Word A Day Quotes & Sayings

It's nothing he can see or lay hands on - sudden gases, a violence upon the air and no trace afterward ... a Word, spoken with no warning into your ear, and then silence forever. Beyond its invisibility, beyond hammerfall and doomcrack, here is its real horror, mocking, promising him death with German and precise confidence, laughing down all of Tantivy's quiet decencies ... no, no bullet with fins, Ace ... not the Word, the one Word that rips apart the day ... — Thomas Pynchon

You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word. — Gustave Flaubert

It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it's tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you're offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you're using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world's fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman's shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit's cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black. — Maria Semple

Glint, glisten, glitter, gleam ...
Tiffany thought a lot about words, in the long hours of churning butte. Onomatopoetic , she'd discovered in the dictionary, meant words that sounded like the thing they were describing, like cuckoo. But she thought there should be a word that sounds like the noise a thing would make if that thing made a noise even though, actually, it doesn't, but would if it did.
Glint, for example. If light made a noise as it reflected off a distant window, it'd go glint!And the light of tinsel, all those little glints chiming together, would make a noise like glitterglitter. Gleam was a clean, smooth noise from a surface that intended to shine all day. And glisten was the soft, almost greasy sound of something rich and oily. — Terry Pratchett

The qualities that make for excellence in children's literature can be summed up in a single word: imagination. And imagination as it relates to the child is, to my mind, synonymous with fantasy. Contrary to most of the propaganda in books for the young, childhood is only partly a time of innocence. It is, in my opinion, a time of seriousness, bewilderment, and a good deal of suffering. It's also possibly the best of all times. Imagination for the child is the miraculous, freewheeling device he uses to course his way through the problems of every day ... It's through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. — Maurice Sendak

I know that God is working through me within this sport. I know He's put me here for a purpose and it's not just to win medals. Winning is great and hopefully it gives me a platform to spread His love and spread His Word, but at the end of the day, I'm called to do what He wants me to do. — Elana Meyers

Almost every day brings opportunities to perform unselfish acts for others. Such acts are unlimited and can be as simple as a kind word, a helping hand, or a gracious smile.
— James E. Faust

The popular etymology of the word mantram gives us some clue what it means to have the holy name at work in our consciousness. It is said that mantram comes from the roots man, "the mind," and tri, "to cross." The mantram is that which enables us to cross the sea of the mind. The sea is a perfect symbol for the mind. It is in constant motion; there is calm one day and storm the next. — Eknath Easwaran

Tyson," he breathes. My name on his lips is like a revelation, and I want to break. I want to shatter. I want to tell him things I can't even admit to myself. "What?" I croak. "You know I love you, right?" His gaze searches mine. "Yeah." Because I do. I've known since the beginning. It's inevitable - our word of the day, the word of our friendship. — T.J. Klune

Gee-word?"
"Gods. What were you doin' the day they handed out brains, boy, anyway?"
"Someone was telling a story about stealing a tiger's balls, and I had to stop and find out how it ended. — Neil Gaiman

That's a heavy word, but picking up a newspaper every day, how can you not despair at what's happening in the world, and how we're represented as human beings? The disappointments and corruption are dismaying at every level. And the biggest source of evil is of course religion. Religions are tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshipping the same god. — Ridley Scott

We just held each other for warmth. I cannot recall that we even spoke to one another. Such was our shock. That day we learnt a new word - war. — P.J. Whittlesea

As a former waitress myself, I know firsthand how a simple smile from someone can improve your day and how a single harsh word can destroy it. Being courteous and thoughtful costs you nothing and can sometimes pay you dividends in unexpected ways. — Susanna Kearsley

Bombay, you will be told, is the only city India has, in the sense that the word city is understood in the West. Other Indian metropolises like Calcutta, Madras and Delhi are like oversized villages. It is true that Bombay has many more high-rise buildings than any other Indian city: when you approach it by the sea it looks like a miniature New York. It has other things to justify its city status: it is congested, it has traffic jams at all hours of the day, it is highly polluted and many parts of it stink. — Khushwant Singh

