Withdrawing Quotes

• A Christian who withdraws into himself, hiding all that the Lord has given him, is not a Christian! I would ask the many young people present to be generous with their God-given talents for the good of others, the Church and our world.

  Pope Francis

  God, Christian, Religious

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• It really is easy to forget the unpleasant if we simply refuse to recall it. Withdraw only positive thoughts from your memory bank. Let the others fade away. And your confidence, that feeling of being on top of the world, will zoom up-ward. You take a big step forward toward conquering your fear when you refuse to remember negative, self-deprecating thoughts.

  David J. Schwartz

  Happiness, Memories, Self

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• Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers.

  Peter Matthiessen

  Life, Beauty, Spiritual

  Peter Matthiessen (1998). “Nine-Headed Dragon River: Zen Journals 1969-1982”, p.8, Shambhala Publications

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• The ocean is like a checking account where everybody withdraws but nobody makes a deposit. This is what's happening because of overfishing.

  Enric Sala

  Ocean, Deposits, Overfishing

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• It is not the distance of the earth from the sun, nor the sun's withdrawing itself, that makes a dark and gloomy day; but the interposition of clouds and vaporous exhalations. Neither is thy soul beyond the reach of the promise, nor does God withdraw Himself; but the vapours of thy carnal, unbelieving heart do cloud thee.

  John Owen

  Distance, Heart, Dark

  John Owen (1904). “The Golden Book of John Owen: Passages from the Writings of the Rev. John Owen, M.A., D.D., Sometime Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and Dean of Christ Church”

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  I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Friendship, Sad, Philosophy

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: 1799-1803”, p.130, Cosimo, Inc.

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• He grunted and stirred, withdrawing from her. She only had a moment to be disappointed and then he flipped her to her back and rose over her, powerful and male. He casually parted her legs with his knees and thrust into her again, hot and hard. She gasped at the swift invasion, the lovely feeling, and then his face was next to hers, his big palms cradling her cheeks. “What I want,” he drawled, “is ye. Nothin’ else.

  Elizabeth Hoyt

  Powerful, Rose, Feelings

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• You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wisdom, Loneliness, Men

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.173, Courier Corporation

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• Prayer is naught but a rising desire of the heart into God by withdrawing of the heart from all earthly thoughts.

  Walter Hilton

  Prayer, Heart, Desire

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• Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of his mind where he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself when he could not bear to be a part of what was going on around him. From it he could see out and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place where he felt free of the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it he could see her with absolute clarity.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Mother, Judging, Mind

  Flannery O'Connor (1965). “Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories”, p.11, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• God, if ever I have come close to wanting to commit suicide, it is now, with the groggy sleepless blood dragging through my veins, and the air thick and gray with rain ... I fell into bed again this morning, begging for sleep, withdrawing into the dark, warm, fetid escape from action, from responsibility. No good.

  Sylvia Plath

  Suicide, Morning, Rain

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.149, Anchor

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• Globally, as the nation-state becomes increasingly less meaningful - a provider of positive goods and more and more just an army and some domestic enforcement - people are withdrawing to shape and support more localised forms of organisation and power. To the extent that it's part of that civilised and localising world, the same is true of the U.S.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Meaningful, Army, People

  "The growth of local power is a bright spot in seven bleak years of Bush" by Rebecca Solnit, www.theguardian.com. December 28, 2007.

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• Gaiaguys are free to think for themselves, and since their translations of our texts - even if these are of a preliminary nature - are sought for by many people, we see no reason for withdrawing our permission.

  Billy Meier

  Thinking, People, Reason

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• If Paulus's army had capitulated before the end, the Russians would have had the advantage of withdrawing forces against Paulus and against the southern front, where I had only two Romanian armies. Therefore, the resistance of the Sixth German Army, even to the death of the last man, was necessary.

  Erich von Manstein

  Army, Men, Two

  "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, 2004.

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• I was very bored at school. I found it very easy and slow and grey. My teachers didn't really know how to handle me, because I was very sarcastic. I was over-confident, arrogant, a typical youngest child. I went through periods of withdrawing into myself and school psychologists tried to figure me out, work out why I didn't fit in. I found that irritating, too.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Sarcastic, Teacher, Children

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• Who could deny that privacy is a jewel? It has always been the mark of privilege, the distinguishing feature of a truly urbane culture. Out of the cave, the tribal teepee, the pueblo, the community fortress, man emerged to build himself a house of his own with a shelter in it for himself and his diversions. Every age has seen it so. The poor might have to huddle together in cities for need's sake, and the frontiersman cling to his neighbors for the sake of protection. But in each civilization, as it advanced, those who could afford it chose the luxury of a withdrawing-place.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Men, Jewels, Civilization

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• Wikipedia, every day, is tens of thousands of people inputting information, and every day millions of people withdrawing that information. It's a perfect image for the fundamental point that no one of us is as smart as all of us thinking together.

  James G. Stavridis

  Smart, Thinking, People

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• The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.

  Matthew Arnold

  Faith, Night, Wind

  "Dover Beach" l. 21 (1867)

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• If you overcome your fear to ask someone for a date, a raise, or help with a project, that is an act of self-assertiveness. You are moving out into life rather than contracting and withdrawing.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Fear, Moving, Self

  Nathaniel Branden (1998). “Nathaniel Brandens Self-Esteem Every Day: Reflections on Self-Esteem and Spirituality”, p.208, Simon and Schuster

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• When your body, mind and soul are healthy and harmonious, you will bring health and harmony to the world- not by withdrawing from the world, but by being a healthy, living organ of the body of humanity.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Healthy, Soul, Humanity

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• At this time of crisis we cannot be concerned solely with ourselves, withdrawing into loneliness, discouragement and a sense of powerlessness in the face of problems. Please do not withdraw into yourselves! This is a danger: we shut ourselves up in the parish, with our friends, within the movement, with the like-minded... but do you know what happens? When the Church becomes closed, she becomes an ailing Church, she falls ill! That is a danger. . . .A Church closed in on herself is the same, a sick Church.

  Pope Francis

  Loneliness, Fall, Sick

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• I lay and cried, and began to feel again, to admit I was human, vulnerable, sensitive. I began to remember how it had been before; how there was that germ of positive creativeness. Character is fate; and damn, I'd better work on my character. I had been withdrawing into a retreat of numbness: it is so much safer to NOT feel, NOT to let the world touch one.

  Sylvia Plath

  Character, Fate, Numbness

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.64, Anchor

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• In some instances even certain social services that normally were supplied, or pre-empted by the state. Take the United States, the [Ronald] Reagan administration is withdrawing assistance, all kinds of welfare programs, and if people don't improvise their own resources to cope with problems of the ageing, problems of the sick, problems of the young, problems of the poor, problems of tenant rights, who will?

  Murray Bookchin

  Rights, Welfare Programs, People

  Source: robertgraham.wordpress.com

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• When there is a gap between what's on the outside and what's on the inside, that's when people retreat into their foxholes because it is an unsafe situation. You don't know what you are dealing with. What you see is not what you are going to get. And that is when people start withdrawing.

  Parker J. Palmer

  People, Foxholes, Gaps

  Source: www.youthworker.com

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• Humility sets us free to do what is really good, by showing us our illusions and withdrawing our will from what was only an apparent good.

  Thomas Merton

  Humility, Illusion

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.73, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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