Retreat Quotes - Page 14

• Monopathy, or over-specialisation, eventually retreats into defending what one has learnt rather than making new connections. The initial spurt of learning gives out, and the expert is left, like an animal, merely defending his territory.

  Robert Twigger

  Animal, Giving, Connections

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• If hemp could supply the energy needs of the United States, its value would be inestimable. Now that the drug czar is in final retreat, America has an opportunity to, once and for all, say farewell to the Exxon Valdez, Saddam Hussein and a prohibitively expensive brinkmanship in the desert sands of Saudi Arabia.

  Hugh Downs

  Farewell, Opportunity, America

  ABC News, November 1990.

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• Every man must be made to realize that further retreat is impossible. He must realize with his mind and heart that this is a matter of life and death of the Soviet state, of the life and death of the people of our country...the Nazi troops must be stopped now, before it is too late.

  Leonid Brezhnev

  Country, Heart, Men

  Statement made in World War II, as a commissar on the southern front, as quoted in "Leonid I. Brezhnev: Pages from his Life" by Academy of Sciences of the USSR, p. 49, 1978.

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• The Iraqi forces are conducting the Mother of all Retreats.

  Dick Cheney

  Mother, Force, Conducting

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• We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination. So when you attend a retreat, you have a chance to look at the deep roots of this pollution of the collective energy that is unwholesome.

  Nhat Hanh

  Running, Roots, Energy

  "Zen and the art of protecting the planet" by Jo Confino, www.theguardian.com. August 26, 2010.

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• I would like a UK fully engaged in Europe, but I can't decide in place of the British. I see that for the moment they want to be more in retreat.

  Francois Hollande

  Europe, Want, Moments

  "Hollande fires warning shot at Merkel over austerity on eve of EU summit" by Angelique Chrisafis and Ian Traynor, www.theguardian.com. October 17, 2012.

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• There are moments in life when a man retreats defensively, when he must give ground, when he must surrender less important positions in order to protect the more important ones. But should it come to the very last, the most important one, at this point a man must halt and stand firm if he doesn't want to begin life all over again with idle hands and a feeling of being shipwrecked.

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Hands, Order

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• Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.

  Gregory Maguire

  Guilt, World, Faces

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• I am a nice young girl here to pick up your granddaughter for the weekend... We're going to a Bible retreat to scare the devil out of her. - Bones to Cat's grandparents

  Jeaniene Frost

  Girl, Nice, Cat

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• Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats 5 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10 Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

  T. S. Eliot

  Night, Oysters, Talking

  "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" l. 13 (1917)

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• When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Real, Stupid, Silly

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• I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

  J. K. Rowling

  What Matters, Careers, Long

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• [There's a] point where you have to leave the dough alone. It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. I have to admit, I often feel that way myself.

  Jodi Picoult

  Drama, Silly, Order

  Randy Susan Meyers, M. J. Rose, Ronlyn Domingue, Sarah Pekkanen, Jodi Picoult (2013). “Atria Book Club Bites: A Free Sampling of Ten Books Guaranteed to Feed Your Discussion”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

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• Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Education, Giving, Age

  "Manners and speech or maxims extracted from Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son". Book by Lord Chesterfield, 1884.

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• My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.

  Michel de Montaigne

  War, Home, Soul

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• The hardest thing of all for a soldier is to retreat.

  Duke of Wellington

  Military, War, Soldier

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• Running is just such a monastery- a retreat, a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal.

  George A. Sheehan

  Running, Spiritual, Psychological

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• Society is a republic. When an individual endeavors to lift himself above his fellows, he is dragged down by the mass, either by means of ridicule or of calumny. No one shall be more virtuous or more intellectually gifted than others. Whoever, by the irresistable force of genius, rises above the common herd is certain to be ostracized by society, which will pursue him with such merciless derision and detraction that at last he will be compelled to retreat into the solitude of his thoughts.

  Heinrich Heine

  Mean, Solitude, Individuality

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• The retreat and disappearance of glaciers—there are only 160,000 left—means we're burning libraries and damaging the planet, possibly beyond repair. Bit by bit, glacier by glacier, rib by rib, we're living the Fall.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Fall, Mean, Library

  Gretel Ehrlich (2010). “The Future of Ice: A Journey Into Cold”, p.53, Vintage

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• Never retire! Do what you do and keep doing it. But don't do it on Friday. Take Friday off. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, go fishing...Then Monday to Thursday, do what you've been doing all your life. My point is: Live full and don't retreat.

  Mel Brooks

  Friday, Monday, Sunday

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• I became so desperate that I considered throwing Eric [Beck] off the ledge. I thought I could get down and then lie about what had happened. To my addled brain, this was plausible. Then I came to my senses and woke Eric up and told him that either he had to retreat or I'd throw him off. We went down and I never climbed again for a quarter of a century.

  Dave Cook

  Lying, Climbing, Brain

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• That saint who advances on his knees never retreats.

  Jim Elliot

  Saint, Knees

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• The mountain decides whether you climb or not. The art of mountaineering is knowing when to go, when to stay, and when to retreat.

  Ed Viesturs

  Art, Knowing, Mountain

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• If I advance; follow me. If I retreat; kill me. If I die; avenge me! It is better to live one day as a lion than one-hundred years as a sheep!

  Benito Mussolini

  Sheep, Years, One Day

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• Prayers are designed to raise God-consciousness five times a day, throughout one's life. Prayers also provide regular exercise - like yoga or Tai Chi or Qigong built into the day - and serve as a calming retreat from the daily demands of life. Muslims thus learn to balance deeni wa dunyavi (the spiritual and the worldly). They can't abandon one for the other; that's the essence of their faith.

  Haroon Siddiqui

  Spiritual, Prayer, Yoga

  Haroon Siddiqui (2010). “Groundwork Being Muslim”, p.59, A&C Black

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