. Down at the Peacock, the change flows like tap water. The women behind the registers bow to you, and I don't mean that they lower their heads a little, the way you might if passing someone on the street. These cashiers press their hands together and bend from the waist. Then they say what sounds to me like "We, the people of this store, worship you as we might a god. — David Sedaris

Football is my profession now. I'm getting married in August ... It's a new experience for me as someone just getting out of college. I still have the same attitude about football I always had. I play hard. I enjoy practice. I'd rather be throwing in passing drills than sitting around and watching TV. — Doug Flutie

Someone once asked me what I want on my epitaph when I pass away. Just the words 'I tried.' That's what this game of life is all about. Trying. There's the tryers, the criers, and the liars. — Mickey Rooney

Someone who really wants to discover themselves has to be particularly careful about the use and abuse of power. But even your average human being just passing through another life has to be careful. — Frederick Lenz

Love can die. It's a mysterious thing, the death of love. Sometimes it fades slowly, like a long sunset with amazing and rare color that lasts in the memory forever. Sometimes it becomes obese and dies from its own weight, the density and slowness that come with things grown too large. It is often killed on purpose, by someone who is in love with someone or something else. But the other person, the one still in love, is a loose end, snapping and cracking in the high wind of life passing them by. Life moves so fast it creates a back draft, that leaves things scattered and blowing in its wake. Life, of all things, is alive. It is everywhere and moves beyond speed. — Scott Wolven

I have even learned to respond to someone crying by just listening. In the old days I used to reach for the tissues, until I realized that passing a person a tissue may be just another way to shut them down, to take them out of their experience of sadness and grief. Now I just listen. When they have cried all they need to cry, they find me there with them. — Rachel Naomi Remen

There must be a lot of duplication in our country's laws," said Dukhi. "Every time there are elections, they talk of passing the same ones passed twenty years ago. Someone should remind them they need to apply the laws."
"For politicians, passing laws is like passing water," said Narayan. "It all ends down the drain. — Rohinton Mistry

Mam drove the same way she walked, freestyle, also known as bumpily. She didn't really go in for right- and left-hand lanes, which was fine this side of Faha where the road is cart-wide and Mohawked with a raised rib of grass and when two cars meet there is no hope of passing, someone has to throw back a left arm and reverse to the nearest gap or gate, which Faha folks do brilliantly, flooring the accelerator and racing in soft zigzag to where they have just been, defeating time and space both and making a nonsense of past and present, here and there. As any student of Irish history ancient and recent will know, we are a nation of magnificent reversers. — Niall Williams

It may be laid down as a general rule that if a man begins to sing, no one will take any notice of his song except his fellow human beings. This is true even if his song is surpassingly beautiful. Other men may be in raptures at his skill, but the rest of creation is, by and large, unmoved. Perhaps a cat or a dog may look at him; his horse, if it is an exceptionally intelligent beast, may pause in cropping the grass, but that is the extent of it. But when the fairy sang, the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands. In the fairy's song the earth recognized the names by which it called itself. — Susanna Clarke

Have you ever really held the hand of someone you love? Not just in passing, a loose link between you - but truly clasped, with the pulses of your wrists beating together and your fingers mapping the knuckles and nails like a cartographer learning a country by heart? — Jodi Picoult

They were just passing the Evanses' house, Rose making gruesome faces in case they were spying out their windows, when Abby felt someone take her elbow, and she turned to find Zander Burley, his arm now linked with hers. "Happy Valentine's Day," he said, "one day late." He withdrew his arm and loped ahead of Abby and Rose, along the sidewalk and across the lawn to his front door. Abby watched him, thinking that he moved very gracefully for a boy, and noticing that his jaw had grown squarer and his shoulders broader. "Abby has a boyfriend!" Rose chanted when Zander was out of earshot. "No, I don't. — Ann M. Martin

Knowing someone's story helps to make the patient more real, and it makes the job more personal. The shared narratives of others' lives incorporate and become stories about us. I feel myself to be a part of a stranger's story, when it is shared with me, and passing it on feels like my sharing of a parable we've all heard- we know the plot, even the climax and the ending. Only the names have changed, or the costumes, or the settings, but the story is the same and is this: we are all vulnerable; we are all a little bit crazy; we are all funny, entertaining, delicate, bold, horrible, and fantastic. We are all, in our unique and individual ways, as equally and universally fucked up as the next person. Every one of us. Theres comfort in knowing this. — Pamela Baker

