We Arrived Quotes & Sayings

We're too often guilty of thinking that our parents arrived on this planet as fully functioning adults on the day that we were born. That they don't have pasts of their own prior to our birth. That the father is not also a son, that the mother is not also a child. My mother had a tough beginning, enduring things I know little about. And yet I more often discount her pain and overvalue mine. — Steven Rowley

The inflection point at which we have arrived is one in which we are increasingly seizing the keys to all creation, as astonding as that might seem. — Joel Garreau

Maybe the social value of truth is as a destination - so long as we do not assume we have arrived there. — Edward De Bono

When I was 10, we drove to Disney World. When we arrived, what impressed me most was the meticulous attention to detail; there wasn't a gum wrapper anyplace. — Jason Kilar

We have arrived at the point where the public are right in thinking that John Prescott no longer serves a purpose in governing the country, only a purpose in trying to hold together the fragile peace in the Labour Party — Andrew Lansley

No duties. I don't have to be profound.
I don't have to be artistically perfect.
Or sublime. Or edifying.
I just wander. I say: 'You were running,
That's fine. It was the thing to do.'
And now the music of the worlds transforms me.
My planet enters a different house.
Trees and lawns become more distinct.
Philosophies one after another go out.
Everything is lighter yet not less odd.
Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.
We talk a little of district fairs,
Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,
Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.
That's better than examining one's private dreams.
And meanwhile it has arrived. It's here, invisible.
Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.
Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.
Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell. — Czeslaw Milosz

You're late," said the third bouncer. "The others have already arrived and are
setting up." Ian grunted non-committedly when what he wanted to say was: Of course
we're late. We had to intercept the real catering van. We had to take out the people inside. We
had to hack your stupid staff list ID system. — Stephen Hunt

Toxic pheromone pollution. How can we combat that?" Charles Groh and I looked at each other. This was it. We'd finally arrived at the hard part. What had to be done. "The first step," I said, "would be removing the factors that are causing the environmental disturbance." "Remove petroleum products?" said the president. "And cell phones?" said the secretary of state. I nodded at both of them, then looked out at the faces around the table and on the screens. — James Patterson

Jane, who is much better at reading guide books than I am (I always read them on the way back to see what I missed, it's often quite a shock), discovered something wonderful in the book she was reading. Did I know, she asked, that Brisbane was originally founded as a penal colony for convicts who committed new offences after they had arrived in Australia ? I spent a good half hour enjoying this single piece of information. It was wonderful. There we British sat, poor grey sodden creatures, huddling under our grey northern sky that seeped like a rancid dish cloth, busy sending those we wished to punish most severely to sit in bright sunlight on the coast of the Tasman Sea at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and maybe do some surfing too. No wonder the Australians have a particular kind of smile that they reserve exclusively for use on the British. — Douglas Adams

In my poems though, as you say, the comic arrived fairly late. This doubtless has something to do with growing older. A person who's seen a bit of the world can't help but notice how foolish is the self-centeredness we bring to our tiny slice of existence. — Jane Hirshfield

3 May. Bistritz. - Left Munich at 8:35 P. M, on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. — Bram Stoker

When we did eventually get to the party - me walking next to Dad's Volvo driving at five miles an hour - I had a horrible time. Everyone laughed at first but then more or less ignored me. In a mood of defiant stuffed oliveness I did have a dance by myself but things kept crashing to the floor around me. The host asked if I would sit down. I had a go at that but it was useless. In the end I was at the gate for about an hour before Dad arrived. — Louise Rennison

Our journey into consciousness of wealth begins with the realization that we have already arrived! — Michael Beckwith

I remember a biology lab in which we observed a spear-headed water worm. Like a starfish, it could grow back anything we razored off of it, even to the point of generating multiple versions of itself. I saw myself in that gliding shape. Arrow-shaped, it never arrived where it wanted to go. But it knew, when cut, to grow. — Kenji Yoshino

I think the world has mostly ended because the cities we wander through are as rotten as we are. Buildings have collapsed. Rusted cars clog the streets. Most glass is shattered and the wind drifting through the hollow high-rises moans like an animal left to die. I don't know what happened. Disease? War? Social collapse? Or was it just us? The Dead replacing the Living? I guess it's not so important. Once you're arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters which road you took. — Isaac Marion

