Quotes & Sayings About Unfinished Business

For many decades my relations with my parents constituted unfinished business. I had dealt with them through sheer avoidance and guilt. — Alix Kates Shulman

happiness is a journey, not a destination. for a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. but there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. at last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. this perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. happiness is the way. so treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one. — Souza

Peace is more than a lofty ideal. It is a practical principle that, with conscious effort, can become a normal part of our lives as we deal with matters both large and small. One habit that prevents inner peace is procrastination. It clutters our minds with unfinished business and makes us uneasy until we finish a task and get it out of the way. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

As long as one American is hungry ... then we have unfinished business in this country. — William Safire

He bowed is head into my throat, groaning softly. "I loved you long before you loved me. It's the only thing I have you beat at, and I'll bring it up every chance I get." His mouth pressed to my skin, took on a devilish curve. "Lets get out of here. I'm taking you back to my place, this time for good. We have unfinished business, and I think its time we do something about it. — Becca Fitzpatrick

It's now clear that from the very moment President Bush took office, Iraq was his highest priority as unfinished business from the first Bush Administration. His agenda was clear: find a rationale to get rid of Saddam. — Edward Kennedy

Children, I suppose, are always unfinished business: they begin as part of your own body, and continue as separate as another continent. — Jeanette Winterson

What's your unfinished business ?"
"I wanted to matter — Kim Fielding

When this Child Within is not nurtured or allowed freedom of expression, a false or co-dependent self emerges. We begin to live our lives from a victim stance, and experience difficulties in resolving emotional traumas. The gradual accumulation of unfinished mental and emotional business can lead to chronic anxiety, fear, confusion, emptiness and unhappiness. — Charles L. Whitfield

The truth of relationship healthiness is that water seeks its own level. If you want to know what is missing in you, what unfinished business you have, what your inner struggles are, you need not look further than your partner. If you listen carefully and look closely, usually your choice of mates will tell you what you need to know about yourself. As you grow and change, your choice of mate continues to reflect what you still need to work on. — Susan J Elliott

When people die," I said, "and you'll be able to verify this for yourself - most of 'em move on. A few of 'em stick around. But the ones who stick around are usually messed-up. Murders and suicides, or people with unfinished business. As for accidents and illness - at the very worst, they leave a little residue. A repeater. A psychic impression of the final moments, like a moving snapshot. I think the spirits of those repeaters, they're fine. They go wherever it is people ... go. When they die. — Jordan Castillo Price

Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what. — Salman Rushdie

He looked at my lips. I suddenly found myself wanting to lick his. 'Yes,' he replied, his eyes going molten. My breath caught in my throat as he reached out and brushed a strand of hair where it had flown across my cheek. 'I believe we do have unfinished business.' 'Good.' I gulped, suddenly one big mass of tingling body parts that wanted an immediate introduction to all of his body parts. I tried to slam down a mental barrier between his mind and mine, but it did no good. The cheerleaders in my groin were setting up fundraising car washes to finance a field trip to his groin. — Katie MacAlister

From '86 until the summer of last year, wherever I went, people would say, You would have made a great James Bond! Weren't you going to be James Bond? You should have been, you could have been, you may have been. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like unfinished business in my life. I couldn't say no to it this time around. — Pierce Brosnan

Unfinished business is our worst business. Perpetual procrastination must yield to perceptive preparation. Today we have a little more time to bless others-time to be kinder, more compassionate, quicker to thank and slower to scold, more generous in sharing, more gracious in caring. — Russell M. Nelson

There are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark ... Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. — Sara Zarr

He didn't like the idea of leaving unfinished business behind. He had wanted definite answers about the heart attacks to be able to turn the page on who or what caused so many of his brothers to die. — Keith Steinbaum

The mark we've left on each other is the color and shape of love. That's the unfinished business between us. because love, love is never finished. — Sara Zarr

What is your problem?" I asked, scooping the freezing mess out of my cleavage.
"We got unfinished business," he reminded me.
"My name's not Bill." He chuckled. "Yeah, I loved that movie. Shoulda brought a katana, but it seemed like an unfair advantage. — Karen Chance

If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully. Stories about food show a strong connection. Wistful silences demonstrate unfinished business. The more a daughter knows about the details of her mother's life - without flinching or whining - the stronger the daughter. — Anita Diamant

You can eat beef on a weekly basis and become a genius intuitive if your energy is in present time.You can consume only organic food while running thirty-five miles a day and "om-ing" until dawn, but if your spirit is raging about your history and is saturated in regrets and unfinished business, you won't be able to intuit your left hand from your right ... — Caroline Myss