We were passing suits of armor at irregular intervals, and as usual, I had an uncomfortable feeling that I was under observation.
"There's someone inside that armor, isn't there?" I whispered to Mr. George. "Some poor novice who can't go to the toilet all day, right? I can tell he's staring at us. — Kerstin Gier

God is light and God is love, and when you put those two together you get fire. Fire is both light and warmth. As someone has well pointed out, fire will destroy what it cannot purify, but it purifies what it cannot destroy. That is the whole explanation of life in this present hour. We are passing through fire which is designed either to destroy that which can be destroyed, or to purify that which can never be destroyed. God is leading us through these trials and through the difficulties of our day, in order that we may learn to cry with old Job, back there in the oldest book of the Bible, He knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold (Job 23:10). — Ray C. Stedman

You don't have to drink this," I said, handing him the champagne. "But Sandy might like it".
"No,no. Come on, let's have some," he grinned, popping the cork, taking a swig from the bottle and passing it back. He [HST] rarely failed to show his appreciation of someone appreciating him, which is an admirable trait. — Jay Cowan

Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold. Junaid bowed towards the criminal. Someone asked him: 'What did you do that?' Junaid said: 'I was bowing before his single-mindedness. For his aim, that man has given his life. — Idries Shah

For you see, when us people who know run into each other that's an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That's a bad thing. It's happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us. — Carson McCullers

No sketches first, no studies, that's long past:
I do what many dream of, all their lives,
--Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive--you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,--
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter)--so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world. — Robert Browning

Insecurity and jealously can be a cause of someone having a critical spirit towards others. Focusing on men and not the Lord can cause one to be critical of every flaw of others. Satan is also the "the accuser of the brethren" (Revelation 12:10) and sadly can work through or use believers to accomplish his work of tearing down. Those who are habitual fault-finders, constant critics of people and situations usually are sick in the body and full of tension and stress. The Scriptural solution to any of us even struggling in this area is clear: "stop passing judgment on one another" and that we can start to love others in the body of Christ, uplifiting them, edifying them and building them up. — Greg Gordon

I feel like I've been standing underneath an open window, just as a baby gets tossed out. I grab the baby, right, because who wouldn't? But then another baby gets tossed out, so I pass the baby to someone else, and I make the catch. This keeps happening. And before you know it there are a whole bunch of people who are getting really good at passing along babies, just like I'm good at catching them, but no one ever asks who the fuck is throwing the babies out the window in the first place. — Jodi Picoult

She was someone who heard each grain in the hour-glass, she felt the passing seconds like sandpaper against her softest skin. Time actually seemed to hurt her, and people helped her get through it. [..] Sometimes it seemed to Nathan that her life was just that, a feat of held breath, just another ten seconds, just another five, and then death would flood her lungs like water, a string of glass bubbles to the surface and then nothing. She was scared in a way that he could understand. The kind of fear that sends you running across a six-lane highway or jumping into rapids. She was someone who ran towards her fear, screaming. Who tried to frighten it. Who, in another period of history, would have been worshipped as a saint or burned as a witch. — Rupert Thomson

The Poet
His teeth splayed in a way he'd notice and pity
in his closest enemies or friends.
Youth held his eye; he blinked at passing beauties,
birds of passage that could not close the gap.
His wife was high-blooded, he counted on her living
she lived, past sixty, then lived on in him,
and often when he plotted lines, she breathed
her acrid sweetness past his imaginings.
She was still a magnificent handle of a woman
did she have her lover as a novelist wished her?
No
hating someone nearer, she found her voice
no wife so loved; though Hardy, home from cycling,
was glad to climb unnoticed to his study
by a circling outside staircase, his own design. — Robert Lowell

Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain. — Patrick Rothfuss

The temptation to level off [your giving] increases with each passing year. Pride tells you that you've sacrificed more than others. Fear tells you it's time to worry about the future. Friends say you've given enough, that it's someone else's turn now. But Jesus says to keep on, and you will see more of God. — Francis Chan

Passing him with frightening speed, I see him sailing downward with his open parachute. "It won't open!"
"Pull harder!"
Looking down, I estimate that at this speed it will only be a matter of seconds before I collide with the black lava rocks below. They rigged it! is all I can think. President Volkov won. I lost. I failed Gemma. I failed Nicholas. I failed myself.
All of a sudden, someone rams into me from behind and hooks his arms and legs around my body. I look back and see Cory. "You're crazy!" I scream as we spin out of control.
"I know!" He smiles like he really is, but he feeds off of this kind of insanity. "Hold on!"
The ground is so close and I can see the green grass and smell the scent of it mixed with the sulfur. He helps me turn around and I lock my arms around his thick shoulders, my legs around his firm hips. We'll die together, and he doesn't seem to care one bit. He really is insane! — E.J. Squires