I know what it is! We've arrived at the West Coast! We're all strangers again! Folks, I just forgot the biggest gumption trap of all. The funeral procession! The one everybody's in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country. — Robert M. Pirsig

August 1
The harvest season has finally arrived. Today marks its opening. Our next stop on the wheel of the year will be the autumn equinox. I've always seen the opening of the harvest as a kind of stairway we walk down to reach the dark and magickal part of the year where all the good things await. The cool, comforting energy that feels more like home than any place can. Today is the landing at the top of the stairs. All we have to do is put one foot before the other, and before you know it, we'll be watching The Great Pumpkin again. — Damien Echols

What if we changed the story that has been peddled to us over thousands of years by those religions that want to control us, that this life is merely a stepping stone to something better or something worse, and that we can only achieve the better by passing through the doors of their institutions and following their rules? What if we trash this arcane story which has caused so much suffering and hostility, and accept that we have already arrived in heaven and that there is nothing more gorgeous than here and now? — Danny Scheinmann

May I tell you a wonderful truth about your dog? ... In our religion, we believe in reincarnation. We live many times, you see, always seeking to be wiser and more virtuous. If we eventually lead a blameless life, a perfect life, we leave this world and need not endure it again. Between our human lives, we may be reincarnated as other creatures. Sometimes, when someone has led a nearly perfect life but is not yet worthy of nirvana, that person is reincarnated as a very beautiful dog. When the life as the dog comes to an end, the person is reincarnated one last time as a human being, and lives a perfect life. Your dog is a person who has almost arrived at complete enlightenment and will in the next life be perfect and blameless, a very great person. You have been given stewardship of what you in your faith might call a holy soul. — Dean Koontz

The realms of good fortune and calamity in human life are all made of thoughts and imaginings. Therefore Buddhists say that the burning of desire for gain is itself a pit of fire, while drowning in greedy love is itself a bitter sea. The moment thoughts are pure, fierce flames become a pond; the moment you become aware, the boat has arrived on the further shore. If your thoughts vary at all, your world will immediately differ, so can we not be careful? — Zicheng Hong

I hadn't watched any of the Olympics, apart from the evening we arrived in St Petersburg. I figured why watch it, I'm doing it. — Mel Cormican

How remote we were too from the crazy musicians who arrived on a blustery fall day with the idea that, since this was a financial center, there would be a rain of coins from the tall buildings in response to their trumpet, guitar, and bass fiddle. The wind swirled their jazz among the canyons. I saw that no one was paying them the slightest attention. Feeling guilty, I threw them a quarter, but they didn't see it. They danced and made jazz in the cold, while upstairs we went on with our work, and they didn't exist, and it was nobody's fault. — Alan Harrington

We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. — Alan W. Watts

Hispanic gives us all one ultimate paternal cultural progenitor: Spain. The diverse cultures already on the American shores when the Europeans arrived, as well as those introduced because of the African slave trade, are completely obliterated by the term. Hispanic is nothing more than a concession made by the U. S. legislature when they saw they couldn't get rid of us. If we won't go away, why not at least Europeanize us, make us presentable guests at the dinner table, take away our feathers and rattles and civilize us once and for all. — Ana Castillo

True, we might never have arrived, but the fact is we did. If only people thought a little more about it, they would see that life is not worth worrying about so much. — Mikhail Lermontov

Mara gave you my letter?"
"Yes."
"You must have been astonished." She had exposed her heart in that letter.
His eyebrows shot up. "'Astonished' is a mild word for it."
"But you came - so you must have read the other letters. They should have prepared you a little."
"I received no other letters. I had no idea you were in this part of the world."
She shook her head in confusion. "Then how did you know to come?"
"Yasmeen and I were in New Eden again - I have written that story for you in another letter - when a supply ship arrived carrying the rumor that Zenobia Fox was under the protection of the Kraken King. Needless to say, we abandoned New Eden and flew to Krakentown and full steam. — Meljean Brook

