Momentary Quotes - Page 6

• I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary--you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.

  Georgia O'Keeffe

  Thinking, Things In Life, People

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• Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.

  Robert Frost

  Love, Life, Confusion

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• The sun sliced through the windshield, sealing me in light. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my eyelids. Sunlight traveled a long distance to reach this planet; an infinitesimal portion of that sunlight was enough to warm my eyelids. I was moved. That something as insignificant as an eyelid had its place in the workings on the universe, that the cosmic order did not overlook this momentary fact.

  Haruki Murakami

  Distance, Eye, Light

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• Oh I believe in loving cats and dogs and children and parents – sometimes – but I don’t believe in romantic love. Of course, there’s the momentary rush of hormones and chemicals that encourages us to mate, but it’s biology – it’s no more inherently mystical than the nicotine in that cigarette you’re smoking

  Amy Jenkins

  Dog, Children, Believe

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• Even the most subjected person has moments of rage and resentment so intense that they respond, they act against. There is an inner uprising that leads to rebellion, however short- lived. It may be only momentary but it takes place. That space within oneself where resistance is possible remains.

  Bell Hooks

  Uprising, Space, May

  bell hooks (2014). “Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics”, p.29, Routledge

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• He awoke, opened his eye. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come. If he had not the energy to ascertain his position in time and space, he also lacked the desire. ... In utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank back into on the the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one.

  Paul Bowles

  Eye, Sleep, Space

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• People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?

  P. D. James

  People, Violence, Excited

  P.D. James (2012). “Innocent Blood”, p.378, Simon and Schuster

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• The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: "Of course it is none of my business, but -- " is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Cutting, Use, Way

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.327, Penguin

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• At my worst, I even resented Nic because an addict, at least when high, has a momentary respite from his suffering. There is no similar relief for parents or children or husbands or wives or others who love them.

  David Sheff

  Children, Husband, Wife

  David Sheff (2009). “Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• people don't change, they just have momentary steps outside of their true character

  Chad Kultgen

  Character, People, Steps

  Chad Kultgen (2009). “The Lie: A Novel”, Harper Perennial

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• This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

  Rumi

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Morning

  Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi, “The Guest House”

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• She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of wildrose beauty, and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over thirty years. At the end of it she was still singing.

  George Orwell

  Children, Years, Singing

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I felt a momentary urge to leap into the sea and swim free of the present.

  Meg Rosoff

  Sea, Swim, Leap

  "What I Was: A Novel". Book by Meg Rosoff, 2007.

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• Many [Western Christians] habitually think and act as if there is no eternity. . . . We major in the momentary and minor in the momentous.

  Randy Alcorn

  Christian, Thinking, Eternity

  Randy Alcorn (2017). “Seeing the Unseen, Expanded Edition: A 90-Day Devotional to Set Your Mind on Eternity”, p.105, Multnomah

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• He felt a momentary pang of regret that he had not spent more time with his beloved wife. But it passed when he remembered that the reason he’d gone to sea in the first place was that he had never really liked his beloved wife.

  Dave Barry

  Regret, Beloved Wife, Sea

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• Now I know what loneliness is, I think. Momentary loneliness, anyway. It comes from a vague core of the self - - like a disease of the blood, dispersed throughout the body so that one cannot locate the matrix, the spot of contagion.

  Sylvia Plath

  Fear, Loneliness, Thinking

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.29, Anchor

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• I've never been afraid of the dark. I'm more afraid of the day, of people. I love the night. The solitude. Well, I don't love it. I don't feel love. I hate people, so I hope when I get there it isn't crowded. I hope the light is a momentary phenomenon and the other side is completely black. And silent.

  Julie Anne Peters

  Hate, Dark, Night

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• History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.

  Victor Hugo

  Reality, Men, Goal

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• If there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it, Making it momentary as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!' The jaws of darkness do devour it up; So quick bright things come to confusion.

  William Shakespeare

  Dream, War, Night

  'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1595-6) act 1, sc. 1, l. 141

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• Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without felony, stipulate for those interests and defend them. The present has its pardonable amount of egotism; momentary life has its claims, and cannot be expected to sacrifice itself incessantly to the future. The generation which is in its turn passing over the earth is not forced to abridge its life for the sake of the generations, its equals after all, whose turn shall come later on.

  Victor Hugo

  Sacrifice, Generations, Earth

  Victor Hugo (2007). “Hugo's Works”, p.77, Wildside Press LLC

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• There are people whose eyes you must avoid, whose attention you must not draw to yourself. They are strange, parasitic creatures, lost souls seeking to stretch across the abyss and make fatal contact with the warm, constant flow of humanity. They live in pain, and exist only to visit that pain on others. A random glance, the momentary lingering of a look, is enough to give them the excuse that they seek. Sometimes, it is better to keep your eyes on the gutter for the fear that, by looking up, you might catch a glimpse of them, black shapes against the sun, and be blinded forever.

  John Connolly

  Pain, Eye, People

  John Connolly (2015). “The Killing Kind: A Charlie Parker Thriller”, p.63, Simon and Schuster

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• To wait. In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions all together occupy a bare one percent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine percent is just living in waiting. I wait in momentary expectation, feeling as though my breasts are being crushed, for the sound in the corridor of the footsteps of happiness. Empty. Oh, life is too painful, the reality that confirms the universal belief that it is best not to be born.

  Osamu Dazai

  Reality, Ninety Nine, Expectations

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• Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

  John Gardner

  Reality, Self, Giving

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• Defeat is always momentary.

  Peter Jackson

  Defeat

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• The decisions that we write off as momentary, insignificant, incidental, everyday encounters are exactly when we have a chance to define ourselves. To find beauty. To engage the world around us. To create memories.

  Teri Hatcher

  Memories, Writing, Decision

  Teri Hatcher (2006). “Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life”

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