Where Things Come Back Quotes & Sayings

Hearing the sound of your breathing as you sleep,
with the dog at your feet, his head resting
on a shoe, and the clock's ticking
like water dripping in a sink

I know that, even if reincarnation were a fact,
given the inherent cruelty of the world
where beautiful things and people
are blasted apart all the day long,
I would never want to come back, knowing
I could never be this lucky twice ... — Bruce Dawe

Surely, we all can look back and see things in our lives that we wish we would have done differently. But the Bible says, "Make the most of each day."4 Yesterday is gone; tomorrow may not come. You must live for today. Start right where you are. You can't do anything about what's gone, but you can do a great deal about what remains. — Joel Osteen

Sir, come quick. They've found a body in the canal.
I blew out my breath. Saved by the corpse.
... The corpse in question was Nigel Nicabar.
The watchers had collected the bodies found in Nigel's house, garden, and canal, and put them in the greenhouse located at the back of the garden. The necromancer's talents weren't with living things, so the greenhouse's tables were pretty much empty - at least of plants. Dead goblins lay under sheets and tarps. I couldn't help feeling that Nigel would have approved. What he wouldn't have approved of was being included among them. Nigel wouldn't have been caught dead surrounded by goblins, yet that's exactly how and where he was. I don't think he would have appreciated the irony. — Lisa Shearin

Never feel this bad again. Never come back to this place, where only a knife will do. Live a gentle and kind life. Don't do things that make you want to hurt yourself. Whatever you do, every day, remember this - then steer away from here. — Caitlin Moran

What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him-even concerning his own body-in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key. And woe to that fatal curiosity which might one day have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and then suspect that man is sustained in the indifference of his ignorance by that which is pitiless, greedy, insatiable, and murderous-as if hanging in dreams on the back of a tiger. Given this situation, where in the world could the drive for truth have come from? Insofar as the individual wants to maintain — Friedrich Nietzsche

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off. — Willa Cather

You ever wonder what we'd find if we could pick up the threads back to the point where things unravel, where paths cross, and lives pivot, and people come together? — Leylah Attar

Baby, everybody got their own reasons for doing things they do in life. It don't matter what her reason was at the time, what matters is she come back for you, and even though you might think it's too late, it ain't never too late where a mother and her child is concerned. — Bernice L. McFadden

What drew him back was something altogether more personal, to a history where, in the pain and longing of adolescence, he was still standing on the corner of Queen and Albert Streets waiting for someone that he knew would never appear. He had long understood that one of his selves, the earliest and most vulnerable, had never left this place, and this original and clearest view of things could be recovered only through what had first come to him in the glow of its ordinary light and weather ... it was the light they appeared in that was the point, and that at least had not changed. — David Malouf

The idea of fairyland fascinates me because it's one of those things, like mermaids and dragons, that doesn't really exist, but everyone knows about it anyway. Fairyland lies only in the eye of the beholder who is usually a fabricator of fantasy. So what good is it, this enchanted, fickle land which in some tales bodes little good to humans and, in others, is the land of peace and perpetual summer where everyone longs to be? Perhaps it's just a glimpse of our deepest wishes and greatest fears, the farthest boundaries of our imaginations. We go there because we can; we come back because we must. What we see there becomes our tales. — Patricia A. McKillip

It's so natural to think the Presence of Jesus has no greater purpose than to improve the quality of our journey through life - with quality defined as a pleasurable, satisfying, self-affirming existence - a journey where certain things don't go wrong or, if they do, they correct themselves. Marriages should work, biopsies should come back benign, ministry efforts should succeed, and we should feel pretty good about the way most things go. — Larry Crabb

Loving me is like entering a dungeon with a lot of doors. I cannot guarantee you that you will get the key of every door you come across, I cannot tell you which door leads you where and what is behind it, I cannot assure you that you will head back out again the way you came in. All I can say is if you manage to open every right door and the last one too, I will make you one of my secrets forever, you will see and feel things that you have never come across, which will never let you leave again from the paradise that you have reached. — Akshay Vasu