Barely a teenager, Elizabeth Taylor was already more beautiful and voluptuous than Miss America. When she arrived at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for our magazine shoot, I was bowled over. I couldn't believe she was only fourteen. She filled out a swimsuit better than I did. We did the pictures, including one shot of me teaching her to float. With that superstructure of hers, she floated just fine. What she couldn't do was sink. — Esther Williams

Reality took forever - the underwater way people walked and sent their voices wobbling through the air, how printed words lay inert like bugsplat, all manifesting the basic DUH of the physical plane. By the time he decided to go anywhere he wondered why he wasn't there already. As soon as he sent an email he felt he should already have the reply. And learning any fact, he was annoyed not to have known it already, because whenever anything happened, the conversation around it had already trended and backlashed and been reexamined and swallowed and shat and reswallowed and reshat in a thousand places online, until all thinking felt redundant. We needed brain-to-brain; only then would we catch up to real time. Right now everything progressed so slowly that by the time we arrived at the future it was the present again. — Tony Tulathimutte

It might seem singular that Nancy - with her religious theory pieced together out of narrow social traditions, fragments of church doctrine imperfectly understood, and girlish reasonings on her small experience - should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that of many devout people, whose beliefs are held in the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge - singular, if we did not know that human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barriers of system. — George Eliot

We all love a good story. We all love a tantalizing mystery. We all love the underdog pressing onward against seemingly insurmountable odds. We all, in one form or another, are trying to make sense of the world around us. And all of these elements lie at the core of modern physics. The story is among the grandest
the unfolding of the entire universe; the mystery is among the toughest
finding out how the cosmos came to be; the odds are among the most daunting
bipeds, newly arrived by cosmic time scales trying to reveal the secrets of the ages; and the quest is among the deepest
the search for fundamental laws to explain all we see and beyond, from the tiniest particles to the most distant galaxies. — Brian Greene

We're not going to make it, I said.
The words caught in my throat, choking me. What was it Leslie had said to me when we were discussing Shannon's and Antoinetta's disappearance? 'You're beginning to sound like one of the characters in your books, Adam.' She'd been right. If this were a novel my heroes would have arrived just in the nick of time and saved the day. But real life didn't work like that. Real life had no happy endings. Despite our best efforts, despite my love for Tara [his wife] and my determination to protect her, and after everything we'd been through at the LeHorn house, fate conspired against us. We were still nine or ten miles from home, and night was almost upon us. By the time we got there it would already be too late. I fought back tears. I had the urge just to lie down in the middle of the road and let the next car run over me. — Brian Keene

It was hot, there was no shade, and we were once again waiting on "the word". Everyone was bitching about getting water or getting into the shade. The staff sergeant in charge of this detail was afraid to let anyone wander away in case the plane arrived. No one was having any luck in trying to get him to understand that if we die of thirst or a burst bladder, there would be no one to catch the damn airplane anyway. — W.R. Spicer

I had some vague memory of visiting Canberra as a lad, when we came up with my father by car. But when I made the long train journey from Sydney to Canberra and arrived at the little stop, I did wonder slightly whether this really was the national capital. — John Henry Carver

Trying to make it and get people to respect your band, being a cool band-all of that stuff-I think we've arrived at a place where we have kids and everything is in perspective and it doesn't matter. — Matt Berninger

The life-and-death question for each of our churches and denominations may boil down to this: are we a club for the elite who pretend to have arrived or a school for disciples who are still on the way? — Brian D. McLaren

ITS NOT FUNNY!"
"You're right," agreed Sydney. "It's no funny. It's hilarious."
We were back at Raymond's house, in the privacy of our room. It had taken forever for us to get away form the fireside festivities, particularly after learning a terrible fact about a Keeper custom. Well, I thought it was terrible, at least. It truned out that if someone wanted to marry domeone else around here, the prospectimve bride and groom each had to battle it out with the other's nearest relative of the same sex. Angeline had spotted Joshua's interest from the moment I'd arrived, and when she'd seen the bracelet, she'd assumed some sort of arragement has been made. — Richelle Mead

We routinely disqualify testimony that would plead for extenuation. That is, we are so persuaded of the rightness of our judgment as to invalidate evidence that does not confirm us in it. Nothing that deserves to be called truth could ever be arrived at by such means. — Wm. Paul Young

