Quotes & Sayings About Those We Have Lost

Holy Week challenges us to step outside ourselves so as to attend to the needs of others: those who long for a sympathetic ear, those in need of comfort or help. We should not simply remain in our own secure world, that of the ninety-nine sheep who never strayed from the fold, but we should go out, with Christ, in search of the one lost sheep, however far it may have wandered. — Pope Francis

There is a whole generation of young people just like us wandering around Europe and the rest of the world, trying to find some meaning for why they are alive and what they should choose to do with their time. When Martha leaves and we sit in front of the fire in the living room, I look to Lily until she turns to me and I can see the grief that hides just under the surface of her expression. We are, or at least were, two of those lost souls: wanderers, backpackers, season workers, Wwoofers, Workawayers, travellers: searching the world for something or someplace to hold on to. And we have come home not because we have retired from trying to find answers and are ready to settle into adulthood, but because my death has come upon us fast and unexpected. I am not the first person of this generation of travellers- or any person who lives in this godless, superficial society- to die. But I think that it feels to Lily and to me, my mother too perhaps, that I may very well be. — Annie Fisher

You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have been Hailsham if we hadn't. Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you, I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods. Lucy was well-meaning enough. But if she'd have her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered. Look at you both now! I'm so proud to see you both. You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn't be who you are today if we'd not protected you. You wouldn't have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn't have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you? So she had to go. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The high-minded pursuit of a Jiu Jitsu practitioner pursuing mastery cannot coexist well with the modern world. Our values vary immensely from our contemporaries. This pursuit leaves societal norms slaughtered in our wake. Those who share this journey will praise our efforts; those in the hive will think we have lost it. We must be willing to be misunderstood if we are to understand ourselves. — Chris Matakas

We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost. — Gaston Bachelard

Usually at least once in a person's childhood we lose an object that at the time is invaluable and irreplaceable to us, although it is worthless to others. Many people remember that lost article for the rest of their lives. Whether it was a lucky pocketknife, a transparent plastic bracelet given to you by your father, a toy you had longed for and never expected to receive, but there it was under the tree on Christmas ... it makes no difference what it was. If we describe it to others and explain why it was so important, even those who love us smile indulgently because to them it sounds like a trivial thing to lose. Kid stuff. But it is not. Those who forget about this object have lost a valuable, perhaps even crucial memory. Becuase something central to our younger self resided in that thing. When we lost it, for whatever reason, a part of us shifted permanently. — Jonathan Carroll

The only possible paradises are those we have lost — Marcel Proust

We lost our country somewhere along the way. We know where we lost it but we do not appear to have the strength to eliminate those blocking our view to enable us to develop our common identity. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

We don't have a choice in how or when our bad days will blindside us. But what we do choose is how we allow them to leave us once they're gone. You can use those moments as a catalyst to spur you on to greater things or you can let it be the event that breaks you and leaves you shattered and forever lost in darkness. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Will we be happier afterwards? Or will be have lost the freshness of those who are privileged to experience art as real life, where we enter after the trumps have been played, and we leave without knowing who's going to win or lose the game? — Umberto Eco

Bruce is still my friend. We don't talk much. We don't have to. He is great and in his own league. I'm not him and he is not me. But we are on similar paths, writing and singing out own kind of songs around the world, along with Bob and a few other singer/songwriters. It is a a silent fraternity of sorts, occupying this space in people's souls with our music. Last year, I lost my right-hand man, the pedal steel guitarist Ben Keith. This year Bruce lost his right-hand man, the saxophonist Clarence Clemons. It's time for another talk; friends can help each other just by being there. Now both of us will look to our right and see a giant hole, a memory, the past and the future. I won't play with another steel player trying to recreate Ben's parts, and I know Bruce won't play with another sax man trying to play Clarence's. Those parts are not going to happen again. They already did. That takes a lot out of our repertoires. — Neil Young

Our culture is ill-equipped to assert the bourgeois values which would be the salvation of the under-class, because we have lost those values ourselves. — Norman Podhoretz

I'm still of the same mind. For many years I've been ashamed, mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn. As time went on, I merely learned that even those who were better than the rest could not keep themselves nowadays from killing or letting others kill, because such is the logic by which they live, and that we can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. Yes, I've been ashamed ever since I have realized that we all have the plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the mortal enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. — Albert Camus

