Midst Quotes - Page 27

• I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster - the girls dance and dance and dance with their sweet lord, who has made himself so abundant as to be in the arms of each and every girl. But the moment the girls become possessive, the moment each one imagines that Krishna is her partner alone, he vanishes. So it is that we should not be jealous of God.

  Yann Martel

  Girl, Sweet, Jealous

  Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.80, Canongate Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I grew up in the midst of poverty but every black kid that I knew could read and write. We have to talk about the fact that we cannot educate for critical consciousness if we have a group of people who cannot access Fanon, Cabral, or Audre Lorde because they can’t read or write. How did Malcolm X radicalize his consciousness? He did it through books. If you deprive working-class and poor black people of access to reading and writing, you are making them that much farther removed from being a class that can engage in revolutionary resistance.

  Bell Hooks

  Book, Reading, Writing

  7 Copy quote

• We choose--or choose not--to be alone when we decide whom we will accept as our fellows, and whom we will reject. Thus an eremite in a mountain is in company, because the birds and coneys, the initiates whose words live in his 'forest books,' and the winds--the messengers of the Increate--are his companions. Another man, living in the midst of millions, may be alone, because there are none but enemies and victims around him.

  Gene Wolfe

  Book, Men, Wind

  5 Copy quote

• I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

  Saul Bellow

  Art, Prayer, Eye

  In George Plimpton Writers at Work (1967) 3rd series, p. 190

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child.

  John Irving

  Children, Couple, Divorce

  7 Copy quote

• Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.

  Bernard Beckett

  Fear, People, Monsters

  "Genesis". Book by Bernard Beckett, www.npr.org. 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• He was not oppressed by a crowd because in the midst of all the hullabaloo he always found a quiet place for his soul.

  Isabel Allende

  Soul, Crowds, Quiet

  5 Copy quote

• I have come to think that life is a far more limited thing than those in the midst of its maelstorm realize. That light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment -
  perhaps only a matter of seconds. Once it is gone and failed to grasp its offered revelation, there is no second chance. One may have to live the rest of one's life in hopeless depth of loneliness and remorse. In that twilight world, one can no longer look forward to anything. All that such a person holds in his hands is the withered corpse of what should have been.

  Haruki Murakami

  Loneliness, Twilight, Thinking

  "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Book by Haruki Murakami, August 25, 1995.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been a time when she'd felt a loneliness so deep that once, not so many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist's gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Kindness, Loneliness, Eye

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.224, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Here in this ocean, in the midst of all this water, with the red flags on those distant buoys flapping in the sea breeze, I find myself unable to treat our house in Tokyo as anything but a dream.

  Banana Yoshimoto

  Dream, Ocean, Sea Breeze

  Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich (2002). “Goodbye Tsugumi”, p.104, Grove Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tis a sad day when ye ha' t' pinch yerself t' see if ye're awake or in th' midst o' a night terror. 'Tis a really sad day when ye have t' pinch yerself twice." Old woman Nora to her three wee granddaughters on a cold winter's night

  Karen Hawkins

  Winter, Night, Granddaughter

  4 Copy quote

• I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Thinking, Names, Voice

  Jean-Paul Sartre (2013). “Nausea”, p.21, New Directions Publishing

  74 Copy quote

  Show source

• Having to read footnotes resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.

  Noel Coward

  Doors, Making Love, Answers

  14 Copy quote

• The point is the love story. We live in a love story in the midst of war.

  John Eldredge

  War, Stories, Love Story

  39 Copy quote

• Our tendency in the midst of suffering is to turn on God. To get angry and bitter and shake our fist at the sky and say, "God, you don't know what it's like! You don't understand! You have no idea what I'm going through. You don't have a clue how much this hurts." The cross is God's way of taking away all of our accusations, excuses, and arguments. The cross is God taking on flesh and blood and saying, "Me too.

  Rob Bell

  Hurt, Blood, Sky

  Rob Bell (2010). “Sex God”, p.76, Harper Collins

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• What did I really think fifteen years ago? A nonbeliever, I felt guilty in the midst of all those believers. And since it seemed to me that they were in the right, I decided to believe, as you might decide to take an aspirin: It can't hurt and you might get better.

  Umberto Eco

  Hurt, Believe, Thinking

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.61, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can’t bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that. Still, enveloped in the twilight coming from the west, there she was, watering the plants with her slender, graceful hands, in the midst of a light so sweet it seemed to form a rainbow in the transparent water she poured.

  Banana Yoshimoto

  Sweet, Twilight, Heart

  Banana Yoshimoto, Megan Backus (1979). “Three Plays”, p.42, Grove Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• One never quite allows for the moron in our midst.

  Agatha Christie

  Moron

  AGATHA CHRISTIE (1980). “MISS MARPLE MEETS MURDER”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

  John Keats

  Men, Age, This Generation

  "Ode on a Grecian Urn" l. 46 (1820)

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.

  Haruki Murakami

  Looks, Strange, Strange Days

  9 Copy quote

• New York was a city where you could be frozen to death in the midst of a busy street and nobody would notice.

  Bob Dylan

  New York, Cities, Frozen

  Bob Dylan (2011). “Chronicles”, p.158, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is true, Monsieur," Raoule went on, shrugging her shoulders, "that I have had lovers in my life as I have books in my library, to know, to study. But I have had no passion, I have not written my own book yet! I always found myself alone when we were two. One is not weak when one remains master of one's self in the midst of the most stupefying pleasures.

  Rachilde

  Book, Passion, Self

  4 Copy quote

• I have learned that in every circumstance that comes my way, I can choose to respond in one of two ways: I can whine or I can worship! And I can't worship without giving thanks. It just isn't possible. When we choose the pathway of worship and giving thanks, especially in the midst of difficult circumstances, there is a fragrance, a radiance, that issues forth out of our lives to bless the Lord and others.

  Nancy Leigh DeMoss

  Life, Thanksgiving, God

  91 Copy quote

• So, even in the midst of craziness and exhaustion and life-changing chaos, I was filled with peace and the sweet knowledge that I was walking the path my Goddess wanted me on. Not that that path was smooth and pothole free. But still, it was my path, and like me, it was bound to be unique." Untamed

  P. C. Cast

  Sweet, Life Changing, Unique

  8 Copy quote

• Long have you timidly waded Holding a plank by the shore, Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, To jump off in the midst of the sea, Rise again, nod to me, shout, And laughingly dash with your hair.

  Walt Whitman

  Hair, Sea, Long

  Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.76, NYU Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source