Retreat Quotes - Page 14

• What others regard as retreat from them or rejection of them is not those things at all but instead a breeding ground for greater friendship, a culture for deeper involvement, eventually, with them.

  Doris Grumbach

  Rejection, Solitude, Culture

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Fifty Days of Solitude: A Memoir”, p.56, Open Road Media

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• In no other field has the world yet paid so dearly for the abandonment of nineteenth-century liberalism as in the field where the retreat began: in international relations. Yet only a small part of the lesson which experience ought to have taught us has been learned.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Taught Us, World, Lessons

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 15 : The Prospects of International Order, 1940 - 1943.

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• Americans have always held firm, because we have always believed in certain truths. We know that if evil is not confronted, it gains in strength and audacity and returns to strike us again. We know that when the work is hard, the proper response is not retreat, it is courage. And we know that a great ideal of human freedom entrusted to us in a special way and that the ideal of liberty is worth defending.

  George W. Bush

  Evil, Special, Liberty

  George W. Bush's address to the Nation in Fort Bragg, North Carolina,, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. June 28, 2005.

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• The hardest thing of all for a soldier is to retreat.

  Duke of Wellington

  Military, War, Soldier

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• My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.

  Michel de Montaigne

  War, Home, Soul

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• She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats.

  Bernhard Schlink

  Struggle, Victory, Defeat

  Bernhard Schlink (2001). “The Reader”, p.134, Vintage

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• Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats 5 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10 Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

  T. S. Eliot

  Night, Oysters, Talking

  "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" l. 13 (1917)

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• Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.

  Eduardo Galeano

  Lying, Two, Horizon

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• Is there some particular reason that you're here?" ... "Not this again." "Not what again?" said Clary. "Every time I annoy him, he retreats into his No Mundanes Allowed tree house." Simon pointed at Jace.

  Cassandra Clare

  House, Tree, Annoying

  Cassandra Clare (2010). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (3 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass”, p.548, Simon and Schuster

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• I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

  J. K. Rowling

  What Matters, Careers, Long

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• I am a nice young girl here to pick up your granddaughter for the weekend... We're going to a Bible retreat to scare the devil out of her. - Bones to Cat's grandparents

  Jeaniene Frost

  Girl, Nice, Cat

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• Knowledge is a comfortable and necessary retreat and shelter for us in an advanced age; and if we do not plant it while young, it will give us no shade when we grow old.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Education, Giving, Age

  "Manners and speech or maxims extracted from Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son". Book by Lord Chesterfield, 1884.

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• Again I take a taxi to Clichy address, but feel that I do not want to go on loving Henry more actively than he loves me (having realized that nobody will ever love me in that overabundant, overexpressive, overthoughtful, overhuman way I love people), and so I will wait for him. So I ask taxi driver to drop me at the Galeries Lafayette, where I begin to look for a new hat and to shop for Christmas. Pride? I don't know. A kind of wise retreat. I need people too much. So I bury my gigantic defect, my overflow of love, under trivialities, like a child. I amuse myself with a new hat.

  Anais Nin

  Wise, Children, Pride

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• Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.

  Gregory Maguire

  Guilt, World, Faces

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• There are moments in life when a man retreats defensively, when he must give ground, when he must surrender less important positions in order to protect the more important ones. But should it come to the very last, the most important one, at this point a man must halt and stand firm if he doesn't want to begin life all over again with idle hands and a feeling of being shipwrecked.

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Hands, Order

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• I am like a snake who has already bitten. I retreat from a direct battle while knowing the slow effect of the poison.

  Anais Nin

  Snakes, Knowing, Battle

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• When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Real, Stupid, Silly

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• The female of all species are most dangerous when they appear to retreat.

  Don Marquis

  Female, Dangerous, Species

  Don Marquis (1950). “The lives and times of Archy and Mehitabel”, Doubleday Books

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• You think that you are an iconoclast, but you’re not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Break Up, Breakup, Betrayal

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• Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.

  Kiran Desai

  Loss, Contentment, Desire

  FaceBook post by Kiran Desai from Jan 13, 2013

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• [There's a] point where you have to leave the dough alone. It's silly to anthropomorphize bread, but I love the fact that it needs to sit quietly, to retreat from touch and noise and drama, in order to evolve. I have to admit, I often feel that way myself.

  Jodi Picoult

  Drama, Silly, Order

  Randy Susan Meyers, M. J. Rose, Ronlyn Domingue, Sarah Pekkanen, Jodi Picoult (2013). “Atria Book Club Bites: A Free Sampling of Ten Books Guaranteed to Feed Your Discussion”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

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• How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal.

  E. M. Forster

  Country, Home, Men

  E. M. Forster (2010). “A Passage to India”, p.136, RosettaBooks

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• I think a lot of Hollywood is in retreat right now trying to figure out how to make money and make the safest bets.

  Judd Apatow

  Thinking, Trying, Hollywood

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• Running is just such a monastery- a retreat, a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal.

  George A. Sheehan

  Running, Spiritual, Psychological

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• Our policy is simple: We are not going to betray our friends, reward the enemies of freedom, or permit fear and retreat to become American policies — especially in this hemisphere. None of the four wars in my lifetime came about because we were too strong.

  Ronald Reagan

  Leadership, Strong, War

  "Ronald Reagan".

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