I'm counting my drawer when Regn comes into the office. I hear her before she enters. I listen for her. The sound of the keypad, the sound of three doors. I saw her pull up on my way in. The anticipation is what I love. The details. The security of knowing she's arrived and will be here for the day. Even if we don't have the leisure of time, we have time. It is the unspoken acknowledgments to self. The constant checking and watching for expressions, inflections in the voice, mannerisms. It is a gradual advance. The more we are restrained, the stronger it grows. It is innocence and age that allows the affection to mature, naturally, as it should. Something inside stirs, the heart itself is attracted, much before the body responds. Knowing Regn looks forward to seeing me as much as I do her makes me happy. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

When we arrived at his cottage we had known each other forever. — Laurie R. King

There's a lot of Americans, black and white, who think that we've arrived where we need to be and nothing else needs to be done and affirmative action needs to be dismantled. — Spike Lee

Stella explained that when he had arrived, because of his English accent, she had assumed that he was me, and had asked where his fridge was. She didn't tell me what his reply was, and we can only hazard a guess, but I was impressed that he had been prepared to stay the night. It is surely a brave man who goes ahead and checks into an establishment where the first question is 'Where's your fridge?'. Especially if, as he had done, you had arrived by motorcycle. — Tony Hawks

soon after we arrived in the U.S., Baba started grumbling about American flies. He'd sit at the kitchen table with his flyswatter, watch the flies darting from wall to wall, buzzing here, buzzing there, harried and rushed. "In this country, even flies are pressed for time," he'd groan. — Khaled Hosseini

To be in pilgrimage is to have not yet arrived. There is a longing in prayer that is never fulfilled in this life, and sometimes the deep satisfactions we are looking for in prayer feel few and far between. Prayer is a journey. — Timothy Keller

...no matter how frequently we came, when we arrived, they acted as if we had been away one hundred years. [His grandparents' greeting.] — James Vescovi

The morning meal was served in traditional socialist fashion - very slowly, with the courses out of order so that the jelly arrived half an hour after the toast and the coffee didn't come until we'd called for the check. However, it was hard to be angry at a place that had ice cream, beer, and cigarettes on its breakfast menu. — P. J. O'Rourke

We drove for 10 hours on rocky trails out into the central part of Mongolia in a Russian utility vehicle with no shock absorbers. Then we arrived at a remote area where we stayed in a yurt and waited to meet a horse wrangler who was scheduled to bring our rides. — John Fusco

But at the first word or sign from anyone you will drop whatever you are doing and ready yourself for what is really your one and only duty: to lend yourself. Your hands are not your own, nor are your breasts, nor, most especially, any of your bodily orifices, which we may explore or penetrate at will. You will remember at all times - or as constantly as possible - that you have lost all right to privacy or concealment, and as a reminder of this fact, in our presence you will never close your lips completely, or cross your legs, or press your knees together (you may recall you were forbidden to do this the minute you arrived). — Pauline Reage

We have entered a new era. Global society is interconnected as never before. [...] I suggest that we have arrived in the Age of Sustainable Development. — Jeffrey D. Sachs

We were now arrived at the close of our solitary journeyings along the St. Joseph's trail. — Francis Parkman

When we have arrived at the question, the answer is already near. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am not one who, to quote an American author, believes that democracy and enterprise have finally won the battle of ideas - that we have therefore arrived at the end of history, and there is nothing left to fight for. That would be unutterably complacent, indeed foolish. There will always be threats to freedom, not only from frontal assaults, but more insidiously by erosion from within. — Margaret Thatcher

No wonder the summer solstice had been such a fun day in northern Europe before Christian missionaries arrived from the sunny south. If priests had not driven sex underground, what would the north have been like? Would art have flourished in the absence of sexual repression? What about artillery and fortification? The Reformation? The Thirty Years War? The French Revolution? The final perfection of murder as blood sport at Verdun and Dresden and in the Gulag?