It is not as if an 'I' exists independently over here and then simply loses a 'you' over there, especially if the attachment to 'you' is part of what composes who 'I' am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who 'am' I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost 'you' only to discover that 'I' have gone missing as well. At another level, perhaps what I have lost 'in' you, that for which I have no vocabulary, is a relationality that is composed neither exclusively of myself nor you, but is to be conceived as *the tie* by which those terms are differentiated and related. — Judith Butler

What I tried to make clear in Good Calories, Bad Calories was that nutrition and obesity research lost its way after the Second World War with the evaporation of the European community of scientists and physicians that did pioneering work in those disciplines. It has since resisted all attempts to correct it. As a result, the individuals involved in this research have not only wasted decades of time, and effort, and money but have done incalculable damage along the way. Their beliefs have remained imperious to an ever-growing body of evidence that refutes them while being embraced by public-health authorities and translated into precisely the wrong advice about what to eat and, more important, what not to eat if we want to maintain a healthy weight and live a long and healthy life. — Gary Taubes

None of us move on without a backward look. We move on always carrying with us those we have lost. What we aim to do in our little group is ensure that carrying them is not a burden, something that feels impossible to bear, a weight keeping us stuck in the same place. We want their presence to feel like a gift. — Jojo Moyes

All those things for which we have no words are lost. The mind - the culture - has two little tools, grammar and lexicon: a decorated sand bucket and a matching shovel. With these we bluster about the continents and do all the world's work. With these we try to save our very lives. — Annie Dillard

The Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object and so effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognized their voices the spell is broken. We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our life. — Marcel Proust

Too many Christians become bitter and angry in the conflict. If we descend into hatefulness, we have already lost the battle. We must cooperate with God in turning what was meant for evil into a greater good within us. This is why we bless those who would curse us: It is not only for their sakes but to preserve our own soul from its natural response toward hatred. — Francis Frangipane

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and thus effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised them the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and return to share our life.
And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die. — Marcel Proust

It's extremely important that, as writers, we give a voice to those who don't have voices, including the other animals that we share the planet with and the places that are endangered or being lost. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

None of us moves on without a backward look. We move on always carrying with us those we have lost. — Leigh Bardugo

We've pitched and even begun development on a number of fantasy worlds that have never seen the light of day. All of those worlds ... It's soul-crushing to see them sputter out, one by one. Lost. Like tears. In rain. — Chris Avellone

I say unto you with all the soberness I can, that we stand in danger of losing our liberties, and that once lost, only blood will bring them back; and we of this church will, in order to keep the Church going forward, have more sacrifices to make, and more persecutions to endure than we have yet known. If the conspiracy comes here it will probably come in its full vigor and there will be a lot of vacant places among those who guide and direct, not only this government, but also this Church of ours. — J. Reuben Clark

For all the civilians saved thanks to the presence of peacekeepers, there have been those who were lost - the United Nations personnel who sacrificed their lives for a noble cause. Even as we mourn our fallen colleagues, we are all uplifted by their unflinching commitment and are inspired to strive even harder for the collective cause so eloquently envisaged in the United Nations Charter: a world free from the scourge of war. — Jan Eliasson

I lifted my chin, meeting the eyes of the woman who'd become the living embodiment of my totem, my bright phoenix, and forged ahead. "But I live with the wrong choices, the paths untraveled, the lives lost, and I never hold those regrets against anyone but myself. So, if you have some reason that you think I'll regret getting in that car or not getting in that car, then tell me. Because I won't have anything between us, either." My mind flashed to an hourglass, grains of sand trickling away, carrying my life with them. "At least, nothing that we can avoid...like the fear of unspoken words. — Marie Castle

I am the last of the Kerluhm. The Ifayle, who heeded our first summons, are all but destroyed. Those few that remain cannot extricate themselves from the conflict. I myself did not expect to survive the attempt. Yet I have.'
'A horrific conflict indeed,' Lady Envy quietly observed. 'Where does it occur?'
'The continent of Assail. Our losses: twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and fourteen Kerluhm. Twenty-two thousand two hundred Ifayle. Eight months of battle. We have lost this war.'
Lady Envy was silent for a long moment, then she said, 'It seems you've finally found a Jaghut Tyrant who is more than your match, Lanas Tog.'
The T'lan Imass cocked her head. 'Not Jaghut. Human. — Steven Erikson

