Retreat Quotes - Page 20

• What is needed [to combat terrorism], in my view, is resolve, not retreat; courage, not concession. Rather than thinking in terms of an exit strategy, focus on a strategy for success.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  Thinking, Views, Focus

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Perhaps dirt is the necessary condition of beauty.... Perhaps hygiene and art can never be bedfellows. No Verdi, after all, without spitting into trumpets. No Duse without a crowd of malodorous bourgeois giving one another their coryzas. And think of the inexpugnable retreats for microbes prepared by Michelangelo in the curls of Moses' beard!

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Reality, Thinking

  Aldous Huxley (1953). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• Many children grow through adolescence with no ripples whatever and land smoothly and predictably in the adult world with both feet on the ground. Some who have stumbled and bumbled through childhood suddenly burst into bloom. Most shake, steady themselves, zigzag, fight, retreat, pick up, take new bearings, and finally find their own true balance.

  Stella Chess

  Children, Fighting, Land

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• From time to time, to remind ourselves to relax and be peaceful, we may wish to set aside some time for a retreat, a day of mindfulness, when we can walk slowly, smile, drink tea with a friend, enjoy being together as if we are the happiest people on Earth.

  Nhat Hanh

  People, Peaceful, Tea

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2008). “Being Peace”, p.4, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• I have sort of a Zen body philosophy, I'm sort of like: we're one weight one day, we're one weight another day, and some day our body just doesn't even exist at all! It's just a vessel I've been given to move through this life. I think about my body as a tool to do the stuff I need to do, but not the be all and end all of my existence. Which sounds like I spent a week at a meditation retreat, but it's genuinely how I feel.

  Lena Dunham

  Philosophy, Moving, Thinking

  "Lena Dunham, Spanish magazine clash over alleged Photoshop used to slim her", www.foxnews.com. March 1, 2016.

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• Don't be afraid if things seem difficult in the beginning. That's only the initial impression. The important thing is not to retreat; you have to master yourself.

  Olga Korbut

  Recovery, New Beginnings, Gymnastics

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• Fate is a misplaced retreat. Many people rationalize an unexplained event as fate and shrug their shoulders when it occurs. But that is not what fate is. The world operates as a series of circles that are invisible, for they extend to the upper air. Fate is where these circles cut to earth. Since we cannot see them, do not know their content, and have no sense of their width, it is impossible to predict when these cuts will slice into our reality. When this happens, we call it fate. Fate is not a chance event but one that is inevitable, we are simply blind to its nature and time.

  James Levine

  Cutting, Fate, Reality

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• The plan of spiritual evolution is marked not only by God's will that we move ever in the direction of love, nut also by another of God's creative principles: that humanity has free will. What that means is that in any given moment, it is our choice whether we move toward love or retreat from it. What is not love is fear. But in the larger scheme of things, there is a limit past which lovelessness cannot remain. Fear is not life-giving enough to sustain itself. We can move in the direction of fear only so long before it brings us to our knees, or to our end.

  Marianne Williamson

  Spiritual, Moving, Mean

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• How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat, whom I may whisper, solitude is sweet.

  William Cowper

  Sweet, Loneliness, Solitude

  William Cowper, Robert Southey (1854). “The Works: Comprising His Poems, Correspondence and Translations : in Eight Volumes. ¬The poetical works, Vol. 1”, p.237

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• Let us fight the battle-retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us.

  Seneca the Younger

  Fighting, Battle, Action

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• All scientific theories are provisional and may be changed, but ... on the whole, they are accepted from Washington to Moscow because of their practical success. Where religion has opposed the findings of science, it has almost always had to retreat.

  Nevill Francis Mott

  Change, Success, Science

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• Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat?

  Charles Lamb

  Art, Science, World

  Charles Lamb, Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1850). “The Works of Charles Lamb: To which are Prefixed His Letters, and a Sketch of His Life”, p.292

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• In this Revolution, no plans have been written for retreat. Those who will not get into step will find that the parade has passed them by.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Civil Rights, Revolution, Steps

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2011). “Why We Can't Wait”, p.99, Beacon Press

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• When the individual is relieved of the obligation of self-respect, he acquires the habits of helplessness; he is inclined to retreat to the security of the prenatal state. The more he is taken care of the more he wants care.

  Frank Chodorov

  Taken, Self, Care

  Frank Chodorov (2007). “Income Tax: Root of All Evil”, p.59, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• United States has always been very close to Africa and it's very sad now to see that Africa has a lot more friends - a lot more engagements with the Chinese, with the Indians, with the Brazilians as the United States retreats. Actually, Africa is a wonderful place to do business and American business is missing a big opportunity by really overlooking Africa.

  Mo Ibrahim

  Opportunity, Missing, Chinese

  "Mo Ibrahim: The 'Bill Gates Of Africa'". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. April 25, 2013.

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• All basic scientists who look to the NCI for funding should know that I will tolerate no retreat on the study of model systems and the pursuit of fundamental biological principles.

  Harold E. Varmus

  Principles, Looks, Fundamentals

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• I see for Nature no defeat
  In one tree's overthrow
  Or for myself in my retreat
  For yet another blow.

  Robert Frost

  Nature, Blow, Tree

  David A. Sohn, Richard Tyre, Robert Frost (1969). “Frost: The Poet and His Poetry”

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• Earth does not understand her child,
  Who from the loud gregarious town
  Returns, depleted and defiled,
  To the still woods, to fling him down.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Children, Doe, Earth

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (1934). “Wine from these grapes”

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• Interventionism is inextricable from the American idea. If the United States retreats into isolationism, it ceases to be itself ? a nation dedicated, however much it falls short, to a universalist ideal of freedom.

  Roger Cohen

  Fall, Ideas, United States

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• In the last generation, with public Christianity in headlong retreat, we have caught our first, distant view of a de-Christianized world , and it is not encouraging.

  Paul Johnson

  Christian, Religious, Views

  Paul Johnson (2012). “History of Christianity”, p.720, Simon and Schuster

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• Every other year or so I go to one of those great generous places, the artist retreats. Some of the poems in The Beauty were written at the MacDowell Colony, in New Hampshire, and others at Civitella Ranieri, in Umbria.

  Jane Hirshfield

  Artist, Umbria, Years

  "Of Amplitude There Is No Scraping Bottom: An Interview with Jane Hirshfield". Interview with Rebecca Olson, tinhouse.com. March 16, 2015.

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• A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind.

  Chris Hedges

  Powerful, Lying, Ghetto

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• I think most people, when they take a look at the candidates and the positions of the candidates, realize that protecting this country and keeping this economy going are the two most important issues. And you can't protect the country if you retreat from overseas, and you can't keep the economy growing if you raise taxes. And that's exactly what the Democrats in the House would like to do.

  George W. Bush

  Country, Thinking, Two

  "President Bush Discusses Midterms; War on Terror Strategy With Sean Hannity". "Hannity & Colmes", www.foxnews.com. October 31, 2006.

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• Better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to speak out and confirm that you didn't do the assigned readings before the strategic planning retreat.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Reading, Speaks Out, Fool

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• Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Technology, Celebrate, Connectedness

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