Encounters Quotes - Page 23

• The soul may be compared to a field of battle, where the armies are ready every moment to encounter. Not a single vice but has a more powerful opponent, and not one virtue but may be overborne by a combination of vices.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Powerful, Army, Soul

  Oliver Goldsmith (1825). “Miscellaneous works”, p.189

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• Writers matter in a society to the extent that we can help that society hear its unvoiced longing, encounter its erased and disregarded selves, break with complacency, numbness, despair.

  Adrienne Rich

  Self, Numbness, Despair

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• All wars derive from lack of empathy: the incapacity of one to understand and accept the likeness or difference of another. Whether in nations or the encounters of race and sex, competition then replaces compassion, subjection excludes mutuality.

  Marya Mannes

  Sex, War, Compassion

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• You reach a point in life where you realize that you might as well do what you need to do, because your being loved or not being loved is really a function of the people you encounter and not of yourself. That is an immensely liberating insight.

  Erica Jong

  Confidence, People, Needs

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• Just as the difference in height between males is no longer a realistic issue, now that lawsuits have been substituted for hand-to-hand encounters, so the difference in strength between men and women is no longer worth elaboration in cultural institutions.

  Margaret Mead

  Men, Hands, Differences

  Margaret Mead (1963). “Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies”

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• When we let go of wanting something else to happen in this moment, we are taking a profound step toward being able to encounter what is here now. If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing. If we don't really know where we are standing—a knowing that comes directly from the cultivation of mindfulness—we may only go in circles, for all our efforts and expectations. So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.

  Jon Kabat-Zinn

  Letting Go, Hope, Circles

  Jon Kabat-Zinn (2005). “Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life”, Hyperion

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• the encounter with death is the great turning-point in the lives of those who live on.

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher

  Turning Points

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1915). “The Bent Twig”

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• It is too early to feel fear of the future when one is under 30, and too late after that. What I mean is that one must never allow fear to become one's permanent sense of life. The important thing is to prepare yourself intellectually to deal with whatever circumstances you may encounter, which requires that you define your values fully, clearly and rationally -- and never betray them.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Important, Too Late

  Ayn Rand (1997). “Letters of Ayn Rand”, p.673, Penguin

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• When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.

  Gwendolyn Brooks

  Color, Two, White

  Gwendolyn Brooks, Gloria Jean Wade Gayles (2003). “Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks”, p.18, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good.

  Pope Francis

  Religion, Atheism, Needs

  "Pope at Mass: Culture of encounter is the foundation of peace". Vatican Radio, May 22, 2013.

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• Divine reality is not way up in the sky somewhere; it is readily available in the encounters of everyday life, which make hash of my illusions that I can control the ways God comes to me.

  Barbara Brown Taylor

  Reality, Sky, Everyday

  Source: theotherjournal.com

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• Love is an active construction, and choice, not just an encounter that happens by chance.

  Masha Tupitsyn

  Love Is, Choices, Chance

  "True Lovers are as Rare as True Rebels". The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. October 24, 2013.

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• We must calculate not on the weather, nor on fortune, but upon God and ourselves. He may fail us in the gratification of our wishes, but never in the encounter with our exigencies.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Weather, Wish, May

  William Gilmore Simms (1853). “Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside”, p.41

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• In a pure anonymous encounter you find a world alive and full of character. In New York, the street adventures are incredible. There are a thousand stories in a single block. You see the stories in people's faces. You hear the songs immediately. Here, in Los Angeles, there are fewer characters because they are all inside automobiles.

  Joni Mitchell

  Song, New York, Block

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• The human mind feels restless and dissatisfied under the anxieties of ignorance. It longs for the repose of conviction; and to gain this repose it will often rather precipitate its conclusions than wait for the tardy lights of observation and experiment. There is such a thing, too, as the love of simplicity and system,--a prejudice of the understanding which disposes it to include all the phenomena of nature under a few sweeping generalities,--an indolence which loves to repose on the beauties of a theory rather than encounter the fatiguing detail of its evidences.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Ignorance, Light, Simplicity

  Thomas Chalmers (1836). “Works”, p.314

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• Journalism is an extraordinary and terrible privilege. Not by chance, if you are aware of it, does it consume you with a hundred feelings of inadequacy. Not by chance, when I find myself going through an event or an important encounter, does it seize me like anguish, a fear of not having enough eyes and enough ears and enough brains to look and listen and understand like a worm hidden in the wood of history.

  Oriana Fallaci

  Eye, Feelings, Brain

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• All encounters with children are touched with social embarrassment.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Children, Social, Embarrassment

  Sylvia Townsend Warner (1947). “The Museum of Cheats: Stories”

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• An artist requires the upkeep of creative solitude. An artist requires the healing of time alone. Without this period of recharging, our artist becomes depleted. Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically. We may be enmeshed, but we are not encountered. Art lies in the moment of encounter. We meet our truth and we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression.

  Julia Cameron

  Art, Lying, Healing

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• Luther deters me from solitariness; but he does not mean from a sober solitude that rallies our scattered strengths and prepares us against any new encounter from without.

  Francis Atterbury

  Mean, Solitude, Doe

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• There are self-awareness groups, to help you discover who you really are ... encounter groups, to help you deal with who you really are ... assertiveness training groups to help you stand up for who you really are ... Suddenly, the only way to become an individual is to join a group.

  Cathy Guisewite

  Self, Training, Groups

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• Dating is really all about sex. In the conventional context, this means that the man invites the woman to go through a social encounter, the ultimate purpose of which is sexual engagement.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Sex, Mean, Men

  Alexander McCall Smith (1995). “Heavenly Date: And Other Stories”

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• When I mention somebody, that doesn't necessarily mean that I identify with him, personally or poetically. I'm extremely happy when I encounter poets who are different than I am. The ones who have their own distinct poetics provide me with the greatest experiences.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Mean, Different, Poet

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• The 'Cercle et Carré' group owes its existence to my encounter with the Uruguayan painter Torrès-Gracia in 1929... However difficult our relationship, his obstinacy matching my patience, this unholy team of fire and water was bound to produce something. Towards the end of the year, after consulting sundry artists, including Arp, Mondrian, and Van Doesburg, we drew up the program for a new group and launched a magazine which was be called 'Cercle et Carré'.

  Michel Seuphor

  Team, Artist, Fire

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• we can search for and attain to only one being, that one which was given us, which is within us and which awaits its birth from ourselves. Each day I feel that I leave myself a little more, the better to go toward my encounter with myself.

  Georgette Leblanc

  Each Day, Littles, Birth

  Georgette Leblanc (1932). “Souvenirs: My Life with Maeterlinck”

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• Finding God in all things is not an 'empirical eureka.' When we desire to encounter God, we would like to verify him immediately by an empirical method. But you cannot meet God this way...A contemplative attitude is necessary: it is the feeling that you are moving along the good path of understanding and affection toward things and situations. Profound peace, spiritual consolation, love of God, and love of all things in God-this is the sign that you are on this right path.

  Pope Francis

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Attitude

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