I have no problem living in Liverpool, but I think my wife and daughters deserve to enjoy every day to the full and live their lives - but they have to be at home all day. My wife doesn't speak a word of English, so she depends 100% on me. I live here with them. That's my world, that's my life. — Javier Mascherano

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility, or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law, or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement. — J.K. Rowling

One last word,' I said in my horrible careful English, 'are you quite, quite sure that - well, not tomorrow, of course, and not after tomorrow, but - well - some day, any day, you will not come to live with me? I will create a brand new God and thank him with piercing cries, if you give me that microscopic hope'
'No,' she said smiling, 'no.'
'It would have made all the difference,' said Humbert Humbert.
Then I pulled out my automatic-I mean, this is the kind of fool thing a reader might suppose I did. It never even occurred to me to do it. — Vladimir Nabokov

You know that thing where you repeat a word over and over until it just sounds like utter gibberish? That's what doing a day of press on a film is like. Ten interviews in a row, all asking pretty much the same questions until you find yourself giving pretty much the same answers. — John Niven

Companies the size of PepsiCo is like running a little republic, there is no question about it. The only difference is that I don't have to worry about the media hounding me every day, on every word that I say. I have a board of directors that runs the country in the interest of the stake holders. — Indra Nooyi

Over the years, Skye sampled every drug she could find, and like many addicts, had a working knowledge of pharmacology. She snorted coke and swallowed pills. She took downers - orange and red Seconal, red and ivory Dalmane, Miltown, Librium, Luminal, Nembutal, and Quaaludes. Blue devils, red birds, purple hearts. Enough of them sank her in a kind of coma, where she watched her own limbs suspended in front of her in syrup. For a party, there was Benzedrine, rushing in her veins and making her talk for an hour in one long sentence. Day to day, she carried yellow tablets loose in her pockets, Dilaudid and Percodan, and chewed them in the back of classrooms. But her favorite was the greatest pain reliever of them all, named for the German word for hero. — Frederick Weisel

If you take a single word ... and make it your own on a day-to-day basis, I hope it's choose. Being able to choose to act differently, even while feeling the old way, may be the most liberating growth you can accomplish. — Sue Thoele

If I could be God for a day, I would instantly replace July and August with two Septembers so the twelve months of the new calendar year would consist of January, February, March, April, May, June, September, September, September, October, November, December. On second thought, I'd also replace December with another September, thus deleting the Mas season and ending the year with a fourth September. The Mas season, once known as Christmas until we took Christ out of it, leaving only mas, the Spanish word for more, is my least favorable month of the year because of the greed-mandated financial, emotional and spiritual stresses that the economy-dependent celebration of Mas imposes. — Lionel Fisher

Is the invisible presence of the Christian fellowship a reality and a help to the individual? Is the Word of God close to him as a comfort and a strength? Or does he misuse his aloneness contrary to the fellowship, the Word, and the prayer? The individual must realize that his hours of aloneness react upon the community. In his solitude he can sunder and besmirch the fellowship, or he can strengthen and hallow it. Every act of self-control of the Christian is also a service to the fellowship. One who returns to the Christian family fellowship after fighting the battle of the day brings with him the blessing of his aloneness, but he himself receives anew the blessing of the fellowship. Blessed is he who is alone in the strength of the fellowship and blessed is he who keeps the fellowship in the strength of aloneness. But the strength of aloneness and the strength of the fellowship is solely the strength of the Word of God, which is addressed to the individual in the fellowship. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I'm with you on measuring this week in letters and the two-day drought we are about to experience. If only there was a way to transport letters faster, through some sort of electronic device that codes messages and sends them through the air. But that's just crazy talk.

