Quotes & Sayings About When Life Puts You Down

Nobody goes "AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" when they sing it. Maybe because it puts the life adventure in such clear and simple terms. The small creature is alive and looks for adventure. Here's the drainpipe
a long tunnel going up toward some light. The spider doesn't even think about it
just goes. Disaster befalls it
rain, flood, powerful foces. And the spider is knocked down and out beyond where it started. Does the spider say, "To hell with that"? No. Sun comes out
clears things up
dries off the spider. And the small creature goes over to the drainpipe and looks up and thinks it really wants to know what is up there. — Robert Fulghum

If we're lucky, writer and reader alike, we'll finish the last line or two of a short story and then just sit for a minute, quietly. Ideally, we'll ponder what we've just written or read; maybe our hearts or intellects will have been moved off the peg just a little from where they were before. Our body temperature will have gone up, or down, by a degree. Then, breathing evenly and steadily once more, we'll collect ourselves, writers and readers alike, get up, "created of warm blood and nerves" as a Chekhov character puts it, and go on to the next thing: Life. Always life. — Raymond Carver

The result of these trends is that today the courts, unrestrained by
higher law and disdainful of majority will, are the dominant force in American politics. As law professor Russell Hittinger writes, in Casey the Court has laid down a "new covenant" by which it agrees to give citizens the right to decide for themselves the meaning of life, to decide what is right and wrong, to do as they please. In exchange for this guarantee, the Court asks only that the people accept the Court's assumption of ultimate power.3S Or as Notre Dame's Gerard Bradley puts it, the Court has said: "We will be your Court, and you will be our people. — Charles W. Colson

To suggest that the grief of Christ issues from his perfect wisdom and
charity would confirm that true sorrow is human and therefore cannot
correspond to despair, since the hopelessness of despair would yield nothing
about which to sorrow. If life is meaningless, there is no reason to
mourn. Truth is what makes grief authentic and real, and so it follows
that Truth Incarnate, come down from heaven to our vale of tears, would
grieve at the highest pitch. The "tragic experience of the most complete
desolation"49 depends on "the knowledge and experience of the Father."50
Or as Adrienne von Speyr puts it: "The Father is never more present than
in this absence on the Cross. — Aaron Riches

This classmate told me that Plato drove this idea home in his dialogue Euthydemus, in which Socrates puts down the Sophists, claiming that a man learns more by "playing" with ideas in his leisure time that by sitting in a classroom. And Plato's successor, that world champion of pleasure, Epicurus, believed in a simple yet elegant connection between learning and happiness: the entire purpose of education was to attune the mind and sense to the pleasures of life. — Daniel Klein

There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we'll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life. — Pema Chodron

This is what you must be like. Grow wherever life puts you down. — Ben Okri

Politics has become so all-possessive of life, that by impertinence it thinks the only philosophy a person can hold is the right or the left. This question puts out all the lights of religion so they can call all the cats gray. It assumes that man lives on a purely horizontal plane, and can move only to the right or the left. Had we eyes less material, we would see that there are two other directions where a man with a soul may look: the vertical directions of "up" or "down. — Fulton J. Sheen

We have plenty to learn from the numerous ants. Sawako Nakayasu-writer, antologist, Baudelaire's sister-turns daily life inside out and upside down then puts it into perfect little boxes. Here we follow the lines of black legged, syntactical units-the words-as they cross and they tickle the heart of the matter with us. — John Granger

Cynie Cory roams the outer reaches of the heart's territory, from the snowy winter of family life to the tropical jungles of love. She wears her heart on her sleeve and it is as big as the country she writes about. Is she the quintessential American girl? You bet she is, part Annie Oakley, part Emily Dickinson - sharpshooting poet of wild nights. She zooms in on the detritus of love - the broken fragments, the fallen leaves - and puts together a collage that is as heartbreaking as it is beautiful. Watch out - she's driving down your street. — Barbara Hamby

A man of adequate vitality and zest will surmount all misfortunes by the emergence after each blow of an interest in life and the world which cannot be narrowed down so much as to make one loss fatal. To be defeated by one loss or even by several is not something to be admired as a proof of sensibility, but something to be deplored as a failure in vitality. All our affections are at the mercy of death, which may strike down those whom we love at any moment. It is therefore necessary that our lives should not have that narrow intensity which puts the whole meaning and purpose of our life at the mercy of accident. — Betrand Russell

So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity. — Henry David Thoreau

With every rise in choices, the expectations double up which puts people deeper down into the rubble. — Ashish Patel

Americans think New Yorkers are property obsessed, but clearly they haven't lived a day in Hong Kong. In this part of the world, a man isn't a man until he is a homeowner. His entire life leads up to the singular moment when he hands over the down-payment check and puts his signature on the triplicate purchase agreement. All the good grades and job promotions he has received are mere preparation; and every source of happiness - marriage, children and retirement - depends on it. — Jason Y. Ng

There's a part of me wishes that Daddy would sleep his life away. A part of me that hopes that after all these years his drinking will finally catch up to him. That one day he'll just go to bed and never wake up. But who am I kidding with that dream? It's the people like Daddy, the wicked ones who go on living forever. It's like God puts people like Daddy on earth on purpose. Making them a test for the good people in the world. If you can withstand what the good Lord throws at you, by staying true to your goodhearted self, and persevering through all of the obstacles thrust before you, then you've earned a spot by his side in Heaven. I look forward to that day. I look forward to the day where I'll be smiling down from Heaven, wondering what made my daddy become so sick, twisted, and rotten. I look forward to the day when I can forgive him for everything he's done and watch him from a cloud up in Heaven, praying for his damned soul, while he's doused in flames, and burning in hell. — Lauren Hammond