In short, where would we be without Jesus? — Charles McCarry

It is easier and much more satisfying to rail against the Right than to suggest that we go back to Genesis 1 and study together. Liberals can be just as intolerant as fundamentalists, and we have arrived at a moment in human history when intolerance and hope are mutually exclusive. (p. 6) — Robin R. Meyers

did you ever consider that lsd and color TV arrived for our consumption around the same time? Here comes all this explorative color pounding, and what do we do? we outlaw one and fuck up the other. — Charles Bukowski

Next an Intimacy Consultant named Anita arrived. When Anita walked in she looked very studious. However, when she started to set up I would have never guessed that she did this for a living. First came all types of lingerie; see through, lacy, racy, edible, and even costumes.
"Okay," Phoebe cleared her throat. "The idea here is to purchase things for our dear Lilli to wear or use on her honeymoon." Phoebe giggled and I scowled at her.
"Don't waste your money," I spat quickly, earning a laugh from Maggie and Viola.
"Oh, honey, if Aidan is anything like his uncle then you will definitely want to get yourself some."
"Mom," Maggie yelled and covered her ears.
We all burst into laughter.
"I'm just saying," Viola shrugged. "Your father is quite - "
"Seriously? Seriously, mom? No ... Ew, ew, ew!" Maggie screamed as she left the room. "God, please let my car get here soon! — Sadie Grubor

We've arrived at a point where the President of the United States is going to lead a war on traditional marriage. — Rush Limbaugh

If I'd known you'd look so beautiful, I would've gotten dressed up," Loki teased when Finn and Thomas brought him into the War Room. Finn shoved him into a seat unnecessarily hard,but Loki didn't protest.
"Don't get familiar with the Princess, Duncant told him,giving him a stony look.
"My apologies," Loki said. "I wouldn't want to get familiar with anyone."
Loki looked about the room. Duncan, Finn, Thomas, Tove,the Chancellor, and I were the ones set to meet Sara. The rest of the house was on standby, should we need them,but we didn't want to look like we were ambushing Sara when she arrived.
"Did you change your mind and decide to execute me?" Loki asked,looking us over. "Because you all look like you're going to a funeral."
"Not now," I said, fidgeting with my bracelet and watching the clock.
"Then when,Princess?" Loki asked. "Because we only have about fifteen minutes until I leave."
I rolled my eyes and ignored him. — Amanda Hocking

The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition, that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway. — George Washington

When we arrived in Japan in 1988, we were not prepared for the overwhelming support shown to us. — Dennis Banks

Having met other immigrants like myself in America, I can say that a great number of us came to our same "Oriental" identity in a similar fashion. We arrived in the United States as Japanese or Korean or Filipino, but over time we became Orientals. — Alex Tizon

After allthe events of the previous summer he was more prtective then ever,and i whanted to be sure i knew the rules i'd be likely to break once we arrived in bridewell. — Patrick Carman

Have you ever walked along a beach? You walk towards something in the distance. For the longest while it never seems to get any closer even though you are walking and walking. Then all of a sudden, you are there. You've arrived at last. That's what grief is like. Meanwhile we are running with you in the spray of the surf at the edge of the shore where the sand meets the sea. We are cheering you on. — Kate McGahan

But I can't say that gratitude was my motive for infringing on the Law of Cultural Embargo. I was not paying my debt to him. Such debts remain owing. Estraven and I had simply arrived at the point where we shared whatever we had that was worth sharing. — Ursula K. Le Guin

(Native hygiene was far better than Spanish hygiene. When the Spaniards first arrived in Mexico, natives bearing incense burners were assigned to accompany them wherever they went. The Spaniards thought it was a mark of divine honour. We know from native sources that they found the newcomers' smell unbearable.) The — Yuval Noah Harari

The darkest hour is always just before dawn." Sometimes in our darkest hour we can feel so hopeless, so rejected, so unloved, unwanted and discarded, but imagine when dawn eventually arrived, how we could shine!! — Lynette Ferreira

I wanted what most people wanted - love, companionship.
I wanted someone to touch. I wanted someone to touch me back.
I wanted someone to laugh with, someone who would laugh with me, laugh at me.
I wanted someone who looked and sawme . Not my power, not my position.
I wanted someone to say my name. To call out, "Merit," when it was time to go, or when we arrived.
Someone who wanted to say to someone else, with pride, "I'm here with her. With Merit."
I wanted all those things. Indivisibly.
But I didn't want them from Morgan. — Chloe Neill