Friday from me:

Sending letters through the sky? Like when airplanes attach notes to their tails? I thought they only advertised for going-out-of-business sales. But perhaps our letters would be okay up there as well. I wonder how much they charge per word. — Kasie West

I try to write every day. I don't beat myself up about word counts, or how many hours are ticking by on the clock before I'm allowed to go and do something else. I just try to keep a hand in and work every single day, even if there are other demands or I'm on a book tour or have the flu or something, because then I keep my unconscious engaged with the book. Then I'm always a little bit writing, no matter what else I'm doing. — Jonathan Lethem

My childhood ended that summer. I learned the word murder. But it is not enough to be told a word as big as that ... You have to live with it, carry it around with you. You have to ... see it from different angles, at different times of day, in different light, until you understand, until it enters you. — William Landay

God doesn't want religious duty. He doesn't want a distracted, half-hearted, 'Fine, I'll read a chapter ... now are You happy?' attitude. God wants His word to be a delight to us, so much that we meditate on it day and night. — Francis Chan

Blue Duck could never avoid a moment of fear, when his father's eyes became the eyes of a snake. He choked off his insult
he knew that if he spoke, he might, in an instant, find himself fighting Buffalo Hump. He had seen it before, with other warriors. Someone would say one word too many, would fail to see the snake in his father's eyes, and the next moment Buffalo Hump would be pulling his long bloody knife from between the other warrior's ribs.
Blue Duck waited. He knew that it was not a day to fight his father. — Larry McMurtry

Boredom is essentially a thwarted desire for events, not necessarily pleasant ones, but just occurrences such as will enable the victim of ennui to know one day from another. The opposite of boredom, in a word, is not pleasure, but excitement. — Bertrand Russell

Now I am going to speak a word and this is the word and here's the word. When the clock strikes 2.08. There are eight songs in the Bible. Noah started the world over with eight people. On the eighth day the Bible says Jesus appeared. Thomas because was not a believer but on the eighth day he showed up and Thomas was a believer. Actually Jesus was resurrected on the eighth day ... — Steve Munsey

wondered what had become of Marcus Brutus's wife, Portia. She had ardently espoused the Republican cause and encouraged her husband in the course he had taken. The day after we heard news of my father's funeral, word came of her fate. Often when a man is impelled by honor to take his own life, his wife will do the same. And so Portia did, most painfully, jamming a hot coal down her throat. — Phyllis T. Smith

It's like if someone had a loaded gun in your face. I don't know how else to describe how it felt to try to talk to my father. Even on a good day. If someone always has a loaded gun in your face, you weigh every word before you say it. You only dare say it if it might save you. But you're never sure, so there's this tendency to freeze. Say nothing at all. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

The philosopher Odo Marquard has noted a correlation in the German language between the word zwei, which means 'two,' and the word zweifel, which means 'doubt' - suggesting that two of anything brings the automatic possibility of uncertainty to our lives. Now imagine a life in which every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices, and you can begin to grasp why the modern world has become, even with all its advantages, a neurosis-generating machine of the highest order. In a world of such abundant possibility, many of us simply go limp from indecision. Or we derail our life's journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time. Or we become compulsive comparers - always measuring our lives against some other person's life, secretly wondering if we should have taken her path instead. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The world didn't have words to measure hate. There were tons, yards, years. Volts, knots, watts. Ronan could explain how fast his car was going. He could describe exactly how warm the day was. He could specifically convey his heart rate. But there was no way for him to tell anyone else exactly how much he hated Aglionby Academy.
Any unit of measurement would have to include both the volume and the weight of the hate. And it would also have to include a component of time. The days logged in class, wasted, useless, learning skills for a life he didn't want. No single word existed, probably, to contain the concept. All, perhaps. He had all the hate for Aglionby Academy.
Thief? Aglionby was the thief. Ronan's life was the dream, pillaged. — Maggie Stiefvater

New Rule: Since Glenn Beck is clearly onto us, liberals must launch our plan for socialist domination immediately. Listen closely, comrades, I've received word from General Soros and our partners in the UN
Operation Streisand is a go. Markos Moulitsas, you and your Daily Kos-controlled army of gay Mexican day laborers will join with Michael Moore's Prius tank division north of Branson, where you will seize the guns of everyone who doesn't blame America first, forcing them into the FEMA concentration camps. That's where ACORN and I will re-educate them as atheists and declare victory in the war on Christmas. — Bill Maher

