Granted Quotes - Page 22

• Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them. Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed. I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room. The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love. My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Art, Prayer, Fear

  Rabindranath Tagore (2013). “Gitanjali - Song Offerings”, p.28, Read Books Ltd

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• Without a yardstick sometimes the high points can be taken for granted.

  Jasper Fforde

  Taken, Yardsticks, Sometimes

  "The Eyre Affair". Book by Jasper Fforde, July 19, 2001.

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• We fly, but we have not 'conquered' the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and the use of such of her forces as we may understand. It is when we presume to intimacy, having been granted only tolerance, that the harsh stick fall across our impudent knuckles and we rub the pain, staring upward, startled by our ignorance.

  Beryl Markham

  Nature, Pain, Fall

  Beryl Markham (1994). “The Illustrated West with the Night”, Stewart, Tabori, & Chang

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• That did it. I'd gone through a lot in the past few days. Everyone I met seemed to want a piece of me: djinn, magicians, humans...it made no difference.I'd been summoned, manhandled, shot at, captured, constricted, bossed about and generally taken for granted. And now, to cap it all, this bloke is joining in too, when all I'd been doing was quietly trying to kill him.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Taken, Past, Joining In

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• Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Thinking, Trying

  FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from Jan 22, 2017

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• But also I wanted him to go away and leave me be. I was granted one weak grace. Back in the room where the green chair was still warm from his body, I blew that lonely, flickering candle out

  Alice Sebold

  Lonely, Grace, Going Away

  Alice Sebold (2014). “The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic”, p.103, Pan Macmillan

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• Nothing could be taken for granted. Women who loved you tried to cut your throat, while women who didn't even know your name scrubbed your back. Witches could sound like Katharine Hepburn and your best friend could try to strangle you. Smack in the middle of an orchid there might be a blob of jello and inside a Mickey Mouse doll, a fixed and radiant star.

  Toni Morrison

  Stars, Taken, Cutting

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• We humans...are seriously flawed. The things that are the most necessary, the most critical to us, are the things we take most for granted. Air. Water. Love. If you have someone to love, you are lucky. If they love you back, you're blessed. And if you waste the time you have to love them, you're a fool. -The Christmas List- p. 296

  Richard Paul Evans

  Blessed, Love You, Air

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• I sat thinking how terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as incredible as living. One day we suddenly take the fact that we exist for granted - and then, yes, then we don’t think about it anymore until we are about to leave the world again.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Thinking, People, One Day

  Jostein Gaarder (2003). “The Solitaire Mystery”, p.362, Macmillan

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• You have to get away from them. You have to get as far away as you can otherwise they'll kill you with their lives. They don't know what they do. They are careless with themselves and they take too much for granted. They make their shortcomings your problem. The only way to keep your head above it and heal your wounds is to crawl away.

  Henry Rollins

  Too Much, Way, Problem

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• She could ask for anything, she thought dizzily, anything--an end to pain or world hunger or disease, or for peace on earth. But then again, perhaps these things weren't in the power of angels to grant, or they would already have been granted. And perhaps people were supposed to find these things for themselves.

  Cassandra Clare

  Pain, Angel, People

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels”, p.1245, Simon and Schuster

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• Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can make only one decision; we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various decisions.

  Milan Kundera

  Decision, Reason, Given

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• The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Happiness, Selfish, Discipline

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• Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by each of us and known to all, seldom rates a second thought. That mystery, which most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time. Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it. Time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart.

  Michael Ende

  Heart, Thinking, Calendars

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• You live your life like it’s a rare treasure to be savored. You take pleasure from the simplest of things and you never take them for granted. I saw the joy on your face and the life in your eyes when you cradled the permits to your chest. I’ve never seen anything lovelier. I actually thought you would cry just from the joy of touching them. I’ve been numb all my life, Megeara, but you…you feel on a level that I can’t even imagine, and for a little while I wanted to feel that, too. (Arik)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Eye, Joy, Live Your Life

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• It's funny, but have you ever noticed that the more special something is, the more people seem to take it for granted? It's like they think it won't ever change. Just like this house here. All it ever needed was a little attention, and it would never have ended up like this in the first place.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Gratitude, Appreciation, Thinking

  "The Wedding". Book by Nicholas Sparks, September 2003.

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• What was wrong with me? I had a decent life. I was healthy. I wasn't starving or maimed by a land mine or orphaned. Yet somehow, it wasn't enough. I had a hole in me, and everything I took for granted slipped through it like sand. I felt like I had swallowed yeast, like whatever evil was festering inside me had doubled in size.

  Jodi Picoult

  Land, Evil, Healthy

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Collection #4: Change of Heart, Handle with Care, and House Rules”, p.788, Simon and Schuster

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• This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.

  James A. Baldwin

  Taken, Moments, Made

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• Kiran says (the shelf) is full of stories. If it is, then I like fairy stories. Fairy stories are fair. In them wishes are granted, words are enchanted, the honest and brave make it safely through to the last page and the baddies either have to give up their wickedness for ever and ever, no going back, or get ruthlessly written out of the story, which they hardly ever survive. Also in fairy stories there are hardly any of those half-good half-bad people that crop up so constantly in real life and are so difficult to believe in.

  Hilary McKay

  Giving Up, Real, Believe

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• She had been wrong to think it wouldn't matter that much to him, yes,He took her for granted, of course he did , but he took her for granted - not like an old coat in the corner of a dark cupboard, as she'd put it to herself , but like the very air that he breathed .

  Ahdaf Soueif

  Dark, Thinking, Air

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• Do you forget that I am your sister?” “No; I’ve never been granted the opportunity to forget it.

  Georgette Heyer

  Opportunity, Forget, Forget It

  Georgette Heyer (2011). “Frederica”, p.8, Random House

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• ....I understood why those who had lived through war or economic disasters, and who had built for themselves a good life and a high standard of living, were rightly proud to be able to provide for their children those things which they themselves had not had. And why their children, inevitably, took those things for granted. It meant that new values and new expectations had crept into our societies along with new standards of living. Hence the materialistic and often greedy and selfish lifestyle of so many young people in the Western world, especially in the United States.

  Jane Goodall

  Children, Good Life, Selfish

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• Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Taken, Simple, World

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• But wishes are only granted in fairy tales.

  Simone Elkeles

  Wish, Fairy Tale, Chemistry

  "Perfect Chemistry". Book by Simone Elkeles, 2008.

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• The tension of opposites: Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn't. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.

  Morrie Schwartz

  Hurt, Tuesdays With Morrie, Opposites

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