As we grow up we learn that even the person that wasnt supposed to ever let you down probably will. You will have your heart broken probably more than once and it gets harder every time. Youll break hearts too, so remember how it felt when yours was broken. Youll fight with your best friend. Youll blame a new love for things an old one did. Youll cry because time is passing too fast, and youll eventually lose someone you love, so take many pictures, laugh too much and love like youve never been hurt because every sixty seconds you spend upset is one minute of happiness youll never get back. — Andy Biersack

People have seen that I intend to sweep away everything we have been taught to consider - without question - as grace and beauty; but have overlooked my work to substitute a vaster beauty, touching all objects and beings, not excluding the most despised - and because of that, all the more exhilarating ...
I would like people to look at my work as an enterprise for the rehabilitation of scorned values, and, in any case, make no mistake, a work of ardent celebration ...
I am convinced that any table can be for each of us a landscape as inexhaustible as the whole Andes range ... I am struck by the high value, for a man, of a simple permanent fact, like the miserable vista on which the window of his room opens daily, that comes, with the passing of time, to have an important role in his life. I often think that the highest destination at which a work of art can aim is to take on that function in someone's life. — Jean Dubuffet

Some history-making is intentional; much of it is accidental. People make history when they scale a mountain, ignite a bomb, or refuse to move to the back of the bus. But they also make history by keeping diaries, writing letters, or embroidering initials on linen sheets. History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible. People make history by passing on gossip, saving old records, and by naming rivers, mountains, and children. Some people leave only their bones, though bones too make a history when someone notices. — Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

It's a tradition my great-grandfather started almost a hundred years ago, after my father was born. He gave my father fifty newly minted silver dollars and explained that each time something really amazing happened to him, he had to return one of the dollars to the universe so that someone else could wish on it.
I smile, recalling how Patrick had once told me a story of his grandfather standing on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1936 and throwing a silver dollar into the water after his beloved Yankees won the World Series. They won it for the next three years too, and his grandfather always believed that it was his coins - good luck returned to the universe - that kept their streak alive ...
... My father always used to tell me that if you keep the coins, you throw things out of balance ... It's all about passing the luck on and thanking the world for whatever good things have happened to you. — Kristin Harmel

I am the recipient of many benefits that I do not deserve and did not earn. Someone else paid for them. I am grateful! How do I show my gratitude? By daily pouring into others and passing on to them the things that will allow them to run far and achieve beyond what I have done. — John C. Maxwell

From his youth on , he had been accustomed to people's passing him and taking no notice of him whatever , not out contempt -as hehad once believed - But because they were quite unaware of his existence. There was no space surrounding him, no waves broke from him into the atmosphere, as with other people; he had no shadow, so to speak, to cast across another's face. Only if he ran right into someone in a crowd or in a street-corner collision would there be a brief moment of discernment; and th person en countered would bounce off and stare at him for a few seconds as if gazing at a creature that ought not even exist, a creature that, although undeniably there, in some way or other was not present- and would take to his heels and have forgotten him, Grenouille, a moment later ....... — Patrick Suskind

You think you'll get over the loss of someone. Eventually. Because it seems we get over everything, given enough time. And I guess in a lot of ways I've partially gotten over the traumatic event of her passing. But what you don't realize, until you have to live it, is that it's the absence of the person that's the trouble. The ongoing absence. And when you're missing someone, a longer time without them doesn't solve the problem. The longer you don't see someone, the more you miss them. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

A pastor must be like a matchmaker who persuades a girl to marry someone else. He must be very careful the girl does not fall in love with him, the matchmaker. Likewise, the pastor must be a guide, enabling the believer to reach the Bridegroom. He must ignite a love for the Bridegroom in the hearts of the believers, so that after hearing one of his sermons, the congregation should not say, "How beautifully he has preached," but "How wonderful Jesus is!" Remaining attached to the pastor and not passing through him to the Savior, about whom he preaches, can be a deadly danger for the believer. — Richard Wurmbrand

Life is too short to hold grudges, plan vengeance, and be angry for too long. And people say things like that all the time, but words like that only take on their meaning when you experience someone close to you passing away. There are truly not enough minutes, hours, days, months, years, to spend any amount of time on being and doing anything other than going into the direction of your happiness. Acceptance is better than correction and joy is better than revenge. Innocent laughter is better than anger. — C. JoyBell C.