Man is a musical being. His origin is in the spoken Word. By sound was he sustained and by music he evolved. One day he will recognize music as a vital factor in the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual evolution of the whole human race. — Corinne Heline

Do other dads not end their phone calls with existential despair? Because that's what my dad does. Papa ends most of his calls with me the way you might close a conversation with someone you want to menace. "Anyway," he'll say, "I'll be here. Staring into the abyss." Or, when I have given him good news, "The talented will rule and the rest will perish in the sea of mediocrity." Or, when I have given him bad news, "I am for for everything that happens to you, as everything is my fault." He never ends with anything that couldn't one day be construed as a tragic yet comic last word. — Scaachi Koul

Victor wrapped his fingers over my hand, pressing his face against my palm. "You're the bravest girl I've ever met. I'm so incredibly proud of you."
"Who knew that one day the word someone would use to describe me is brave. Life is very unpredictable." I chuckled.
"There are many other words I could think of to describe you but I'm not really good at flattery. — A.B. Whelan

Where's your dad now?" Thomas asked.
"He's gone."
The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed the power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night, watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared. But the reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word gone shake the foundation of the house. — Sherman Alexie

Make it a part of every day's business to read and meditate on some portion of God's Word. Private means of grace are just as needful every day for our souls as food and clothing are for our bodies. — J.C. Ryle

A mission is not just a casual thing-it is not an alternative program in the Church. Neither is a mission a matter of choice any more than tithing is a choice, any more than sacrament meeting is a choice, any more than the Word of Wisdom is a choice. Of course, we have our free agency, and the Lord has given us choices. We can do as we please. We can go on a mission or we can remain home. But every normal young man is as much obligated to go on a mission as he is to pay his tithing, attend his meetings, keep the Sabbath day holy, and keep his life spotless and clean. — Spencer W. Kimball

I bid your voice be dumb until the day you find a word worth speaking. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I want to take the word Christianity back to Christ himself, back to that mighty heart whose pulse seems to throb through the world to-day, that endless fountain of charity out of which I believe has come all true progress and all civilization that deserves the name .. I go back to that great Spirit which contemplated a sacrifice for the whole of humanity. That sacrifice is not one of exclusion, but of an infinite and endless and joyous inclusion. And I thank God for it. — Julia Ward Howe

So how's Cupid Day treating you?" He pops a mint in his mouth and leans closer. It grosses me out, like he thinks he can seduce me with fresh breath. "Any big romantic plans tonight? Got someone special to cozy up next to?" He raises his eyebrows at me.
[ ... ]
"We'll see," I say, smiling. "What about you? Are you going to be all by your lonesome? Table for one?"
He leans forward even more, and I stay perfectly still, willing myself not to pull away.
"Now why would you assume that?" He winks at me, obviously thinking that this is my version of flirting
like I'm going to offer to keep this company or something.
I smile even wider. "Because if you had a real girlfriend," I say, quietly but clearly, so he can hear every word perfectly, "you wouldn't be hitting on high school girls. — Lauren Oliver

I think the trick to living fully," I said, thinking through each word, "is to appreciate what we have, day by
day, regardless of what we know might come our way." I took a breath and slowly looked from one of my
parents to the other. "If I live in fear of what might be, how can I truly live my life to the full in the present? And
if I do not give myself to the day, to hope, to life, what do I miss?" I raised my eyebrows and shook my head.
"Life itself, I think. At least the way I wanna live it. — Lisa Tawn Bergren

It's no coincidence that the word 'holiday' suggests a holy day, or that the longest book in the Torah concerns the Sabbath. If you wish to advance in any sphere, the best way is to take a retreat. — Pico Iyer

It is a sad and very melancholy scene, which must strike everyone who knows and feels that we also have to pass one day through the valley of the shadow of death, and "que la fin de la vie humaine, ce sont des larmes ou des cheveux blancs." What lies beyond this is a great mystery that only God knows, but He has revealed absolutely through His word that there is a resurrection of the dead. — Vincent Van Gogh

