Encounters Quotes

• We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Book, Sight, People

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2012). “Crime and Punishment”, p.11, Vintage

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• Nothing is so irretrievably missed as an opportunity we encounter every day.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Opportunity

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• Stupidity is always astounding, no matter how often one encounters it.

  Jean Cocteau

  Stupidity, Matter

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• What I know for sure is that your life is a multipart series of all your experiences- and each experience is created by your thoughts, intentions, and actions to teach you what you need to know. Your life is a journey of learning to love yourself first and then extending that love to others in every encounter.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Love, Journey, Experience

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• Your life is a journey of learning to love yourself first and then extending that love to others in every encounter.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Relationship, Love You, Journey

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• Chess holds deep wisdoms of the people. It is truly an image of life, the reflection of human fate that has shown us the earthly way of suffering in darkness and permanent shortage of time. Like in chess, we encounter all kinds of traps, mistakes, settlements, sacrifices, kings, and queens, doubled pawns, and extraordinary moves while we are on the board ourselves.

  Pope John Paul II

  Queens, Kings, Mistake

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• There is nothing good that does not meet with opposition, and it should not be valued any less because it encounters objections.

  Vincent de Paul

  Wisdom, Doe, Should

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1985). “Correspondence, Conferences, Documents: Apr. 1650-July 1653”

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• It is neither a culture of confrontation nor a culture of conflict which builds harmony within and between peoples, but rather a culture of encounter and a culture of dialogue; this is the only way to peace.

  Pope Francis

  Culture, Way, Conflict

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• In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university there is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by the group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other group can say.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wisdom, Thinking, Differences

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• Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which-miraculously, it seems-merge into a significant event. It provides the neatest paradigm of the bisociation of previously separate contexts, engineered by fate. Coincidences are puns of destiny. In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot; in the coincidental happening, two strings of events are knitted together by invisible hands.

  Arthur Koestler

  Fate, Destiny, Hands

  "Bricks to Babel". Book by Arthur Koestler, 1980.

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• Solitude is the place of purification and transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter.

  Henri Nouwen

  Struggle, Solitude, Transformation

  Henri J. M. Nouwen (2016). “The Spiritual Life: Eight Essential Titles by Henri Nouwen”, p.20, HarperCollins

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• God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints.

  Avicenna

  Spiritual, Essence, Space

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  The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.

  Paulo Coelho

  Love, Life, Patience

  FaceBook post by Paulo Coelho from Jul 31, 2016

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• I may be mistaken but it seems to me that a man may be judged by his laugh, and that if at first encounter you like the laugh of a person completely unknown to you, you may say with assurance that he is good.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Laughing, May

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• We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring, lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other. And then this moment will have been worthwhile.

  Deepak Chopra

  Love, Caring, Joy

  Deepak Chopra (2010). “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams”, p.76, Amber-Allen Publishing

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• Of all bad listeners, the worst and most terrible to encounter is the man who is so fond of listening that he wishes to hear, not only your conversation, but that of every other person in the room.

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Listening, Wish

  charles dickens (1874). “all the year round”, p.181

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• While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.

  Brennan Manning

  Spiritual, Past, Simple

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• I have seen some who did not know when to turn aside their eyes in meeting yours. A truly confident and magnanimous spirit is wiser than to contend for the mastery in such encounters. Serpents alone conquer by the steadiness of their gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees me, that is all.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Eye, Snakes

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.496, Simon and Schuster

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• Human beings cannot endure the geological chaos they encounter under the soil of their own gardens.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Garden, Soil, Chaos

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• It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.

  Guy de Maupassant

  Life Worth Living, Worth Living

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• We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice.

  Pope Paul VI

  Christmas, Faith, Xmas

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• In an age of synthetic images and synthetic emotions, the chances of an accidental encounter with reality are remote indeed.

  Serge Daney

  Reality, Age, Chance

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• Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Funny, Morning, Time

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• You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

  Maya Angelou

  Moving On, Spiritual, Strong Women

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from May 01, 2009

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• I found that when I did something for the sake of heaven, heaven happened. These things changed my life. I owe them to my encounter with Christianity.

  Lionel Blue

  Heaven, Sake, Things Change

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