Varinka Ensminger Quotes & Sayings

A whole life has already been determined at a stage when we didn't know a thing — Milan Kundera

These days, we've gotten incredibly fussy. With our personal playlists, our complicated made-to-order half-caf, half-decaf lattes, our special mattresses that can adjust for each sleeper, our individually designed college curriculums, we've gotten out of the habit of making do with what's at hand. Part of living with abandon is giving oneself over to one's circumstances without any expectation that things are going to be to our liking anytime soon. We can hope that things will improve, but it shouldn't prevent us from doing what we've set out to do. Julia had an astonishing capacity to be content with what was in front of her, whether it be a cooking school run on spit and a string or a less than perfect hunk of meat. She made do and moved on and rarely regretted it. — Karen Karbo

Having hope is hard; harder when you get older. — Wendell Berry

As the twig is bent the tree is inclined. — George Ade

The color," he breathed. "When you stand in the light. They're amazing ... like molten gold. I could paint those ... " He reached toward me but then pulled back. "They're beautiful. You're beautiful." -Bloodlines — Richelle Mead

If you study the history of mankind, it seems to be a history of violence. Certainly the history of art, whether you look at paintings or movies or plays or whatever, is just a litany of murder and death. — Ethan Hawke

Great happiness, and mingled therefor with bitter sorrow. It is not by enthusiasm but by tactics that we defeat a foe. — Georg Ebers

If we continue with what is surely our greatest Western temptation, and think that in some way history owes us a solution, that we can, by pursuing our own most parochial self-interest, achieve in some miraculous way a consummation of world order, then we are heading not simply towards great disappointments, but towards disaster and tragedy as well. — Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson Of Lodsworth

New Year - a new chapter, new verse, or just the same old story ? Ultimately we write it. The choice is ours. — Alex Morritt

But without painful experiences, we dont grow — Betty Williams

Clearly, all fear has an element of resistance and a leaning away from the moment. Its dynamic is not unlike that of strong desire except that fear leans backward into the last safe moment while desire leans forward toward the next possibility of satisfaction. Each lacks presence. (29) — Stephen Levine

Contemplation is a very dangerous activity. It not only brings us face to face with God. It brings us, as well, face to face with the world, face to face with the self. And then, of course, something must be done. Nothing stays the same once we have found the God within ... . We carry the world in our hearts: the oppression of all peoples, the suffering of our friends, the burdens of our enemies, the raping of the Earth, the hunger of the starving, the joy of every laughing child. — Joan D. Chittister

Europe's exhausted elites were ready to concede both liberal democracy and redistributive welfare states to ensure social peace. — Francis Fukuyama

There's no great person that lived that didn't go through scrutiny or ridicule and prosecution in all types of ways, to be who they are in history. — Bernard Hopkins