That Chippendale is a coffee table, Lieutenant, not a footstool."
"How do you walk with that stick up your ass?" She left her feet where they were, propped comfortably on the table. "Does it hurt, or does it give you a nice little rush?"
"Your dinner guests," he said, curling his lip, "have arrived."
"Thank you, Summerset." Roarke got to his feet. "We'll have the hors d'oeuvres in here." He held out a hand to Eve.
She waited, deliberately, until Summerset had stepped out again before swinging her feet to the floor.
"In the interest of good fellowship," Roarke began as they started toward the foyer, "could you not mention the stick in Summerset's ass for the rest of the evening?"
"Okay. If he rags on me I'll just pull it out and beat him over the head with it."
"That should be entertaining. — J.D. Robb

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

We arrived the way most emigrant families did. My father came first, and the rest of us - my mother, my sister and me - followed a year later. — Chang-rae Lee

We arrived in Argentina with a lot of injured players, including our goalkeeper. Also we were unlucky to be drawn in the same group as the two tournament favourites Italy and Argentina. — Michel Patini

Returning to the Brandt home but I agreed to give a hand. We arrived after lunch and found Lise at work loading a wheelbarrow with the smaller stones from the huge pile beside the shed. The flower bed itself was in the middle of the yard, positioned in a sunny area between deep pools of shade that lay beneath a couple of tall hackberry trees. — William Kent Krueger

We are at full stop. We think we have arrived. — Henry Fairlie

On 11 September 2012 crowds of friendly locals in Kabul, Afghanistan, were chanting the usual 'Death to America' slogans. At the same time American flags were torched from London to Sydney. And in Benghazi, Libya, a group of 'spontaneous protesters' arrived at the US consulate with rocket-propelled grenades and savagely murdered the US ambassador. In Washington, members of the Obama administration were, as we have already seen, showing that they weren't taking any of this personally. It wasn't about them and it certainly wasn't about their ambassador, who had in fact been murdered by terrorists in a pre-planned attack. The administration was still claiming all this was caused by an excerpt from an amateur film which had been up on YouTube for weeks. — Douglas Murray

The craziest place I've probably ever visited while filming would have to be Jordan. I did a small test shoot for a test movie. We arrived in Jordan, and we stayed in Amman for a night. Then we drove down for three hours into the middle of the Wadi Rum Desert, which is in the absolute middle of nowhere. It was insane. — Isaac Hempstead-Wright

To Lucy it was an admirable study, the contrast between the man who threw his whole soul into a certain aim, which he pursued with a savage intensity, knowing that the end was a dreadful, lonely death; and the man who was making up his mind deliberately to gather what was beautiful in life, and to cultivate its graces as though it were a flower garden.
"And the worst of it is that it will all be the same in a hundred years," said Dick. "We shall both be forgotten long before then, you with your strenuousness, and I with my folly."
"And what conclusion do you draw from that?" asked Mrs. Crowley.
"Only that the psychological moment has arrived for a whisky and soda. — W. Somerset Maugham

They arrived home again to a most peculiar sight. The small garden at the front of the Banana House had been transformed. A tidal wave of cushions, beanbags, quilts, hearth rugs, and sleeping bags appeared to have swept up the lawn and broken at the wall. From Indigo's window a multicolored rope of knotted bedsheets came snaking out and ended among the cushions. As Micheal and Caddy watched, a mattress emerged and fell to the ground, followed by a rain of pillows.
"Indigo!" shouted Caddy, jumping out of the car.
Indigo's and Rose's heads appeared in the window above.
"It's all right, Caddy!" Indigo called cheerfully. "We've been doing it all the time you've been gone."
"We keep finding more stuff to land on!" added Rose. "Look! — Hilary McKay