Whether I am meant to or not, I challenge assumptions about women. I do make some people uncomfortable, which I'm well aware of, but that's just part of coming to grips with what I believe is still one of the most important pieces of unfinished business in human history - empowering women to be able to stand up for themselves. — Hillary Clinton

There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by the memory of those we love, those with whom we feel we have unfinished business. While they may no longer be with us, a faint aroma of their presence remains, a presence that haunts us until we make our peace with them and let them go. The problem, however, is that we tend to spend a great deal of energy in attempting to avoid the truth. We construct an image of ourselves that seeks to shield us from a confrontation with our ghosts. Hence we often encounter them only late at night, in the corridors of our dreams. — Peter Rollins

You're through running from that sh*t. I get it now, I don't like it, but I get it. You still have unfinished business that's why they're always on your mind. I hope you'll get to the point where you stop running and start fighting back. — Jordan Silver

The thing is not to leave unfinished business; make every day count. — Wally Amos

A person who hasn't grieved a significant loss has unfinished business inside and can cause others great grief as a result. — Henry Cloud

Sunday evenings had long saddened me, reminders of death, unfinished business, guilt, and loss. — Alain De Botton

Offer it up personally,then. Right now. I thought of how many people go to their graves unforgiven and unforgiving. I thought of how many people have had siblings or friends or children or lovers disappear from their lives before precious words of clemency or absolution could be passed along. How do the survivors of terminated relationships ever endure the pain of unfinished business? From that place of meditation, I found the answer-you can finish the business yourself, from within yourself. It's not only possible, it's essential. — Elizabeth Gilbert

When parents don't take responsibility for their own unfinished business, they miss an opportunity not only to become better parents but also to continue their own development. People who remain in the dark about the origins of their behaviors and intense emotional responses are unaware of their unresolved issues and the parental ambivalence they create. — Daniel J. Siegel

Emotional Resilience: Simple Truths for Dealing with the Unfinished Business of Your Past. — Tina Gilbertson

She needs you, Dad," Julia says. "She has unfinished business in this world."
"What is the matter with you?" Charlie asks his daughter. "Any sane person would have told me to go to the doctor. I'm seeing a headless apparition every day. Maybe my medications are conflicting. You should see the list of side effects on this stuff. — Joey Comeau

My therapist shared a theory she had come across, and I liked it. It held that before making your next journey in this life, your soul sits at a large, circular conference table and chooses the souls who are going to be a part of your life. As for which particular people would be chosen, I figured they would be individuals from previous lives with whom there was still unfinished business. — Melissa Gilbert

Another year is ending, but something is pending — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

As life progresses, baggage can accumulate. For a while, things can be swept under the rug, but the wait of unfinished business eventually catches up. — Paul Gibbons

If you are the type of person to carry a lot of worry, especially about unfinished business, you are also probably the type to feel really guilty when you do things other than those pieces of unfinished business. Guilt is such a shitty thing. As if things weren't hard enough with the anxiety symptoms, guilt just creeps right up in there and makes things exponentially more difficult. I like to call this snowballing. You get worked up and then getting worked up makes you feel bad and then you get more worked up about feeling bad about getting worked up and then.... you get the point. — Robert Duff

Life ... is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of. — Anita Brookner

She was thinking how it was the unfinished business. This was why she could not sleep. She could not say the day was over. She had no sense that any day was ever over. Everything was still going on. The business not only not finished but maybe not done well enough. — Lydia Davis

Dr. Sadler opened up the drawers of his desk. All empty - except for supplies. "Tell me," said the patient, "where do you keep your unfinished business?" "Finished!" said Sadler. "And where do you keep your unanswered mail?" "Answered!" Sadler told him. "My rule is never to lay down a letter until I have answered it. I — Dale Carnegie

In addition to unfinished business, some ghosts haunt so that they will be remembered. — Donna Lynn Hope

I want to live in such a way that, if it is only twenty-nine more days or twenty-nine more weeks, or if it is twenty-nine more years or more, I want to faithful with each one of those-that I could go and meet the Lord without regrets, without unfinished business. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

When you run a part of the relay and pass on the baton, there is no sense of unfinished business in your mind. There is just the sense of having done your part to the best of your ability. That is it. The hope is to pass on the baton to somebody who will run faster and run a better marathon. — N. R. Narayana Murthy

If we examine ourselves carefully we shall see most of us have an enormous amount of unfinished business ... We have to be free so that we can just step across the line and that's it. That is what real freedom is. — Thomas Merton