The astronomer will believe that the most erratic comet will yet accomplish its journey and revisit our sphere; but we give up those for lost who have not wandered one-half the distance from the centre of light and life. — Charles Spurgeon

When I look back on that time, it's with the strangest stew of emotions: love, longing, terror, horror, regret, and the deep sweetness only those who've been near death can know. I think it's how Adam and Eve must have felt. Surely they looked back at Eden, don't you think, as they started barefoot down the path to where we are now, in our glum political world of bullets and bombs and satellite TV? Looked past the angel guarding the shut gate with his fiery sword? Sure. I think they must have wanted one more look at the green world they had lost, with its sweet water and kind-hearted animals. And its snake, of course. — Stephen King

Brothers always. Balthazar is with us too. We make this work,' Finnikin said fiercely. 'We bring peace to these kingdoms. We deserve it. Our women do. All of us have lost too much, Froi. We've lost the joy of being children. Let's not take that from Jasmina and Tariq and those who come after them — Melina Marchetta

We passionately long for there to be another life in which we shall be similar to what we are here below. But we do not pause to reflect that, even without waiting for that other life, in this life, after a few years, we are unfaithful to what we once were, to what we wished to remain immortally. Even without supposing that death is to alter us more completely than the changes that occur in the course of our lives, if in that other life we were to encounter the self that we have been, we should turn away from ourselves as from those people with whom we were once on friendly terms but whom we have not seen for years ... We dream much of a paradise, or rather of a number of successive paradises, but each of them is, long before we die, a paradise lost, in which we should feel ourselves lost too. — Marcel Proust

We state and commend the faith only in so far as we go out and put ourselves inside the doubts of the doubters, the questions of the questioners and the loneliness of those who have lost their way. — John R.W. Stott

I had my Boswell, once," Mason tells Boswell, "Dixon and I. We had a joint Boswell. Preacher nam'd Cherrycoke. Scribbling ev'rything down, just like you, Sir. Have you," twirling his Hand in Ellipses, - "you know, ever . . . had one yourself? If I'm not prying." "Had one what?" "Hum . . . a Boswell, Sir, - I mean, of your own. Well you couldn't very well call him that, being one yourself, - say, a sort of Shadow ever in the Room who has haunted you, preserving your ev'ry spoken remark, - " "Which else would have been lost forever to the great Wind of Oblivion, - think," armsweep south, "as all civiliz'd Britain gathers at this hour, how much shapely Expression, from the titl'd Gambler, the Barmaid's Suitor, the offended Fopling, the gratified Toss-Pot, is simply fading away upon the Air, out under the Door, into the Evening and the Silence beyond. All those voices. Why not pluck a few words from the multitudes rushing toward the Void of forgetfulness? — Thomas Pynchon

But they shared a dream. One of a free world. Not built on corpses, but on hope. On the love that binds us, not the hate that divides. We have lost many. But we are not broken. We are not defeated. We fight on. But we do not fight for revenge for those who have died. We fight for each other. We fight for those who live. We fight for those who don't yet live. — Pierce Brown

But in the business I had, we invested in over 100 different businesses and net-net, taking out the ones where we lost jobs and those that we added, those businesses have now added over 100,000 jobs. — Mitt Romney

We're living as if we were in mourning for a lost paradise, he thought. As if we longed for the car thieves and safecrackers of the old days, who doffed their caps and behaved like gentlemen when we came to take them in. But those days have irretrievably vanished, and it's questionable whether they were ever as idyllic as we remember them. — Henning Mankell

I received comments on how extraordinary it was that I could keep up speaking for exactly 45 minutes. Indeed, in an age of soundbites lasting some seconds and of quick quotes in the news, all those minutes do seem like an eternity, easy to get lost in. Yet, wait a moment. Television is not the only place where speeches are given. Some hundred thousand teachers teach every day. They all speak 45 minutes, more times a day. They have been doing this for years. Every teacher knows exactly when the time will be over and that by then his speech will need to come to a natural end. It is this tension that determines the success of a lesson. It is a sign of the times that we forget these daily achievements in education. A million students daily attend several 'live' lectures and this in secondary education alone. These are high ratings! — Robbert Dijkgraaf