Holding on will not make something come back. In my experience, it actually pushes it farther away. You cannot go back and undo what's done, my friends. You can only move forward. And if your deepest compulsions and instincts tell you that you're meant to be with that person or doing that thing, you should let go and move forth and see how life takes you there. Clearly, things aren't going according to your desired plan already, so why not throw caution to the wind and see where you end up. — Brianna Wiest

Ove was, well, Ove was Ove. Something the people around her also kept telling Sonja.
He'd been a grumpy old man since he started elementary school, they insisted. And she could have someone so much better.
Maybe he
didn't write her poems or serenade her with songs or come home with expensive gifts. But he believed so strongly in things: justice and fair play and hard
work and a world where right just had to be right. Not so one could get a medal or a diploma or a slap on the back for it, but just because that was
how it was supposed to be. Not many men of his kind were made anymore, Sonja had understood. So she was holding on to this one. — Fredrik Backman

There is a place deep, deep inside every person that is hidden and hard to find. If things get bad enough and life gets too hard, though, some people will go to that place and never come back from it. Certainly, all outward appearances will suggest otherwise. They will look as they always did. They may even act somewhat like their old selves, but the trut is, the real truth is that they are hiding in this place deep inside where no one can touch or hurt them anymore. — Victoria Forester

There's a time that may come in an organization where leading by influence is not enough. When things are not going the way they need to go, there's a time when one has to step up ... to set the organization back on the right direction. — Abigail Johnson

One of the things I think a lot about, I am perhaps a great example of the enlightened immigration policy of this country where I was able to come here to study and then stay back and work and build a life. — Satya Nadella

Disturb us, Lord, When we are too well pleased with ourselves, When our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, When we arrived safely Because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord, when With the abundance of things we possess We have lost our thirst For the waters of life; Having fallen in love with life, We have ceased to dream of eternity And in our efforts to build a new earth, We have allowed our vision Of the new Heaven to dim. Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, To venture on wider seas Where storms will show your mastery; Where losing sight of land, We shall find the stars. We ask You to push back The horizons of our hopes; And to push into the future In strength, courage, hope, and love. — A.J. Leon

We all have those dreams of going back in time and seeing what it was like when our parents were younger. Maybe we don't all have that dream. I don't know. Getting to role play or step back to a different moment in time and see things through a different lens is something that resonated with me, for sure. We don't get to do that, generally, but when the right neurological disorder lines up with the right unstable woman, that moment presents itself. Getting to know where we come from is a really profound way of getting to look at who we are. — Simon Helberg

In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

Jesus," Kiernan said as he stepped from the Bronco and a gust of frigid wind lifted his hair. "I think my testicles just climbed up into my abdominal cavity in fear."
Matt chuckled. "Lovely visual." He cautiously joined him on the icy sidewalk. "They'll come back out of hiding as soon as you warm up."
"So you say. The poor things aren't used to this kind of weather. It's traumatizing. I'm going to expect you to check later to make sure they're still where they belong."
"I can certainly make an inspection of the general area. I'm a detective. It's all about gathering evidence. — Diana Copland

I love sitting back and taking a look behind, just to see how far I've come. To view how things have unfolded by one simple move I made almost 18yrs ago. If I shall succeed in my dream to further this that I have started, then I shall not stop until I reach the end. But then I stand only to wonder? Why should I give up at all in trying to pursue a dream that quite frankly could be the making of something amazing, something that most likely, if should fail, will place me right in the path of something else. So I shan't give up, because I have come this far and because I know, in my heart, that it's landing me somewhere truely amazing, and I'm excited to see where it goes. Faith doesn't always start in Religion, it starts inside you. And if you have enough of it in yourself, then who's to say what you can accomplish. — Ellie Williams

When one is sitting in his bedroom and, happening to glance out the window, sees his little brother walking slowly down the driveway, he immediately jumps up, knocks over a stack of magazines piled up beside him, and runs through the doorway and down the hall. He throws open the front door, slams his body, against the screen, and hearing the tap tap tap behind him, jumps over the porch steps and down to the driveway. He stands several yards in front of his brother. He considers running, but doesn't. His arms and legs are shaking. His bottom lip between his teeth, he walks slowly and carefully, making not a sound. He stops, reaches one arm out, and pokes Gabriel Witter on the left shoulder with his index finger. He smiles the slightest of smiles.
Book Title #89: Where Things Come Back — John Corey Whaley