Knowing the path to follow doesn't make it a breeze to step along. If every desire were only a skip, hop, and a jump away, we'd all have arrived. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I arrived in Dallas two days before the party and planned on leaving the day after. I hated the city as much as I thought I would. All anyone could talk about were the Cowboys and their chances in the playoffs. Charlene was happy. Joe was not, or so it seemed to me, in spite of the fact that he had finally gotten exactly what he thought he wanted from a wife: she gave him an adorable boy, she did everything in their home including laundry, and most important, she did not embarrass him. Whenever I was alone with Joe during the two days I was there, Charlene would send her son into the room with us. The first time I carried him, Charlene made sure to mention how surprised she was that I had motherly instincts. She probably used the pronoun we more in one day than I have in my whole life. I did not blame her. Most plain women stake their claims clumsily. — Rabih Alameddine

[...] nobody anywhere seemed to be willing to ponder for a moment the possibility that a human being who refused to participate, who refused to speak or listen, who failed to 'interact with his peer group', might not be all that crazy, and might even have arrived at an understandable response to the world in which we lived. — Craig Harrison

When we reach the point where the women athletes are getting their pick of dates just as easily as the men athletes, then we've really and truly arrived. Parity at last! — Billie Jean King

Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply a child's wish - and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy - though Darwin himself had not the courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely, you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now have killed him. — Irvin D. Yalom

We tend to think of happiness (and by happiness I also mean health or overall well-being)as a gift, and sometimes it is, a pure gratuity. But most of the time it comes about because you've done the work, prepared the ground to allow it in or tended it carefully once it has arrived. You have to practice happiness the way you practice the piano, commit to it the way you commit to going to the gym. — Norah Vincent

Them. We were the persons who made this good beginning, and it was not until two years later, when we had made the conquest, and introduced good morals and better manners among the inhabitants, that the pious Franciscan brothers arrived, and three or four years after the virtuous monks of the Dominican order, who further continued the good work, and spread Christianity through the country. The first part of the work, however, next to the Almighty, was done by us, the true Conquistadores, who subdued the country, and by the Brothers of Charity, who accompanied — Bernal Diaz Del Castillo

War is a great destroyer. And human history has arrived at a pivotal moment. We can choose a path built on cooperation, where our caring and sharing side uplifts us, or we can continue to embrace a worldview where domination using violence imprisons us in cycles of killing and destruction. I'm a biologist, and war is not genetically fixed. War is a cultural invention. It's time to end this abomination, and this World Beyond War movement is uniquely focused on unifying the human community to create one of the biggest revolutions in history. I'm in. Join us! — Judith Hand

...Americans didn't stick to cities, which makes us different from the people in other industrialized countries. We no sooner arrived in town, turning those towns into great mid-century metropolises, than we decided to take off for the green world beyond, so that by the 1970 Census, we had become the first suburban nation in the history of the world. And Detroit led the way, with a population curve up and down just like everywhere else, but with its urban decline a lot steeper over the past sixty years - so typical a place that it only looks like an exception. — Jerry Herron

In October 1805, Stoddard's tour left St. Louis, including forty-five Indians from eleven tribes. They arrived in Washington in January 1806. Jefferson gave them the standard Great Father talk: "We are become as numerous as the leaves of the trees, and, tho' we do not boast, we do not fear any nation. . . . My children, we are strong, we are numerous as the stars in the heavens, & we are all gun-men." He followed the threat with the carrot: if they would be at peace with one another and trade with the Americans, they could be happy. (In reply, one of the chiefs said he was glad the Americans were as numerous as the stars in the skies, and powerful as well. So much the better, in fact, for that meant the government should be strong enough to keep white squatters off Indian lands.) — Stephen E. Ambrose

When faith simplifies things that need to remain complex, instead of giving us strength to live with complexity, when it gives us answers where none exist, instead of helping us appreciate the sacredness of living with questions, when it offers certainty when there needs to be doubt, and when it tells us that we have arrived when we should be searching-then there is a problem with that faith. — Brad Hirschfield

Again the dance hall, the money rhythm, the love that comes over the radio, the impersonal, wingless touch of the crowd. A despair that reaches down to the very soles of the boots, an ennui, a desperation. In the midst of the highest mechanical perfection to dance without joy, to be so desperately alone, to be almost inhuman because you are human. If there were life on the moon what more nearly perfect, joyless evidence of it could there be than this. If to travel away from the sun is to reach the chill idiocy of the moon, then we have arrived at our goal and life is but the cold, lunar incandescence of the sun. This is the dance of ice-cold life in the hollow of an atom, and the more we dance the colder it gets. — Henry Miller