Angels are those beings who have been on an earth like this, and have passed through the same ordeals that we are now passing through. They have kept their first estate far enough to preserve themselves in the Priesthood. They did not so violate the law of the Priesthood and condemn themselves to the sin against the Holy Ghost as to be finally lost. They are not crowned with the celestial ones. They are persons who have lived upon an earth, but did not magnify the Priesthood in that high degree that many others have done who have become Gods, even the sons of God. — Brigham Young

One feels guilty on behalf of Western civilisation. What damage are we doing, blindly and swiftly, to those races who are being taught that because we are materially richer we must be emulated without question? What compels us to infect everyone else with our own sick urgency to change, soften and standardise? How can we have the effrontery to lord it over peoples who retain what we have lost - a sane awareness that what matters most is immeasurable? — Dervla Murphy

On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles - whatever one may choose to call them - we know: the best of us did not return. — Viktor E. Frankl

And then it hit me. One of those evil thoughts siblings get because, well, that's what we do. Looking over my shoulder I said, "You know, since you have some free time, maybe you could ... never mind."
"What?"
"Well it's just that, all those calories you've been drink - I mean - not burning off have kind of settled on your gut. I didn't want to mention anything," I said as Dave's hand stole to his midsection. "But the general pointed out that you'd lost a few steps training-wise." I laughed and waved my hand. "I'm sure it's nothing switching to a light beer won't cure. — Jennifer Rardin

But for every adult person you look up to in life there is trailing behind them an invisible chain gang of ghosts, all of which, as a child, you are generously spared from meeting. I know now, however, that these ghosts exist, and that other adults can see them. The lost loves, the hurt friends, the dead: they follow their owner forever. Perhaps this is why we feel so crowded around those people who we know have had hard times. Perhaps this is why we find so little to say. We suffer an odd brand of stage fright, I think, before all those dreadful eyes. — M O Walsh

Heavy misfortunes have befallen us, but let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small, but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived. — Mary Shelley

To those of you who have lost your way, may my story serve as a reminder that life is a journey. The lessons we learn along the way are not for our sake alone. We are obligated to share them — Nancy B. Brewer

I remember Cannae," she said, raising her head, "when we thought all was lost. Carthage had defeated us, and there were those who gave up hope. Yet we survived, by our fortitude, and by believing that we should endure. There are times, Marcus, when courage is all you have."
I looked down at the stone floor, chastened into silence by her cold, stern words. This was her way, as it had always been. It was the Roman way. Grief was an indulgence; and though she surely suffered, her suffering was for her alone. It seemed hard, but she had come from a hard family, brave men and brave women who through the generations had survived by facing down hardship and loss. Of all her long line of ancestors, she was not going to be the one to break.
And nor, I decided, was I. — Paul Waters

We are neither obstinately nor wilfully to oppose evils, nor truckle under them for want of courage, but that we are naturally to give way to them, according to their condition and our own, we ought to grant free passage to diseases; and I find they stay less with me who let them alone. And I have lost those which are reputed the most tenacious and obstinate of their own defervescence, without any help or art, and contrary to their rules. Let us a little permit nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we. — Michel De Montaigne

Let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. — Henry David Thoreau

The present generation of Christians has suffered what I call the lost concept of majesty. This has come about by a slow decline, manifesting itself in our depreciation of ourselves. Those who hold a low value of man have a corresponding low value of God. After all, God created man in His own image. When we cease to understand the majestic nature of man, we cease to appreciate the majesty of God. How — A.W. Tozer

Agency by agency, we frequently have lost a bit of ground, at least to inflation-but had it not been for the efforts we've made to educate people about the importance of science, technology and advanced education, those predictions very well might have come true. — Charles Vest

The course of time, all of Apple's competitors lost their WHY. Now all those companies define themselves by WHAT they do: we make computers. They turned from companies with a cause into companies that sold products. And when that happens, price, quality, service and features become the primary currency to motivate a purchase decision. At that point a company and its products have ostensibly become commodities. As any company forced to compete on price, quality, service or features alone can attest, it is very hard to differentiate for any period of time or build loyalty on those factors alone. — Simon Sinek