I don't really ask of myself a given word or page count or number of hours. To work every day, that's my only fetish. And there is a physical quality to it when a novel is thriving. — Jonathan Lethem

Every time you have with your mouth said well of godliness, and yet gone on in wickedness; or every time you have condemned sin in others, and yet have not refrained it yourselves; I say, every such word and conclusion that hath passed out of thy mouth, sinner, it shall be as a witness against thee in the day of God, and the Lord Jesus Christ. — John Bunyan

Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as if most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meager children; and lovers, with such a word around then and before them, loved and hoped. — Charles Dickens

That reminds me of a song," said Emilia. The women laughed; the men groaned. But the fire was blazing and the night was long, and folk will want entertainment after the tedium of a day's work. Emilia's song detailed the amorous adventures of a water horse who fell in love - if love was the right word - with a series of young women who passed beside the lake in which the creature dwelled and from which he emerged in the form of a good-looking young man of exactly the right sort to catch a young woman's fancy. She had a clear voice and a pleasing timbre, and every local knew the chorus, whose euphemisms about mounting and galloping embarrassed me. We did not sing these sorts of songs in the Barahal house. Rory caught right on and sang the chorus as if born to it. In the laughter and pounding of tables that followed, I said, to no one in particular, "I thought kelpies drowned and then devoured their victims!" The words, innocently spoken, only caused the gathered folk to laugh even — Kate Elliott

Are you familiar with the word inspiration? The meaning of it? Where it comes from?...In the Dark Ages no understood the things that made some people special. Every soul in that dark, difficult time faced the same limitations, every soul except a precious few who saw things differently, the poets, inventors, artists, stone masons. Regular folks didn't understand how a person could wake up one day and see the world differently. They thought it was a gift from God. Thus the word "inspiration." It means breathed upon...breathed upon by God himself. — John Hart

I am, as it were, the created creating - a paradox, for all its rhetorical trappings, at the beating heart of our shared human journey, and one I invite you to struggle with just as I have while, day in and day out, word by word and line by line, constructing a fictitious autobiography for myself in these pages. — Sol Luckman

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day. — Emily Dickinson

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. We — Dorothy L. Sayers

One of the realities of life is that few things of value ever come easy. A great marriage takes years of hard work - every day. There is never a time when I can say that I no longer need to work on being patient, tender, and conversant. I believe that marriage is forever, which means that you work through your problems and learn how to relate to each other no matter what it takes. Hog Hole marriages require daily effort and sacrifice. So do Hog Hole careers, friendships, children, and churches. It's never easy; few things of value ever are. A Hog Hole life is available to every person, but it takes determination, sacrifice, and work. In a word, discipline. — Bob Merritt

Zombies?" There was definite interest in that word. "Are you a brother in arms? Do you also kill those brain sucking monsters?" I realized I was talking to someone who probably killed people every day, well not every day because that's excessive. The deli man didn't put enough rare roast beef on his sandwich and so he slit his throat with the dagger he had hidden up his sleeve. I giggled at the thought. Again — L.A. Fiore

A wise man nourishes his soul each morning with the word of God and enriches his day with God's wisdom. Psalm 19:7. — Felix Wantang

To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I have a word quota I try to fulfill every day, and I try to do that in the morning and into the afternoon and then go out with friends at night. I love singing and have lessons and enjoy drama, and so I am involved in that. — Alexandra Adornetto

I've been moving a little to the music while I worked ... and then I realize I am actually dancing. It feels wonderful, though I can feel how stiff my muscles are, how rigidly I've been holding myself ... Mostly I've been moving cautiously, numbly, steeled because I know, at any moment, I may be ambushed by overwhelming grief. You never know when it's coming, the word or gesture or bit of memory that dissolved you entirely ... It happens every day at first, then not for a day or two, then there's a week when grief washes in every morning, every afternoon. — Mark Doty

My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. — Henry David Thoreau

Infidelity and skepticism abound everywhere. In one form or another they are to be found in every rank and class of society. Thousands are not ashamed to say that they regard the Bible as an old obsolete Jewish book, which has no special claim on our faith and obedience, and that it contains many inaccuracies and defects. In a day like this, the true Christian should be able to set his foot down firmly, and to render a reason of his confidence in God's Word. He should be able by sound arguments to show good cause why he thinks the Bible is from heaven, and not of men. — J.C. Ryle