Much of what I have done is left unfinished- not because I left it too soon, not because I was lazy, but because it had a life of it's own that continues without me. Children, I suppose, are always unfinished business: they begin as part of your own body, and continue as seperate as another continent. The work you do, if it has any meaning, passes to other hands. The day slides into a night's dreaming.
True stories are the ones that lie open at the border, allowing a crossing, a further frontier. The final frontier is just science fiction -don't believe it. Like the universe, there is no end. (p.87) — Jeanette Winterson

I do feel that I have unfinished business in the Premier League and now is the right time to return. I considered all the other offers very carefully and I firmly believe that Chelsea is the best choice. They match my footballing ambitions with their hunger and desire to win trophies. — Cesc Fabregas

Life should be an unfinished business. — Colin Fletcher

Positioned on my dresser, that white-as-snow rose is a personal message to me. It speaks of unfinished business. It whispers, I can find you. I can reach you. Perhaps I am watching you now. — Suzanne Collins

Lots of my dying patients say they grow in bounds and leaps, and finish all the unfinished business. But assisting a suicide is cheating them of these lessons, like taking a student out of school before final exams. That's not love, it's projecting your own unfinished business — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There was, he knew, within him, hidden deep and far away, a great slumbering turbulence he could neither understand nor reach, a turbulence that was also a void, the business of unfinished things. — Richard Flanagan

Everyone's got unfinished business with Barcelona. They're the greatest team in the world. — Frank Lampard

Love is a word for unfinished business, I think. — Paul Shepheard

You and I my love will always have unfinished business — M.H.S. Pourri

The function and responsibility of the President is to set before the American people the unfinished business, the things we must do if we are going to succeed as a nation. — John F. Kennedy

Winding up unfinished business with another person can give you a great burst of positive energy. — Brian Tracy

You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go- into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done. — Alice Hoffman

Door's locked," he said. "And we have unfinished business. — Becca Fitzpatrick

are experts at taking care of everybody around us, do we doubt our ability to take care of ourselves? What is it about us? Many of us learned these things because when we were children, someone very important to us was unable to give us the love, approval, and emotional security we needed. So we've gone about our lives the best way we could, still looking vaguely or desperately for something we never got. Some of us are still beating our heads against the cement trying to get this love from people who, like Mother or Father, are unable to give what we need. The cycle repeats itself until it is interrupted and stopped. It's called unfinished business. — Melody Beattie

We have unfinished personal business I do believe." He smiled. "And I do love to make you blush."
"It clashes with my hair. — Susannah Sandlin

I thought of how many people go to their graves unforgiven and unforgiving. I thought of how many people have had siblings or friends or children or lovers disappear from their lives before precious words of clemency or absolution could be passed along. How do the survivors of terminated relationships ever endure the pain of unfinished business? — Elizabeth Gilbert

I have pain in my hip and long walks are a thing of the past but I'm neither morbid nor senile. I'm not obsessed by death, but I'm at an age when I have to accept that my time is about up. You want to close the accounts and take care of unfinished business. — Stieg Larsson

The world is cluttered up with unfinished business in the form of projects that might have been successful, if only at the tide point someone's patience had turned to active impatience. — Robert Updegraff

Liberty is always unfinished business. — American Civil Liberties Union

Our distance has lived in me like the aftermath of a bad dream-I carry it around, the knowledge that we were once close, that something was lost; it's the lingering sadness of unfinished business. (18) — Lauren Fox

Richard," Kahlan said, "what about Siddin? Weselan and Savidlin will be worried sick over him." Her green eyes gazed deep into his. She leaned closer, and whispered, "And we have unfinished business in the spirit house. I believe there is still an apple there we have yet to finish." Her arm tightened around his waist, and a little twist of a smile came to her lips. The shape of the smile caught his breath in his throat. — Terry Goodkind

I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century. — Hillary Clinton

He dropped to his knees, pushed up her skirt, and spread her legs open. "I have unfinished business with your pussy," he growled, as he dragged a finger across the outside of her panties. — Lauren Blakely

When priorities are in place, one can more patiently tolerate unfinished business. — Russell M. Nelson

As the traditional healer Makhosi Petros Hezekial Mtshali tells us, Ancestors are benevolent beings who love us. You are their legacy, and they want the best for their progeny. Their own evolution in the Otherworld depends upon the completion of unfinished business or making amends for unkind acts or deeds that they may have committed during their lifetime. — Steven D. Farmer