We pass and leave you lying. No need for rhetoric, for funeral music, for melancholy bugle-calls. No need for tears now, no need for regret.
We took our risk with you; you died and we live. We take your noble gift, salute for the last time those lines of pitiable crosses, those solitary mounds, those unknown graves, and turn to live our lives out as we may.
Which of us were fortunate
who can tell? For you there is silence and cold twilight drooping in awful desolation over those motionless lands. For us sunlight and the sound of women's voices, song and hope and laughter, despair, gaiety, love
life.
Lost terrible silent comrades, we, who might have died, salute you. — Richard Aldington

Those of you who are strong need to be there for those who have lost someone today. We have to be here for each other right now. — Tori Amos

But now? Now? Children in the twentieth and this early twenty-first century hated the Alice books, couldn't read them, and why should they? Their world had strayed into madness long ago. Look at the planet. Rain is acid, poisonous. Sun causes cancer. Sex=death. Children murder other children. Parents lie, leaders lie, the churches have less moral credibility than Benetton ads.
And the faces of missing children staring out from milk cartons-imagine all those poor Lost Boys, and Lost Girls, not in Neverland but lost here, lost now. No wonder Wonderland isn't funny anymore: We live there full-time. We need a break from it. — Gregory Maguire

He stared to sea. I gave up all ideas of practicing medicine. In spite of what I have just said about the wave and the water, in those years in France I am afraid I lived a selfish life. That is, I offered myself every pleasure. I traveled a great deal. I lost some money dabbling in the theatre, but I made much more dabbling on the Bourse. I gained a great many amusing friends, some of whom are now quite famous. But I was never very happy. I suppose I was fortunate. It took me only five years to discover what some rich people never discover - that we all have a certain capacity for happiness and unhappiness. And that the economic hazards of life do not seriously affect it. — John Fowles

At times one wanders, doubting the facts, even when one has discovered the secrets of the good life. To be sure, my solution is not the ideal.
But when you don't like your own life, when you know that you must change lives, you don't have any choice, do you? What can one do to become
another?Impossible. One would have to cease being anyone, forget oneself for someone else, at least once.But how? Don't bear down too hard on me.
I am like that old beggar who wouldn't let go of my hand one day on a cafe terrace: Oh, sir,he said, its not just that I am no good, but you lose
track of the light.Yes, we have lost track of the light, the mornings, the holy innocence of those who forgive themselves. — Albert Camus

Civilization has imposed countless restrictions and conventions on each of us, with the result that the subconscious in the majority of us has become a storage room without a key. We are forced to suppress or forget so many events and ideas and thoughts that those to which we should have access are lost in the welter. However, there are people who seem capable of unlocking this part of their minds and extracting relevant information. — Margaret Millar

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time ... when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstitions and darkness. — Carl Sagan

We've all got our own people. Somewhere out there there's someone who is part of your tribe, who belongs to you, who should be with you. You have always been my people, Veronica. From the moment we first met till now, through all of those years where we were both lost and stolen. — Karina Halle

Only those capable of envisaging utopia will be fit for the decisive battle, that of recovering all the humanity we have lost.
— Ernesto Sabato

Honor is what separates man from beast. The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to actually be what we pretend to be. Let others laugh and mock those of us they perceive beneath them, but remember, good Cadegan, honor lies inside our hearts and it is that which makes us act with mercy and compassion against those who have most wronged us. Even if the jackal wounds your pride, do not reward such knavery by surrendering your honor to him. Only then have you truly lost all. Never let anyone take your soul, for they are not worth your eternity or your heart. Instead — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Today at Nariman Point the tall buildings crowd one another. But when I was young and in love with a grey-eyed man it was a marshy waste. We used to walk aimlessly along the quiet Panday Road or cross the Cuffe Parade to walk towards the sun. We did not have a place to rest. But in the glow of those evening suns, we felt that we were Gods who had lost their way and had strayed into an unkind planet.. — Kamala Suraiyya Das