I thought I could write. So it was my intention to start off as a writer. But I wasn't really great at delivering the word at the end of the day. — Lee Daniels

My first meeting as a senator, my first day, they were already talking about the next election. Part of that's the permanent campaign, part of that's a word I've been using more frequently, 'tribal.' Our politics has become tribal: It's us versus them. — Evan Bayh

Weeks passed, but my Word-A-Day Calendar was stuck on motherfucker. — Colson Whitehead

Goodness preaches constantly, wants to change humanity, to work miracles from one day to the next, makes a show of its substance, wants to question essentials, but in fact is most often just hollow, lacking in substance, essence itself. A good word which has not yet been put into practice holds within itself every virgin possibility and is more than a good deed, the outcome of which is dubious, its effect arguable. In general words are always more than deeds. — Deszo Koszstolanyi

I have pledged my word to help people on to truth while living and - will keep my word. Let them abuse and revile me. Let some call me a medium, and a Spiritualist, and others an imposter. The day will come when posterity will learn to know me better. — H. P. Blavatsky

Freedom, "that terrible word inscribed on the chariot of the storm," is the motivating principle of all revolutions. Without it, justice seems inconceivable to the rebel's mind. There comes a time, however, when justice demands the suspension of freedom. Then terror, on a grand or small scale, makes its appearance to consummate the revolution. Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being. But one day nostalgia takes up arms and assumes the responsibility of total guilt; in other words, adopts murder and violence. — Albert Camus

On a second note, though, I have something to say about pain. There are lots of kinds of pain. Pain of smashing your fingers in a car door, pains of loosing a baby, pain of failing a test. But in their own little ways, these pains are all agonizing. Which is sad, and yet, happy, if you really think about it. If we never lost our car keys, or stepped in gum, or had a bad hair day, what kind of people would we be? In a word? Boring. We wouldn't be passionate; we wouldn't know it was exciting to get pregnant, or score an A on a final. So that's why, today at least, I am grateful for pain. Because it's part of what makes me the whacky, goofy, jaded, person that I am. Peace. — Alysha Speer

I was so unsuccessful for so long. I was used to the word no. I was used to you're not good enough or not quite there or you need to fix this about you. So I am honestly walking in faith every single day that I am going to be able to handle whatever God has for me. I am not used to being in a place where people appreciate my work and understand my work and want to be a part of my work and getting something out of my work because for so long it was so misunderstood. The success part for me is the hardest part and everyday I'm still battling. — Tamar Braxton

Nothing saves the day so much as a good word. And nothing has been misused as often. There is power in a word, whether we read it, speak it or hear it. And we command and are commanded by the word. We scatter, we call forth, and we comfort. Words are tools, weapons, both good and bad medicine-but very beautiful when used lovingly. The word, or ka ne tsv in Cherokee, is power to help heal, or make sick people sicker by negative talk around them. The word gives confidence when it builds rather than destroys. Relationships have been shattered beyond repair by a run-away mouth. Prosperity has been dissolved by talking lack. Until we listen to our own voices and how we talk, we would never guess how we use our words. — Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Each day becomes as a learning environment that provides an unexpected teachings:
. Everything you see is an opportunity to learn.
. Every word you hear is an opportunity to learn.
. Good or bad decisions you make each day are the opportunity to learn. Every experience you come across becomes a lesson of the day. Every failure you encounter can be your teacher. — Euginia Herlihy

Look at it carefully so that you will be sure to recognise it in case you travel
some day to the African desert. And, if you should come upon this spot, please
do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man
appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions,
you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me
word that he has come back. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Maybe I am fated to always be alone, Tsukuru found himself thinking. People came to him, but in the end they always left. They came, seeking something, but either they couldn't find it, or were unhappy with what they found (or else they were disappointed or angry), and then they left. One day, without warning, they vanished, with no explanation, no word of farewell. Like a silent hatchet had sliced the ties between them, ties through which warm blood still flowed, along with a quiet pulse. — Haruki Murakami