The great thing that strikes you on looking back is how quickly you have come-how very brief is the span of life on this earth. The warning that one would give, therefore, is that it is well not to fritter it away on things that don't count in the end; nor on the other hand is it good to take life too seriously as some seem to do. Make it a happy life while you have it. That is where success is possible to every man. — Robert Baden-Powell

It can't be that bad. Surely it can't be that bad. There must be a way, only we can't see it yet. A way of making space for ourselves where we can make the best of ourselves - we just can't quite see it yet. But things move on and by the time you've plotted your position the world around you has changed and you're running - panting - to catch up. How can you think clearly when you're running?..that is the beauty of the past..you leave it and come back to it and it waits for you - unchanged. You can turn back the pages , look again at the beginning. You can leaf forward and know the end. — Ahdaf Soueif

I feel when acting, I am sometimes overly self-conscious; I think, 'Going, no, don't, put your eyebrow back where it was and, you know, turn to the left.' You know, I'm sort of very consciously adopting this character. But with music, I don't know. I found it was a question of just closing my eyes and just sort of letting things come out. — Hugh Laurie

Traveled so far, and not yet have they come across anything of interest, he mused, except, of course, for that nest of goblins I managed to stir up. Indeed, his brother had always been a valiant fool; why not give him some excitement?
He always did possess a love for a good fight, and who am I to deny him?
The glass sphere, responding to his thoughts, zoomed in on the mountain nearby where Shrukian camped, and by putting both his hands on the sphere's sides and closing his eyes, Pharun could all but smell the power that radiated from its depths. He could taste it on the back of his tongue, and it awake all sorts of things inside of him. The power tasted of death and ash, and it was scalding hot, pouring down his throat like blood of the freshly dead. He did not need further searching to know what kind of power he was sampling.
He smiled to himself, and it came out a satisfied smirk. — C.N. Faust

It comes out from no source, it goes back in through no aperture. It has reality yet no place where it resides; it has duration yet no beginning or end. Something emerges, though through no aperture - this refers to the fact that it has reality. It has reality yet there is no place where it resides - this refers to the dimension of space. It has duration but no beginning or end - this refers to the dimension of time. There is life, there is death, there is a coming out, there is a going back in - yet in the coming out and going back its form is never seen. This is called the Heavenly Gate. The Heavenly Gate is nonbeing. The ten thousand things come forth from nonbeing. Being cannot create being out of being; inevitably it must come forth from nonbeing. Nonbeing is absolute nonbeing, and it is here that the sage hides himself. — Zhuangzi

There are times when I'm caught up in everything and I have to say to myself, "Please feel good; please feel better; everything's okay; you're fine; things aren't falling apart; take a second; get back to a place where you realize that you don't actually have real problems." That happens. You never know when those tables are gonna turn ... For me, confidence is something that can come crashing down in one second. — Taylor Swift

What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose-knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful, that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think, on reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of a censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time. — Virginia Woolf

I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good. — John Corey Whaley

Let's ignore all that back and front matter and just stick to emergences, cross-sections, to what's right in front of us in the divide where all-things has come to gather and to stay though hidden yet behind its mask, which has got it looking so deliciously comprehensively like so many things-distinct. — Patrick Bryant

Looking back, if I had to live my life over, there are things I would do differently, but the one thing I would not change is my charitable giving. I'm particularly thankful for my father's advice to set goals so high that they can't possibly be achieved during a lifetime and to give help where help is needed most. That inspiration keeps me energized and eager to keep working hard every day on giving back and making the world a better place for generations to come. — Ted Turner

And some day there will be nothing left of everything that has twisted my life and grieved it and filled me so often with such anguish. Some day, with the last exhaustion, peace will come and the motherly earth will gather me back home. It won't be the end of things, only a way of being born again, a bathing and a slumbering where the old and the withered sink down, where the young and new begin to breathe. Then, with other thoughts, I will walk along streets like these, and listen to streams, and overhear what the sky says in the evening, over and over and over. — Hermann Hesse

A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It's as if I've been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I've heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There's the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don't know where these feelings have come from, what I've done. — Margaret Atwood