We must encourage those who earn less than $200 per month and cannot afford to nurture and educate many children never to have more than two ... We will regret the time lost if we do not now take the first tentative steps towards correcting a trend which can leave our society with a large number of the physically, intellectually and culturally anaemic. — Lee Kuan Yew

Ideas give life meaning. Our minds need ideas the way
our bodies need food. We are starved for visions, hungry for understanding. We
are caught up in the routines of life, distracted occasionally by those activities we
call "recreation" and "entertainment." What we as a nation have lost is the joy of
thinking, the challenge of understanding, the inspirations as well as the consolations
of philosophy. — Robert C. Solomon

His youth reappeared, bringing with it all those sweet souvenirs which are rather perfumes than thoughts. Between that past and the present there was an abyss. But imagination has the angel's or lightning's wing; it clears seas in which we should certainly have been shipwrecked; it removes the darkness in which our illusions were lost, the precipice where our happiness was engulfed. — Alexandre Dumas

I have known a lot of people in my life, and I can tell you this ... Some of the ones who understood love better than anyone else were those who the rest of the world had long before measured as lost or gone. Some of the people who were able to look at the dirtiest, the poorest, the gays, the straights, the drug users, those in recovery, the basest of sinners, and those who were just ... plain ... different.
They were able to look at them all and only see strength. Beauty. Potential. Hope.
And if we boil it down, isn't that what love actually is? — Dan Pearce

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for the lost? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love "the lost". You can't feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as "all lost people".
Don't wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God. — John Piper

One of the most important parts of tending our friendships is working our way, over time, into the kind of friendships that can support cataclysm, friendships that are able to move from the office or the playground to hospital rooms and funerals. Some of my married friends are widows now, and some are single, and some have lost parents and had kids who were lost to them for awhile. And even those of us who so far have been relatively unscathed know how important the bonds of love are, how they make a net so we don't hit the ground when we fall from the wire. — Anna Quindlen

The saddest moment as Prime Minister is writing letters to families who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan or those who we have tried to help in hostage situations but it hasn't worked out. — David Cameron

We are acknowledging the close personal nature of our 10 years at war and the strong bonds of fidelity that Marines have for one another, especially for those fellow Marines who we have lost. — James F. Amos

All of us have read of what occured during that interval. The tale is in every Englishman's mouth; and you and I, who were children when the great battle was won and lost, are never tired of hearing and recounting the history of that famous action. Its rememberance rankles still in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of those brave men who lost the day. They pant for an opportunity of revenging that humiliation; and if a contest, ending in a victory on their part, should ensue, elating them in their turn, and leaving its cursed legacy of hatred and rage behind to us, there is no end to the so-called glory and shame, and to the alterations of successful and unsuccessful murder, in which two high-spirited nations might engage. Centuries hence, we Frenchmen and Englishmen might be boasting and killing each other still, carrying out bravely the Devil's code of honor. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Just as fossil fuels from conventional sources are finite and are becoming depleted, those from difficult sources will also run out. If we put all our energy and resources into continued fossil fuel extraction, we will have lost an opportunity to have invested in renewable energy. — David Suzuki

People who mock incidents in history such as 9/11 or the Holocaust, referring to it all as a hoax or stirring up crazy conspiracy theories about it, should really stop and think about their words first, both because it shows flaws in logic and rationality to deny the obvious, and because to play pretend with incidents which killed innocent people, well, that's just like laughing in the face of tragedy. It's as if to say, "no, it's not horrible enough that these people were killed, oh no, we have to drag on these incidents by indulging in melodramatic fantasies!" In essence this means that those who lost loved ones not only have to live with these losses forever, they also have to live with the people who deny that any of it ever happened. It does no good to forget history or to deny it. All it does is desensitize people; it tells them that it's all just a game, which then risks the possibility of nobody taking it seriously enough to prevent something similar from happening again. — Rebecca McNutt

Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon under its shade.
For such is life. We grow rich as we plant through the early years, but then come the years when time undoes our work and cuts down our trees. One by one our comrades deprive us of their shade, and within our mourning we always feel now the secret grief of growing old.
If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me. You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you forever by ordeals endured together. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies, made a comment that sounds almost prophetic now: that the happy, primitive society (which, by the way, never existed) is lost for all those who have eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, Popper warns, the more certainly we will reach the Inquisition, the secret police, and a romanticized gangsterism. But once the existential problems of the individual, who is good by nature, can be blamed on the "evil" society, nothing stands in the way of sheer imagination. The definition of the benevolent society free of all power is only a question of fantasy. — Paul Watzlawick

Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention. Just as people lost in the wilderness, on a cliff face or in a blizzard pay attention with a kind of acuity that they would not have if they thought they knew where they were. Why? Because for those who are really lost, their life depends on paying real attention. If you think you know where you are, you stop looking. — David Whyte

I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn't know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

There are few times when we know with absolute certainty we are going to do something for the last time. Life has a way of moving in circles, bringing us back to places we didn't expect
and taking us away from those we do. There are too many times we don't pay close enough attention, and moments are lost in our assumption we'll have another chance. — Megan Hart

I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. This, and only this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible and even, sometimes, a little good. — Albert Camus

We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad. — Robert McKee

Memorial Day isn't just about honoring veterans, its honoring those who lost their lives. Veterans had the fortune of coming home. For us, that's a reminder of when we come home we still have a responsibility to serve. It's a continuation of service that honors our country and those who fell defending it. — Pete Hegseth

You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be. — Anne Lamott

The new friends whom we make after attaining a certain age and by whom we would fain replace those whom we have lost, are to our old friends what glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs are to real eyes, natrual teeth and legs of flesh and bone. — Nicolas Chamfort

Perhaps in time, Ella, the words we have lost will fade, and we will all stop summoning them by habit, only to stamp them out like unwanted toadstools when they appear. Perhaps they will eventually disappear altogether, and the accompanying halts and stammers as well: those troublesome, maddening pauses that at present invade and punctuate through caesura all manner of discourse. Trying so desperately we all are, to be ever so careful. — Mark Dunn

Our lives become the sum of all whom we have loved. It is important not to waste anyone. One task of living out the last half of life is excavating and recovering all of those whom we loved in the first half. Thus, the recovery of lost loves becomes an important way in which the past affects the present. — George Vaillant

When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide. For what better grounds for suicide can there be than to go on making the same series of false moves which invariably lead to the same disaster and to repeat a pattern without knowing why it is false or wherein lies the flaw? And yet to percieve that in ourselves revolves a cycle of activity which is certain to end in paralysis of the will, desertion, panic and despair - always to go on loving those who have ceased to love us, and who have quite lost all resemblance to the selves who we loved! Suicide is infectious; what if the agonies which suicide endure before they are driven to take their own life, the emotion of 'all is lost' - are infectious too? — Cyril Connolly

Americans should never forget that the founders of this country, like all who have served her in uniform, were willing to die defending everything its flag represents. It's so easy to get lost in the controversies that divide us. But I believe, no matter what our race, religion, or beliefs may be, that Americans should be able to come together to keep our country rooted in what made it great: a land of opportunity, a place where people can make something of themselves, limited only by their imaginations and willingness to work hard; a country where we can all come together, whatever our differences, for the greater good; a country of hands up, not handouts, where we try to live by the meaning of the words "Love thy neighbor," and put as much effort into helping others as we do helping ourselves. By doing those things, we can continue to live up to the idea of "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. — Marcus Luttrell

The banks themselves were doing business on capitals three-fourths of which were fictitious. This fictitious capital ... is now to be lost, and to fall on somebody; it must take on those who have property to meet it, and probably on the less cautious part, who, not aware of the impending catastrophe, have suffered themselves to contract, or to be in debt, and must now sacrifice their property of a value many times the amount of the debt. We have been truly sowing the wind, and are now reaping the whirlwind. — Thomas Jefferson

The names of the cerros and the sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. They cannot find for us the way again. — Cormac McCarthy

Have you ever climbed a mountain in full armour? That's what we did, him going first the whole way up a tiny path into the clouds, with drops sheer on both sides into nothing. For hours we crept forward like blind men, the sweat freezing on our faces, lugging skittery leaking horses, and pricked all the time for the ambush that would tip us into death. Each turn of the path it grew colder. The friendly trees of the forest dropped away, and there were only pines. Then they went too, and there just scrubby little bushes standing up in ice. All round us the rocks began to whine the cold. And always above us, or below us, those filthy condor birds, hanging on the air with great tasselled wings ... Four days like that; groaning, not speaking; the breath a blade in our lungs. Four days, slowly, like flies on a wall; limping flies, dying flies, up an endless wall of rock. A tiny army lost in the creases of the moon. — Peter Shaffer