A castaway in the sea was going down for the third time when he caught sight of a passing ship. Gathering his last strength, he waved frantically and called for help. Someone on board peered at him scornfully and shouted back, Get a boat! — Daniel Quinn

I put my hand on the altar rail. 'What if ... what if Heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you're dying of thirst, or when someone's nice to you for no reason, or ... ' Mam's pancakes with Toblerone sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, 'Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite'; or Jacko and Sharon singing 'For She's A Squishy Marshmallow' instead of 'For She's A Jolly Good Fellow' every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it's not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. 'S'pose Heaven's not like a painting that's just hanging there for ever, but more like ... Like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you're alive, from passing cars, or ... upstairs windows when you're lost ... — David Mitchell

As he looked round, she too turned her head .Her shining gray eyes, that looked dark from the thick lashes, rested with friendly attention on his face, as though she were recognizing him, and then promptly turned away to the passing crowd, as though seeking someone. In that brief look Vronsky had time to notice the suppressed eagerness which played over her face, and flitted between the brilliant eyes and faint smile that curved her red lips. It was as though her nature were so brimming with something that against her will it showed itself now in the flash of her eyes, and now in her smile. Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in that faintly perceptible smile. — Leo Tolstoy

When we assess someone's life or health on the basis of surface-level observations or passing comments, it presents us with a very flawed version of reality. — Evita Ochel

That he liked to think of himself as a philosopher. That he questioned all things, even the most simple, to the extent that when someone passing him on the street raised his hat and said, 'Good day,' Litvinoff often paused so long to weigh evidence that by the time he'd settled on an answer the person had gone on his way, leaving him standing alone. — Nicole Krauss

Slowly, even though I thought it would never happen, New York lost its charm for me. I remember arriving in the city for the first time, passing with my parents through the First World's Club bouncers at Immigration, getting into a massive cab that didn't have a moment to waste, and falling in love as soon as we shot onto the bridge and I saw Manhattan rise up through the looks of parental terror reflected in the window. I lost my virginity in New York, twice (the second one wanted to believe he was the first so badly). I had my mind blown open by the combination of a liberal arts education and a drug-popping international crowd. I became tough. I had fun. I learned so much.
But now New York was starting to feel empty, a great party that had gone on too long and was showing no sign of ending soon. I had a headache, and I was tired. I'd danced enough. I wanted a quiet conversation with someone who knew what load-shedding was. — Mohsin Hamid

My entire notion of friendship altered when I depended on someone for more than just the pleasant passing of time. — Courtney Milan

The sound of someone passing by the library entrance made the two of them scatter away, like cockroaches from the light. — A.Z. Green

History is so comprehensive and detailed. I couldn't be a history student. I thought there was a time when I couldn't be a history maker, because of my limited understanding of what that meant. Today, thinking about the passing of Julian Bond and a wonderful conversation with a woman who has influenced so much, I think we all are history makers. All of our names will not be as known as Mr. Bond's or in books, but our names will be on someone's tongue and our memories will be in someone's heart, and we will all be a part of someone's personal story. We have a unique opportunity at this very second to change how we affect someone's life as living history and historians. Flaws and all. Yep. — Robin Caldwell

The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick, or a self-destroying or ever murderous obsession. — Iris Murdoch

Some of the best moments I've ever written have come about because someone, somewhere, blew my preconceptions out of the water and dropped a detail in passing that took the work in an entirely new, entirely unexpected, direction. — Greg Rucka

Someone once said that we get more difficult to love with each passing year because, over time, our histories grow so tangled that newcomers can no longer bushwhack their way into the thicketed and overgrown depths of our hearts. — Adrian Barnes

Might there come a time
When we stand over a grave
And mourn ourselves?
Mourn the past, a previous life?
Shall we weep for the passing of time?
Shall we grieve for unfulfilled dreams?
In my naivety; in my belief
In immortal youth,
I sleep walk through life.
Someone ... wake me up.
Please.
Wake me up. — Samantha Young

It must be murder to be an aging beauty, a former Tadzio, to see your future as an ignored spectator rushing up to meet you like the hard pavement. What a small sip of gall to be able to time with each passing year the ever-shorter interval in which someone's eyes focus upon you. And then shift away. — David Rakoff

