Our Lives Quotes - Page 3

• How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow
  Into the arctic regions of our lives,
  Where little else than life itself survives.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Age, May, Littles

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, J. D. McClatchy (2000). “Poems and Other Writings”, p.627, Library of America

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• The great secret of social alchemy is to profit best from each stage in our lives, to gather all its leaves in spring, all its flowers in summer, and all its fruits in autumn.

  Honore de Balzac

  Summer, Spring, Flower

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• when people go away, or when we leave the places we love, or something we treasure goes out of our life - I have always noticed that before it happens - this leaving, this parting - when we think about it beforehand we are overwhelmed with sadness at the loss to come. ... the most unbearable sense of loss, the worst homesickness of all, so I have found, is this loss and sickness we feel beforehand, before we ever leave home.

  Nan Fairbrother

  Home, Sadness, Loss

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• During the day, our souls gather their ... impressions of us, how our lives feel. ... Our spirits collect these impressions, keep them together, like wisps of smoke in a bag. Then, when we're asleep, our brains open up these bags of smoke ... and take a look.

  Marsha Norman

  Soul, Brain, Together

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• And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. A child is not enough. A husband and children, no matter how busy one may be kept by them, are not enough. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness.

  Dorothy Day

  Husband, Children, Loneliness

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• If we are waiting for guaranteed courses of action, we may spend much of our life waiting.

  Melody Beattie

  Waiting, May, Action

  Melody Beattie (1990). “The Language of Letting Go”, p.135, Hazelden Publishing

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• All expression, all art, is an indiscretion we commit against ourselves. This is not an 'impoverishment' but an increase in wealth, for it is in this way that we make the short hours of our lives live on beyond themselves.

  Natalie Clifford Barney

  Art, Expression, Way

  Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.125, New Victoria Publishers

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• We cannot make bargains for blisses, / Nor catch them like fishes in nets; / And sometimes the thing our life misses, / Helps more than the thing which it gets.

  Alice Cary

  Happiness, Missing, Helping

  Alice Cary, Phoebe Cary, Mary Clemmer (1876). “The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary”, p.176

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• If we are unhappy without a relationship, we'll probably be unhappy with one as well. A relationship doesn't begin our life; a relationship doesn't become our life. A relationship is a continuation of life.

  Melody Beattie

  Continuation Of Life, Unhappy, Wells

  Melody Beattie (2013). “Melody Beattie 3 Title Bundle: Author of Codependent No More and Three Other Best Sellers: A collection of three Melody Beattie best sellers”, p.118, Hazelden Publishing

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• We must make our lives as we sew, stitch by stitch.

  Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

  Stitches

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• the more we are focused on controlling and changing others, the more unmanageable our life becomes. The more we focus on living our own life, the more we have a life to live, and the more manageable our life will become.

  Melody Beattie

  Focus, Manageable, Focused

  Melody Beattie (2013). “Melody Beattie 4 Title Bundle: Codependent No More and 3 Other Best Sellers by Melody Beattie: A collection of four Melody Beattie best sellers”, Hazelden Publishing

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• we write as if our lives depended upon it. They do.

  Erica Jong

  Writing, Ifs

  Erica Jong (2007). “What Do Women Want?: Essays by Erica Jong”, p.155, Penguin

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• Money ... it's both the most complicated and the most passionate relationship in our lives.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Money, Passionate, Complicated

  Sarah Ban Breathnach (2011). “Peace and Plenty: Finding your path to financial security”, p.68, Random House

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• Let us beware of losing our enthusiasms. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our life.

  Phillips Brooks

  Enthusiasm, Losing, Admiration

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• Why should we need extra time in which to enjoy ourselves? If we expect to enjoy our life, we will have to learn to be joyful in all of it, not just at stated intervals when we can get time or when we have nothing else to do.

  Laura Ingalls Wilder

  Happiness, Extra Time, Joy

  Laura Ingalls Wilder, Stephen W. Hines (1991). “Little house in the Ozarks: a Laura Ingalls Wilder sampler : the rediscovered writings”, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Too much of our lives corresponds to the 'lost-wallet' theory of life. You lose something, spend a long time finding it, and then feel grateful to be back where you started.

  Gloria Steinem

  Grateful, Long, Too Much

  Gloria Steinem (2012). “Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender”, p.265, Open Road Media

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• For girls and women, storytelling has a double and triple importance. Because the stories of our lives have been marginalized and ignored by history, and often dismissed and treated as 'gossip' within our own cultures and families, female human beings are more likely to be discouraged from telling our stories and from listening to each other with seriousness.

  Gloria Steinem

  Girl, Gossip, History

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• There is always a moment in the pyramid of our lives when the apex is reached.

  Ninon de L'Enclos

  Pyramids, Moments, Crisis

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• Happiness is such an incredible advantage in our life. When the human brain is positive, our intelligence rises, we stop diverting resources to think about anxiety.

  Shawn Achor

  Thinking, Anxiety, Brain

  Source: www.independent.co.uk

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• If we imagine that God is somehow punishing us, then we will live our lives in desperation and in fear that we are somehow avoiding displeasing God. The difficulty with that is as many ideas about how to displease and how to please God, as there are hairs on your head.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Hair, Ideas, Desperation

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• Most of us feel on some level like race horses chomping at the bit, pressing at the gate, hoping and praying for someone to open the door and let us run out. We feel so much pent up energy, so much locked up talent. We know in our hearts that we were born to do great things, and we have a deep-seated dread of wasting our lives. But the only person who can free us is ourselves. Most of us know that. We realize that the locked door is our own fear.

  Marianne Williamson

  Running, Horse, Heart

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• while everything else in our lives has gotten simpler, speedier, more microwavable and user-friendly, child-raising seems to have expanded to fill the time no longer available for it.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Children, Friendly, Seems

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• By 'coming to terms with life' I mean: the reality of death has become a definite part of my life; my life has, so to speak, been extended by death, by my looking death in the eye and accepting it, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or the refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it.

  Etty Hillesum

  Mean, Eye, Reality

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• The extent to which we take everyday objects for granted is the precise extent to which they govern and inform our lives.

  Margaret Visser

  Everyday Objects, Granted, Precise

  Margaret Visser (2010). “Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Mea”, p.11, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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