What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable. — Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth - scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books - might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it. — Carl Sagan

We are all inclined to accept conventional forms or colours as the only correct ones. Children sometimes think that stars must be star-shaped, though naturally they are not. The people who insist that in a picture the sky must be blue, and the grass green, are not very different from these children. They get indignant if they see other colours in a picture, but if we try to forget all we have heard about green grass and blue skies, and look at the world as if we had just arrived from another planet on a voyage of discovery and were seeing it for the first time, we may find that things are apt to have the most surprising colours. — E.H. Gombrich

When I arrived at IBM, there were 'Team' signs all around. I asked, 'How do people get paid?' They told me, 'We pay people based on individual performance.' — Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

But we have arrived at a glistening, smug day when nobody much sins, and those that do are prone to call it something else. — Calvin Miller

But these conversations require time and space, and we say we're too busy. Distracted at our dinner tables and living rooms, at our business meetings, and on our streets, we find traces of a new "silent spring" - a term Rachel Carson coined when we were ready to see that with technological change had come an assault on our environment. Now, we have arrived at another moment of recognition. This time, technology is implicated in an assault on empathy. We have learned that even a silent phone inhibits conversations that matter. — Sherry Turkle

He had arrived at Camp Half-Blood thanks to Apollo. Now, on what would likely be his last day at camp, he was stuck with a son of Apollo.
'Whatever,' Nico said. 'But we have to hurry. And you'll follow my lead. — Rick Riordan

The red haired waitress arrived with their drinks, dancing about the table as she placed their orders in front of them. "Hiya, keeds. Peachy place, ain't it?" Before anyone could respond, she kicked her heels in the air and flitted off again.
Waldo lit up a cigarette and tasted his drink. "Listen, I don't think we ought to stay here very long...."
"No shit, Sherlock!" Brisbane chortled. "But first I want to have a little fun. I think I'm gonna talk to some of these guys."
The fredneck left the table and walked over to a group of five men, all of them clad in the old baseball uniforms that were apparently quite popular at The One Year Wonder And All-Around Oddity Bar. They were huddled together on one side of the bar, and Brisbane broke into their conversation with a burst of fredneck chutzpah. — Donald Jeffries

So successfully have we disguised from ourselves the intensity of our own feelings, the sensibility of our own hearts, that plays in the tragic tradition have begun to seem untrue. For a couple of hours we may surrender ourselves to a world of fiercely illuminated values in conflict, but when the stage is covered and the auditorium lighted, almost immediately there is a recoil of disbelief. "Well, well!" we say as we shuffle back up the aisle, while the play dwindles behind us with the sudden perspective of an early Chirico painting. By the time we have arrived at Sardi's, if not as soon as we pass beneath the marquee, we have convinced ourselves once more that life has as little resemblance to the curiously stirring and meaningful occurrences on the stage as a jingle has to an elegy of Rilke. — Tennessee Williams

As time passed there was no more buying food, no money, no supplies. On some days, we wouldn't even have a crumb to eat. There's a vivid scene in Nanni Loy's The Four Days of Naples, a movie made after the war about the uprising of the Neapolitans against the occupying Germans, in which one of the young characters sinks his teeth into a loaf of bread so voraciously, so desperately, I can still identify with him. In those four famous days in late September, when Naples rose up against the Germans - even before the Allies arrived, it was the climax of a terrible period of deprivation and marked the beginning of the end of the war in Italy. — Sophia Loren

Life is short and tedious, and is wholly spent in wishing; we trust to find rest and enjoyment at some future time, often at an age when our best blessings, youth and health, have already left us. When at last I that time has arrived, it surprises us in the midst of fresh desires; we have got no farther when we are attacked by a fever which kills us; if we had been cured, it would only have been to give us more time for other desires. — Jean De La Bruyere

WHEN WE EVENTUALLY ARRIVED in Venice late in the afternoon, we had to park the car in a large lot before we were allowed to enter the town itself, because Venice doesn't have a single proper street. — Jostein Gaarder