Each living creature is said to be alive and to be the same individual
as for example someone is said to be the same person from when he is a child until he comes to be an old man. And yet, if he's called the same, that's despite the fact that he's never made up from the same things, but is always being renewed, and losing what he had before, whether it's hair, or flesh, or bones, or blood, in fact the whole body. And don't suppose that this is just true in the case of the body; in the case of the soul, too, its traits, habits, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears
none of these things is ever the same in any individual, but some are coming into existence, others passing away. — Plato

Time was not a line, but an awareness. I was no longer a body, but a series of pieces whistling as they bonded. I felt every cell within me. I could count them, name them, kill them, and resurrect them. Within the core, I was a tower made of fossil fragments. I could be disassembled and reassembled. If only someone knew the correct pressure point, I would turn into a pile of elements running off to find another bond, like seasonal farmhands journeying from East to West. — Jaroslav Kalfar

It is not known that Litvinoff's favorite flower was the peony. That his favorite form of punctuation was the question mark. That he had terrible dreams and could only fall asleep, if he could fall asleep at all, with a glass of warm milk. That he often imagined his own death. That he thought the woman who loved him was wrong to. That he was flat-footed. That his favorite food was the potato.That he liked to think of himself as a philosopher. That he questioned all things, even the most simple, to the extent that when someone passing him on the street raised his hat and said, "Good day," Litvinoff often paused so long to weigh the evidence that by the time he'd settled on an answer the person had gone on his way, leaving him standing alone.
These things were lost to oblivion like so much about so many who are born and die without anyone ever taking the time to write it all down. — Nicole Krauss

As individuals, it's a responsibility to be cautious about the things we DO put out there. And taking the time to be mindful of what we're sharing. And always coming from a place of integrity. But also sharing positive things. Whether it be online, or just to someone walking down the street - just passing on positive energy. — Lexi Ainsworth

Fellow Englishman. Ladies and gentleman. You gather here today to see a live man become a dead one, and for my part you shall have satisfaction. But I would offer you a moral lesson to commemorate my passing; otherwise it might as well be bull baiting you witness here today. However I shall not deliver a warning that crime does not pay, for it pays very well; nor that a life of drink and debauchery leads inevitably to destruction, for I haven't led such a life. Here's what this little life of mine has taught me. There is only one reason to live, and there is only one reason to die, and that is love. If you have not known love, you have not lived. But if, when death comes to take your soul, you have loved someone dearly, then your soul is safe; for it lives in the bosom of your sweetheart, and death can make no claim upon it. That is all I know, and it is enough. Farewell. — Ben Tripp

The flow of blessings in our life is directly related to our passing blessings along to someone else. — Thomas Kinkade

Death never pierces the heart so much as when it takes someone we love; cleaving the heart they held with their passing. — Brandon M. Herbert

That is the only sure way of knowing we have made someone happy: making someone miserable by our leaving them. — Michelle Franklin

We've all changed," he said. "By coming here. By going through the trials that we're all going through, we've all been changed. When we go back, none of us will be the people we were before. The tragedy and the loss and the sense of wonder changes what it means to be human. Do you know what I mean?" Oddly, Anna thought she did. Being a minister meant being in the middle of people's lives. Anna had counseled dating congregation members, presided over their weddings, baptized their babies, and in one heartbreaking case presided over the infant's funeral a year later. Members of the congregation included her in most of the important events of their lives. She was used to it, and mostly enjoyed the deep connection to people it brought. Charting the course of a life was making a map of the ways each event changed the person, leaving someone different on the other side. Passing through the Ring and the tragedies it had brought wouldn't leave any of them the same. — James S.A. Corey

You staying home all alone on New Year's Eve? Unthinkable. Take my advice ... the countdown should be shared with someone, or it's just another set of numbers passing you by. — E.A. Bucchianeri

I'm not afraid of putting myself out there to someone and then them passing on it. At least you could have gotten a 'yes.' So it's worthwhile to have the cojones to do it. — Carol Leifer

Peoples of the entire world need to hear these words. Their conscience needs to grow in the certainty that Someone exists who holds in His Hands the destiny of this passing world ... And this Someone is Love- Love that became Man, Love crucified and risen, Love unceasingly present among men. It is Eucharistic Love. — Pope John Paul II

