Resigned Quotes

• I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

  Willa Cather

  Nature, Tree, Way

  O Pioneers! pt. 2, ch. 8 (1913)

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• In 1984, Jean Vanier invited me me to visit L'Arche community in Trosly, France. He didn't say "We need a priest" or "We could use you." He said, "Maybe our community can offer you a home." I visited several times, then resigned from Harvard and went to live with the community for a year. I loved it! I didn't have much to do. I wasn't pastor or anything. I was just a friend of the Community.

  Henri Nouwen

  Home, Years, Community

  Source: www.liguorian.org

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• Why were you lurking under our window?" "Yes - yes, good point, Petunia! What were you doing under our windows, boy?" "Listening to the news," said Harry in a resigned voice. His aunt and uncle exchanged looks of outrage. "Listening to the news! Again?" "Well, it changes every day, you see," said Harry.

  J. K. Rowling

  Uncles, Aunt, Boys

  J.K. Rowling (2015). “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”, p.13, Pottermore

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• Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the descending avalanche, or the spinning funnel of the tornado, yet makes no attempt to flee, is not necessarily paralyzed with fright or resigned to an unavoidable fate. He may simply be unable to believe that the message of his eyes concerns him personally. It is all happening to somebody else.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Fear, Real, Believe

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• With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, Have something of their friendliness resigned; Another, if I would, I could not find, And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure in my memory Your gift of charity, and young hearts ease, And the dear honour of your amity; For these once mine, my life is rich with these. And I scarce know which part may greater be,-- What I keep of you, or you rob from me.

  George Santayana

  Country, Memories, Heart

  George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.484, Indiana University Press

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• I do try to say, God’s will be done, sir,” said the Squire, looking up at Mr. Gibson for the first time, and speaking with more life in his voice; “but it’s harder to be resigned than happy people think.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Thinking, Voice, People

  Elizabeth Gaskell (2010). “The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)”, p.2887, BookCaps Study Guides

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• But Laila has decided that she will not be crippled by resentment. Mariam wouldn’t want it that way. ‘What’s the sense?’ she would say with a smile both innocent and wise. ‘What good is it, Laila jo?’ And so Laila has resigned herself to moving on. For her own sake, for Tariq’s, for her children’s. And for Mariam, who still visits Laila in her dreams, who is never more than a breath or two below her consciousness. Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that’s all she can do. That and hope.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Wise, Dream, Children

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• Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Beautiful, Witty, Intelligent

  Buck in the Snow (1928) "Dirge Without Music"

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• Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender, and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet. "Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistriss," concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. "I'll never make it, I guess." Sighing , she resigned herself to a sinless life.

  Betty Smith

  Beautiful, Feet, Long

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• It was a hurting tune, resigned, a cry of heartache for all in the world that fell apart. As ash rose black against the brilliant sky, Fire's fiddle cried out for the dead, and for the living who stay behind to say goodbye.

  Kristin Cashore

  Goodbye, Hurt, Fire

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• Clary stopped dead in her tracks. "Simon?" "Oh, God," said Jace, sounding resigned. "And here I'd actually hoped I'd got hold of something interesting." -Clary and Jace pg. 114

  Cassandra Clare

  Track, Interesting, Jace

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• Why do you tolerate it? (Kat) The same reason Sin hasn’t resigned himself to death. There are six billion people on earth who need someone to protect them from things that are scarier than the tax man or a knife-wielding stranger. Things that a gun won’t stop. As long as their lives hang in the balance, what’s a little humiliation for me? (Acheron)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Gun, Men, Knives

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• I know, but I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Knows

  Buck in the Snow (1928) "Dirge Without Music"

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• 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

  Thinking, Tree, Way

  O Pioneers! pt. 2, ch. 8 (1913)

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• After Nixon resigned in 1974, he engaged in a very aggressive war with history, attempting to wipe out the Watergate stain and memory. Happily, history won, largely because of Nixon's tapes.

  Bob Woodward

  Memories, War, Wiping Out

  "Watergate: 25 Years Later". The Washington Post Interview, www.washingtonpost.com. June 17, 1997.

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• The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Hope, Inspiration, Future

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• Of course, no one should be trapped in bad schools or bad neighborhoods. No one. But I think we need to be asking a larger question: How do we change the norm, the larger context that people seem to accept as a given? Are we so thoroughly resigned to what "is" that we cannot even begin a serious conversation about how to create what ought to be?

  Michelle Alexander

  School, Thinking, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I am a President held prisoner, that I haven't resigned and I will not resign.

  Hugo Chavez

  President, Prisoner, Havens

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• Being 'contented' ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Moving, Mean, Appreciate

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• I dropped out of high school and I couldn't go to college 'cause I wasn't smart enough, so I'd resigned myself to loading trucks and playing punk rock on the weekends.

  Dave Grohl

  Smart, School, Weekend

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• I'm not resigned, but I'm realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Cancer, Long, People

  "Anderson Cooper 360°", transcripts.cnn.com. August 5, 2010.

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• The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Stupid, Bored, Brain

  Christopher Hitchens (2017). “Christopher Hitchens: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations”, p.92, Melville House

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• Are we still a country that takes risks, that innovates, that believes anything is possible? Or are we a country that is resigned to whatever liberty the government decides to dish out?

  Mitch McConnell

  Country, Believe, Government

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• I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

  Voltaire

  Men, Years, Sorrow

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• The greatest fear that haunts this city is a suitcase bomb, nuclear or germ. Many people carry small gas masks. The masses here seem to be resigned to the inevitable, believing an attack of major proportions will happen.

  David Wilkerson

  Believe, Greatest Fear, Cities

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