There's always the possibility that you're going to come across a record that transforms your life. And it happens weekly. It's like a leaf on the stream. There are little currents and eddies and sticks lying in the water that nudge you in a slightly different direction. And then you break loose and carry on down the current. There's nothing that actually stops you and lifts you out of the water and puts you on the bank but there are diversions and distractions and alarums and excursions which is what makes life interesting really. It's fantastic. — John Peel

So I say this. Speak of them. Speak of those that died. Speak of all those who ever died
in all the world's history, in its wars, and long-lost days. Speak of those who met their deaths in Glencoe, in snow
not of their deaths, but of their lives before them. Not of how they died, but of how they bent to pat a dog's head, or what ballads they could sing, or what their skin was like by their eyes when they smiled, or which weather was their weather
for it keeps them living. It stops them being dead.
To do this
to speak or write of them
puts breath back in their mouths. It lifts them up from their earthy beds ... brings them forth, and they stand by the side of the one who speaks of them; they walk out of the pages of those who write them down. From the realm, they smile upon us. All the dead people
only, they are not dead. — Susan Fletcher

Don't worry.When life puts you down,hope will push you up — Mohammed Sekouty

There is a folk tale that before birth, every human soul knows all the secrets of life and death and the universe. But then, just before birth, an angel leans down, puts his finger to the new baby's lips, and whispers "Shhh."' Harris touches his philtrum. 'According to the story, this is the mark left by the angel's finger. Every human being has one. — Stephen King

Tamara looked all around the inside of the car. "Yeah, I see I need to come to your church," Tamara said. "Because what I'm hearing at my church only puts me to sleep. Sleep is good for dreaming, but I'd prefer to see my dreams become reality. I want to touch my dreams. I want to sit down in the seat of my dreams. I definitely see that I need more of the right tools in life to do it right. — Vanessa Davis Griggs

Imagination opens things up so that we can grow into maturity - worship and adore, exclaim and honor, follow and trust. Explanation restricts and defines and holds down; imagination expands and lets loose. Explanation keeps our feet on the ground; imagination lifts our heads into the clouds. Explanation puts us in harness; imagination catapults us into mystery. Explanation reduces life to what can be used; imagination enlarges life into what can be adored. — Timothy S. Lane

I can easily imagine belonging to one man for my entire life, but he would have to be a whole man, a man who would dominate me, who would subjugate me by his inate strength. And every man - I know this very well - as soon as he falls in love becomes weak, pliable, ridiculous. He puts himself into the woman's hands, kneels down before her. The only man whom I could love permanently would be he before whom I should have to kneel. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

in life. It is important, I think, to remember that in a mature relationship, love is not a feeling, but rather a way of being and, as some have said, it is a decision. If we are to love we must avoid the trap of behaving however we might happen to feel on any given day. That puts love on a seesaw with us; down one day and up the next! Rather, to love someone while also maintaining our own love for ourselves, we must deliberately and wisely choose what we do in our relationship. At least as importantly, we must control how we respond to what our partner may do. After all, love doesn't grow from being adored. It grows when it persists and endures through times when we or our partner are difficult to love. Indeed, love thrives on challenges, especially those we address within our own hearts. — John Gray

Laila watches Mariam glue strands of yarn onto her doll's head. In a few years, this little girl will be a woman who will make small demands on life, who will never burden others, who will never let on that she too had sorrows, disappointments, dreams that have been ridiculed. A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her. Already Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.
The little girl looks up. Puts the doll down. Smiles. — Khaled Hosseini

The purpose of music is to elevate the spirit and inspire. Not to help push some product down your throat. It puts you in tune with your own existence. Sometimes you really don't know how you feel, but really good music can define how you feel ... someone who's telling me where he's been that I haven't and what it's like there - somebody whose life I can feel ... — Bob Dylan

Every day, on the roads of Delhi, some chauffeur is driving an empty car with a black suitcase sitting on the backseat. Inside that suitcase is a million, two million rupees; more money than that chauffeur will see in his lifetime. If he took the money he could go to America, Australia, anywhere, and start a new life. He could go inside the five-star hotels he has dreamed about all his life and only seen from the outside. He could take his family to Goa, to England. Yet he takes that black suitcase where his master wants. He puts it down where he is meant to, and never touches a rupee. Why?
Because Indians are the world's most honest people, like the prime minister's booklet will inform you? No. It's because 99.9 percent of us are caught in the Rooster Coop just like those poor guys in the poultry market. — Aravind Adiga

So sometimes life puts a giant plate of steaming hot blueberry fucking pancakes on your table. It's still down to you whether to eat them or say, 'No, thanks.' You can walk away from shite or pancakes. Wait for the next course, see if something tastier comes along." "But it's better, you think, to seize the pancakes?" "Aye!" John raised his empty tumbler to the approaching waitress. "Carpe pancakes! — Avery Cockburn

She sits down and puts her hand to her chest and rocks. Thinks of all she has lost and will lose. All she has had and will have. It seems to her that life is like gathering berries into an apron with a hole. Why do we keep on? Because the berries are beautiful, and we must eat to survive. We catch what we can. We walk past what we lose for the promise of more, just ahead. — Elizabeth Berg