Always, sailing up from the south, from beyond the bend in the river, were clumps of water hyacinths, dark floating islands on the dark river, bobbing over the rapids. It was as if rain and river were tearing away bush from the heart of the continent and floating it down to the ocean, incalculable miles away. But the water hyacinth was the fruit of the river alone. The tall lilaccoloured flower had appeared only a few years before, and in the local language there was no word for it. The people still called it "the new thing" or "the new thing in the river," and to them it was another enemy. Its rubbery vines and leaves formed thick tangles of vegetation that adhered to the river banks and clogged up waterways. It grew fast, faster than men could destroy it with the tools they had. The channels to the villages had to be constantly cleared. Night and day the water hyacinth floated up from the south, seeding itself as it travelled. I — V.S. Naipaul

That's one of the coolest things about being a racecar driver. Even if its one tweet a day, the platform allows me the opportunity to change someone's life. That's what we're here for. When we're struggling on the track, I try to take myself out of the situation and realize how small these earthly problems are. I love being able to spread the Word. That's my main purpose in life. Driving in NASCAR is icing on the cake. — Tanner Berryhill

Do everything without complaining and arguing, 15 so that no one can criticize you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people. 16 Hold firmly to the word of life; then, on the day of Christ's return, I will be proud that I did not run the race in vain and that my work was not useless. — Anonymous

L. 151. Chthizos, yesterday. But either the word must have a more extended signification than is usually given to it, or Homer must here have fallen into an error; for two complete nights and one day, that on which Patroclus met his death, had intervened since the visit of Ajax and — Homer

Walking through each day without a clear guide, an accurate map, and a consistent light source is hazardous to your well-being. Fortunately, God's Word provides us with the tools and help that we need. — Stormie O'martian

She liked to think. What did she like to think? She was having a dumb day and wanted to blame the fog.
Maybe he falls, he slides, if that is a useful word, from his experience of an objective world, the deepest description of space-time, where he does not feel a sense of future direction - he slides into her experience, everyone's, the standard sun-kissed chronology of events.
Am I the first human to abduct an alien? — Don DeLillo

The President must be true to his word. He must keep his faith with the folks who elected him twice. In other words, he must replace Sandra Day O'Connor with a strict constructionist. The president has a God-given opportunity to change the balance on the Supreme Court. On issue after issue - abortion, sodomy, public display of the Ten Commandments - O'Connor has sided with the court's liberal bloc. Time and again, Justice O'Connor and her colleagues have used the Constitution as an excuse to force weird social experiments on the nation. — Rick Scarborough

Every day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word; Well for those who have no fear, Looking seaward well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word they wish to hear. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The daily quota I've set for myself is 500 words or approximately a page and a half double-spaced. Which isn't much, except that I'm extremely slow, extremely meticulous. 'Le mot juste' haunts me. On a good day, I will finally secrete the 500th word at about 5 o'clock, and I'll reward myself by going to Housing Works Bookstore to read. — Said Sayrafiezadeh

One of the bonds between Lily and me is that we both suffer with our teeth. She is twenty years my junior but we wear bridges, each of us. Mine are at the sides, hers are in front. She has lost the four upper incisors. It happened while she was still in high school, out playing golf with her father, whom she adored. The poor old guy was a lush and far too drunk to be out on a golf course that day. Without looking or given warning, he drove from the first tee and on the backswing struck his daughter. It always kills me to think of that cursed hot July golf course, and this drunk from the plumbing supply business, and the girl of fifteen bleeding. Damn these weak drunks! Damn these unsteady men! I can't stand these clowns who go out in public as soon as they get swacked to show how broken-hearted they are. But Lily would never hear a single word against him and wept for him sooner than for herself. She carries his photo in her wallet. — Saul Bellow

When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat ... disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him"
The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately. — Stasi Eldredge