Good decision-making is like playing chess and you must avoid making hasty decisions without thinking of how that particular decision will impact on different aspects of your work and organization. The worst kind of decision-making is to decide to delay a difficult decision until later or to pass it to someone else to have to make. You will never excel and be valued by your colleagues if you get into these habits of procrastination and passing responsibility to others. — Nigel Cumberland

Being in love with someone who doesn't even know you exist isn't the worst thing in the world. In fact, it's quite the oppostie. Almost like passing in a term paper that you know sucked, but having that period of time where you haven't gotten your grade back yet
that kind of exhale where you haven't been rejected, although you pretty much know how it's going to turn out. — Tonya Hurley

If you've no world of your own, it's rather pleasant to regret the passing of someone else's. — John Osborne

Hate," says Roman. "It's such a small word. Four freaking letters. No big deal, right? Only, it is a big deal. People spend their entire lives holding on to it. Even if you no longer even remember the cause of the quarrel you hold on to that feeling because it becomes the only feeling you've ever known; because that feeling drives you towards achieving something and because it gives life meaning, gives you a sense of purpose. Without someone to hate you're just a burger-flipping failure who doesn't stand a chance. Without someone to hate you're just another millionaire, passing through life getting old and inching towards your death.
"Without hate, you're just nothing. — Sam Hunter

Everyone knew that Jim's creative coup d'etat came from a suggestion from his great-uncle Max, who lived on a farm in Iowa. According to Jim [Jackers], his uncle had Mexicans running the farm while his days were spent in the farmhouse basement reconstructing a real train car from scratch, which was the only thing he had shown any interest in since the passing of his wife. He traveled to old train yards collecting the parts. When someone asked him at a family function why we was doing it, his answer was so that no one could remove the train car from the basement after he died. When it was pointed out to him that the boxcar could be removed by dismantling it, reversing the process by which he had constructed it, Jim's great uncle replied that no Jackers alive was willing to work that hard at anything. — Joshua Ferris

As someone who has more than a passing acquaintance with most of the 20th century presidents, I have often thought that their accomplishments have little staying power in shaping popular views of their leadership. — Robert Dallek

Again, take someone who's crippled or deformed; they can't be tied to the plank without a lot of sweat and heaving, and then the crowds (who can't see much anyway) get bored and start hissing and catcalling. Meanwhile a queue builds up, and the people at the end of the queue get awkward and start screaming or passing out. If all the clients were young, male, stoical and fit, he'd have fewer problems, but it's surprising how few of them fall into all those categories. — Hilary Mantel

Imagine a very long time passing - and I find my way out, following someone who already knows how to leave Hell. And God says to me on Earth for the first time, "Xas!" in a tone of discovery, as if I'm a misplaced pair of spectacles or a stray dog. And he puts it to me that he wants me in Heaven. But Lucifer has doubled back - it was him I followed - to find me, where I am, in a forest, smitten, because the Lord has noticed me, and I'm overcome, as hopeless as your dog Josie whom you got rid of because she loved me.' Xas glared at Sobran. Then he drew a breath - all had been said on only three. He went on: 'Lucifer says to God the He can't have me. And at this I sit up and tell Lucifer that I didn't even think he knew my name, then say to God no thank you - very insolent this - and that Hell is endurable so long as the books keep appearing. — Elizabeth Knox

I have long believed that it is only right and appropriate that before one sleeps with someone, one should be able - if called upon to do so - to make them a proper omelet in the morning. Surely that kind of civility and selflessness would be both good manners and good for the world. Perhaps omelet skills should be learned at the same time you learn to fuck. Perhaps there should be an unspoken agreement that in the event of loss of virginity, the more experienced of the partners should, afterward, make the other an omelet - passing along the skill at an important and presumably memorable moment. — Anthony Bourdain

God knows the hour of each person's passing. Whatever we did or didn't do for someone we loved, the timing of his or her departure was God's alone. "Thy will be done" is more than a prayer request. It's a forgone conclusion. — Liz Curtis Higgs

When engaging in simple everyday banter and communications, this rule of thumb can really help suppress a lot of our negative word 'vomit' since we often mindlessly chat about the things we don't like. If we refrain from expressing our negative opinions about things unless they're directly asked for, we can train ourselves to respond rather than react the second we see or hear something and then feel we must verbalize our views about it.

Remember, even if we don't agree with someone or something, we can still speak about the subject at hand in a positive light to encourage growth rather than guilty motivation. I like to say I express more "inspirations" than "opinions" with each passing day. — Alaric Hutchinson