When we started filming, I tried to keep myself well under the radar so that the powers that be wouldn't notice that I hadn't lost the weight they'd asked me to. I only weighed 110 pounds to begin with, but I carried about half of them in my face. I think they may have put those buns on me so they might function as bookends, keeping my face right where it was, between my ears and no bigger. — Carrie Fisher

The graves of those we have loved and lost distress and console as. — Arsene Houssaye

If all histories have a period known as The Golden Age, somewhere between
The Beginning and The End, I suppose those Sundays during Fall Semester
at Hannah's were just that, or, to quote one of Dad's treasured
characters of cinema, the illustrious Norma Desmond as she recalled the lost
era of silent film: "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces. — Marisha Pessl

Ten years have passed since a perfect blue sky morning turned into the blackest of nights. Since then we've lived in sunshine and in shadow, and although we can never unsee what happened here, we can also see that children who lost their parents have grown into young adults, grandchildren have been born and good works and public service have taken root to honor those we loved and lost. — Michael Bloomberg

It's true. somewhere inside us we are all the ages we have ever been. We're the 3 year old who got bit by the dog. We're the 6 year old our mother lost track of at the mall. We're the 10 year old who get tickled till we wet our pants. We're the 13 year old shy kid with zits. We're the 16 year old no one asked to the prom, and so on. We walk around in the bodies of adults until someone presses the right button and summons up one of those kids. — Jonathan Tropper

Because humor brings us back to earth, it helps us to use well what is left to us even when we are keenly aware of what we have lost or been denied. Only those who know how to weep can also laugh heartily. — Kathleen R Fischer

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to a ceremony celebrating Blake Hartt and Livia McHugh. Today is not the start of their lives together. It will mark the day we all stood, clapped, and gave good wishes. But their fates were destined for each other long before they even met. True love, the kind that lasts forever, is very rare indeed. It takes compromise, continued growth, and trust."
Cole paused to look from Blake to Livia and back again. "Livia and Blake have a head start on all those things," he continued. "Time has tested them already, asking a fresh love to face terrifying and life-changing tasks. These two had to find and hold onto their love, even when it felt like all was lost. — Debra Anastasia

Sweetbuns?" "Tradition among us Two Rivers folk." "Never heard of that tradition." "It's very obscure." "Ah, I see. And what did you do to those buns?" "Sprinklewort," Mat said. "It'll turn her mouth blue for a week, maybe two. And she won't share the sweetbuns with anyone, except maybe her Warders. Joline is addicted to the things. She must have eaten seven or eight bags' worth since we got to Caemlyn." "Nice," Thom said, knuckling his mustache. "Childish, though." "I'm trying to get back to my basic roots," Mat said. "You know, recapture some of my lost youth. — Robert Jordan

I remembered those frantic seconds when I'd thought all I loved and knew, all that was Sydney Sage, would be lost from this world. My battered friends and I had just had a brush with death, dancing with this evil. We'd destroyed it, but it was terrifying how touch and go it all had been. At any moment, the Strigoi could have gained the advantage and killed one or all of us. Life and death were inextricably bound together, and we wavered between them. But we'd triumphed over death tonight. We were alive, and the world was beautiful. Life was beautiful, and I refused to waste mine. — Richelle Mead

Do we miss not only the past but every future the lost past describes? Is that just the nature of missing? All the lost might-have-beens? The certainty that those uncertain futures are gone? If we can't embrace uncertainty do we miss the point of love? — Mark Z. Danielewski

Arbitrary distinctions ... have always been the instruments of arbitrary power, the means of lulling and ensnaring men into their own servitude. For whenever we leave principles and clear positive laws, and wander after constructions, one construction or consequence is piled upon another until we get an immense distance from fact and truth and nature, lost in the wild regions of imagination and possibility, where arbitrary power sits upon her brazen throne and governs with an iron sceptre.' -said by John Adams, in Those Who Love, p. 166 — Irving Stone