The term IRL (in real life) is like a safe word for millennials. It's a reminder that despite spending majority of our time meticulously crafting online personas, we still have vital organs that need to be taken care of and family members we should probably interact with. More than anything, it's a reminder of the world we were introduced to the day we left our mother's wombs. Those brave women didn't push us out of their vaginas just so we could strive to be interesting online and disconnected in the real world. — Greg Dybec

It was only a hopeless fantasy,
it passed like an april day,
but a look and a word and the dreams they stirred
they have stolen my heart away. — George Orwell

Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket ... Imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking the long road home. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a song stronger than penicillin. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace. — Sherman Alexie

There's an old play on the word justified: "just-as-if-I'd never sinned." But here's another way of saying it: "just-as-if-I'd always obeyed." Both are true. The first refers to the transfer of our moral debt to Christ so we're left with a "clean" ledger, just as if we'd never sinned. The second tells us our ledger is now filled with the perfect righteousness of Christ, so it's just as if we'd always obeyed. That's why we can come confidently into the very presence of God (Hebrews 4:16; 10:19) even though we're still sinners - saved sinners to be sure, but still practicing sinners every day in thought, word, deed, and motive. — Anonymous

But I'll tell you a secret. When I want to take God at his word exactly I take a peep out the window at His Creation. Because that, darling, He makes fresh for us every day, without a lot of dubious middle managers. — Barbara Kingsolver

It is possible to live twenty-four hours a day in a state of love. Every movement, every glance, every thought, and every word can be infused with love. — Thich Nhat Hanh

We talk of strong personalities, and they are strong, until the not-every-day when we see them as we might see one woman alone in a desert, and know that all the strength we thought we knew was only courage, only her lone song echoing among the stones; and then at last when we have understood this and made up our minds to hear the song and admire its courage and its sweetness, we wait for the next note and it does not come. The last word, with its pure tone, echoes and fades and is gone, and we realize - only then - that we do not know what it was, that we have been too intent on the melody to hear even one word. We go then to find the singer, thinking she will be standing where we last saw her. There are only bones and sand and a few faded rags. — Gene Wolfe

It's the thing I struggle with every day: the mental diligence and stamina needed to sit in front of the computer, open the file, start writing and to keep doing so, word after word, until I've created the next story. A combination of learning disability and chronic health issues make that the hardest thing for me. — Nalo Hopkinson

Shalom is the Hebrew word for "peace." For rhythm. For everything lining up exactly how it was meant to line up. Shalom is happening in those moments when you are at the dinner table for hours with good friends, good food, and good wine. Shalom is when you hear or see something and can't quite explain it, but you know it's calling and stirring something deep inside of you. Shalom is a sunset, that sense of exhaustion yet satisfaction from a hard day's work, creating art that is bigger than itself. Shalom is enemies being reconciled by love. Shalom is when you are dancing to the rhythm of God's voice. — Jefferson Bethke

Some people write by day, others by night. Some people need silence, others turn on the radio. Some write by hand, some by typewriter or word processor, some by talking into a tape recorder. Some people write their first draft in one long burst and the revise; others can't write the second paragraph until they have fiddled endlessly with the first.

But all of them are vulnerable and all of them are tense. — William Zinsser

There is nothing but water in the holy pools. I know, I have been swimming there. All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can't say a word. I know, I have been crying out to them. The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words. I looked through their covers one day sideways. What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through. If you have not lived through something, it is not true. — Kabir

Some of us walk around with a necklace of hope, an armour of sanity, but at the end of the day, they always come off. We reveal our naked, vulnerable, real selves. — Karen Quan

Preaching is the primary means of growth for the local church. There is a great deal of debate about this in our day, but it is the preaching of the Word that God most uses to build up a church, not only numerically but above all (and far more importantly) in spiritual depth and understanding of the people who make up the congregation. — James Montgomery Boice

Let's ask ourselves: are we open to the Holy Spirit, do I pray to him to enlighten me, to make me more sensitive to the things of God?
And this is a prayer we need to pray every day, every day: Holy Spirit may my heart be open to the Word of God, may my heart be open to good, may my heart be open to the beauty of God, every day. — Pope Francis