Becoming the observer (step back) you begin to live in process, trusting where our source is taking you. You begin to detach from the outcome. That detachment allows you to stop fighting and allows things to just come to you; you no longer make things happen but allow them to show up. The fight is gone! — Wayne W. Dyer

The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts ... .We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need - not all the time, surely, but from time to time - to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember - the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived. — Frederick Buechner

I buy an ice-cream sandwich at the Stop-N-Go on my way home. The taste takes me back to childhood. Back when life was dreaming about things to come and believing that if you really wanted something bad enough, it could and would be yours. I remember praying for a bike for Christmas, and there it was. We prayed for Minnie's gerbil to live and it did. Later, in high school, I asked God for guidance about where to go to college, and that very day, like a kite floating straight from heaven, the acceptance letter came from UNC-Charlotte. — Alice J. Wisler

You don't have to go back to the way things were. Just go back to the point where you left off. Don't start over ... just keep going, but there's a right way of keeping going. And no one here is going to be angry at you for leaving. We all have to leave sometimes. And some of us never come back. But there's always a choice, even if you've already decided never to return. You can still come back from this. That is the only kind of faith that matters. Not in the world, not in ... God ... , not in our friendship ... just in yourself. — Dave Matthes

Grooming-wise, it is now a constant battle as I progressively turn into my father. I have to keep on top of ear and nose hair - things you never believe will happen to you. Suddenly I have a shaving brush in my ear and I don't know where it's come from, and the more hair I take the out, the more it surges back. — Mark Gatiss

Growing up in the projects, it was common for us to refer to where we lived as our "house." My friends would always ask if they could come over to my house, and vice versa; we never said , "Can I come over to your unit?" But after visiting Mary in a real house, I felt how marginal we were in the projects. Things they took for granted, like space, were new to me. Mary's windows opened up to the view of the garden in the back, birds, and blue sky, without bars. — Siobhan Brooks

You get started on something and you go where it takes you and you set aside other things because you don't have any choice. Because if you didn't set them aside you would never be able to go on. And then if you're lucky enough you get back to where you started and you realize your mistake. You realize how difficult it is to keep everything in your heart at the same time. How impossible. You can only keep so much and still go on. You come back for the rest if you're lucky enough. — Sam Winston

When you come back strong, you are going to have little nagging things that you can usually play through, but every now and again, it is to the point where you can't play. — Pete Sampras

There's an old saying that if you come back to the place where you became a man, you will remember all those things you need to be happy ... That saying never made sense to me, but I thought it was worth a try. — Henry Bromell

Believe me, a highly strung brain such as yours demands occasional relaxation from the strain of domestic surroundings. Forget for a little while that children want music lessons, and boots, and bicycles, with tincture of rhubarb three times a day; forget there are such things in life as cooks, and house decorators, and next-door dogs, and butchers' bills. Go away to some green corner of the earth, where all is new and strange to you, where your over-wrought mind will gather peace and fresh ideas. Go away for a space and give me time to miss you, and to reflect upon your goodness and virtue, which, continually present with me, I may, human-like, be apt to forget, as one, through use, grows indifferent to the blessing of the sun and the beauty of the moon. Go away, and come back refreshed in mind and body, a brighter, better man - if that be possible - than when you went away. — Jerome K. Jerome

Come back down to basics. The basic things of life, the basic things for me are the things that turn me on more than anything. I'm actually trying to go back from where I was running from ... the more essential things that I was ignoring. — Richard Ashcroft

You know," she says softly, "what I've learned is that everything's more complicated than it seems. I'm so glad I came here, got to know my family, learn about where I come from. India is an incredible country. There are parts of it that I love, that really feel like home. But at the same time, there are things here that just make me want to turn away, you know?"
She looks to Somer.
"Does that sound awful?"
"No, honey." She touches Asha's cheek with the back of her hand. "I think I understand," Somer says, and she means it.
This country has given her Krishnan and Asha, the most important people in her life. But when she has fought against the power of its influence, it has also been the root of her greatest turmoil. — Shilpi Somaya Gowda

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca

I'm sorry, Cullen. I really am. I know this sucks. But you're better off anyway. And you'll be fine. You needed me. Now someone else needs me. — John Corey Whaley