Pegi just recorded "I Don't Want to Talk About," written by Danny Whitten, the original Crazy Horse guitar player and singer who's all over Early Daze, an album of songs from the beginning of Crazy Horse that I have been working on compiling recently. Danny was every bit the artist I am, but he died of a heroin OD in the early seventies. Every time I hear Pegi sing that song, it makes me tremendously sad. She sings it so beautifully, phrasing it to break my heart. She does it justice. You can see I have some unfinished business with Danny. — Neil Young

You ask me what it means to be irrelevant? The feeling is akin to visiting your old house as a wandering ghost with unfinished business. Imagine going back: the structure is familiar ,but the door is now metal instead of wood,the walls have been painted a garish pink ,the easy chair you loved so much is gone .Your office is now the family room and your beloved bookcases have been replaced by a brand-new television set . This is your house,and it is not. And you are no longer relevant to this house , to its walls and doors and floors ; you are not seen . — Azar Nafisi

The summer I turned eleven, I found out that ghosts are real.
Guess it's hard to rest nice and easy in your coffin if you got stuff on your mind. Your soul stays chained to earth instead of zipping up to heaven to sing in one of the angel choirs.
Sometimes ghosts show up in the msot peculiar places.
Sometimes ghosts fool you.
Then you are those ghosts that hang around because we have unfinished business. Business that sinks like old crawfish left in a bucket for a week. That's some nasty smell let me tell you.
But the most important thing I learned is that ghosts can help you spill your guts before guilt eats you up and leaves a hole that can't ever be fixed no matter how many patches you try to steam iron across it. — Kimberley Griffiths Little

I ... now see a rare opportunity to push across the goal line much of the unfinished business of America: investing in our infrastructure and workers, universal healthcare, comprehensive immigration reform and scrubbing a tax code that's out of shape and behind the times. — Xavier Becerra

I have some unfinished business to complete at the University of Oregon. — Chip Kelly

For my own good, I want to hang out with people who want to find out what it would be like to live in such a way as to leave no unspoken words, no unfinished business; I want to be with people who are hungry for the truth, who want to spend time learning and sharing what they have learned rather than defending their images or reputations. — Brad Blanton

The one true freedom in life is to come to terms with death, and as early as possible, for death is an event that embraces all our lives. And the only way to have a good death is to lead a good life. The more we do God's will, the less unfinished business we leave behind when we die. — William Sloane Coffin

The collective sign of relief heaved on V-J Day ought to have inspired Hollywood to release a flood of "happily ever after" films. But some victors didn't feel too good about their spoils. They'd seen too much by then. Too much warfare, too much poverty, too much greed, all in the service of rapacious progress. A bundle of unfinished business lingered from the Depression - nagging questions about ingrained venality, mean human nature, and the way unchecked urban growth threw society dangerously out of whack. Writers and directors responded by delivering gritty, bitter dramas that slapped our romantic illusions in the face and put the boot to the throat of the smug bourgeoisie. Still, plenty of us took it - and liked it. — Eddie Muller

I'm talking about the ones who, for whatever reason, are as much a part of you as your own soul. Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business.
Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. If you had a lifetime to talk, there would still be things left unsaid. — Sara Zarr

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. - FR. ALFRED D'SOUZA — Arianna Huffington

I'm unfinished business and business hours are over — Renee Ruin

I had a little unfinished business," she said at his raised brow.
He reached out a hand to her and she clasped it. Not saying a word, he led her into the house and shut the door. — Laurel Cremant

I believe we move in soul groups; we meet the same people over different lifetimes; we have to finish the unfinished business with those people. And when we do, they walk away from our lives. — Shilpa Shetty

There are two types of spirits. One makes the transition to the spirit realm and goes on to whatever comes next. They can still come back to connect with people who are alive, but it's like dropping by for a visit, and then they go back to whatever it is they were happily doing in the next life. On the other hand, earthbound spirits - ghosts - are folks who pass but still have unfinished business. They feel like they're going to be judged for something they did wrong; or they don't know they are dead; or they are angry about being dead and not getting to finish something. They have been cheated out of life. They stay on a plane that's closer to the plane of earth, and that's why they're always at the corners of our vision and the edges of our dreams. Once they complete the process and resign themselves to the fact that their time on earth is finished and they've done what they can do, they can move to the next level. — Jodi Picoult

As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to the question of how the United States military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan. — Chelsea Manning

If you try to send a clear signal to and call your SoulMate into your life, having unfinished business with your ex is like static on the line. — Annette Vaillancourt

If you must begin then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time. — Chogyam Trungpa

I wondered why I was so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed utterly inevitable about the moment. Not in any grand, destined sense; just in the quiet, stubborn way that unfinished business has of imposing its will on the unwilling. — Emily Giffin