Retreat Quotes - Page 16

• Remember the high board at the swimming pool? After days of looking up at it you finally climbed the wet steps to the platform. From there, it was higher than ever. There were only two ways down: the steps to defeat of the dive to victory. You stood on the edge, shivering in the hot sun, deathly afraid. At last you leaned too far forward, it was too late for retreat, and you dived. The high board was conquered, and you spent the rest of the day diving. Climbing a thousand high boards, we demolish fear, and turn into human beings.

  Richard Bach

  Life, Adventure, Swimming

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• I anticipate with pleasing expectations that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.

  George Washington

  Sweet, Retirement, Freedom

  George Washington (1851). “The life of General Washington: first president of the United States”, p.337

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• In our Ashrams of East and West, places of spiritual retreat, we begin with what we call "The Morning of the Open Heart," in which we tell our needs. . . . We give four or five hours to this catharsis. The reaction of one member, who listened to it for the first time, was: "Good gracious, have we all the disrupted people in the country here?" My reply was: "No, you have a cross section of the church life honestly revealed." In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to a appear better than we really are.

  E. Stanley Jones

  Country, Spiritual, Morning

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• Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.

  Steven Erikson

  War, Dark, Light

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• Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Inspirational, Life Changing, Rooms

  Cheryl Strayed (2012). “Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found”, p.107, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Age should fly concourse, cover in retreat defects of judgment, and the will subdue; walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore of that vast ocean it must sail so soon.

  Edward Young

  Ocean, Thoughtful, Silence

  Edward Young, John Doran, James Nichols (1854). “The Complete Works, Poetry and Prose of the Rev. Edward Young, LL.D.: Revised and Collated with the Earliest Editions. To which is Prefixed A Life of the Author”, p.82

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• Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.

  John Taylor Gatto

  Children, Kids, Class

  John Taylor Gatto (2017). “Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling”, p.53, New Society Publishers

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• You're in a terrible spot. It's too late for you to retreat but too soon to act. All you can do is witness. You're in the miserable position of an infant who cannot return to the mother's womb, but neither can he run around and act. All an infant can do is witness and listen to the stupendous tales of action being told to him. You are at that precise point now. You cannot go back to the womb of your old world, but you cannot act with power either. For you there is only witnessing acts of power and listening to tales of power.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Mother, Running, Listening

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• I simply don't shine in company. Mostly I prefer to retreat with a book.

  Barbara Hambly

  Book, Shining, Company

  Barbara Hambly (2011). “Bride of the Rat God”, p.36, Open Road Media

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• Solitary. But not in the sense of being alone. Not solitary in the way Thoreau was, for example, exiling himself in order to find out where he was; not solitary in the way Jonah was, praying for deliverance in the belly of the whale. Solitary in the sense of retreat. In the sense of not having to see himself, of not having to see himself being seen by anyone else.

  Paul Auster

  Order, Whales, Example

  Paul Auster (2007). “The Invention of Solitude”, p.34, Penguin

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• The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat into anxious introspection when, as Emerson might have said, there is a vast world outside to explore? Why spend so much time working on oneself when there is so much real work to be done?

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Real, Understanding, Might

  Barbara Ehrenreich (2009). “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”, p.76, Macmillan

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• I'll never look at you in any way but complete admiration.” He stroked her hair soothingly. “You will never be a millstone about my neck. Rather you're the sunshine that brightens my day.” He swallowed. “Don't you see? You brought me into the daylight. You've embraced parts of me that I was never able to let see light. Don't make me retreat again into the night. (Winter Makepeace)

  Elizabeth Hoyt

  Sunshine, Winter, Night

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• The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity.’ The child enjoys his cold meat, otherwise dull to him, by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savory for having been dipped in a story…by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wise, Horse, Children

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “Image and Imagination”, p.108, Cambridge University Press

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• Any man who retreats into a cave which has only one opening deserves to die.

  Frank Herbert

  Men, Caves, Opening

  Frank Herbert (2003). “Dune”, p.189, Penguin

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• Their leaving made me melancholy, though I also felt something like relief when they disappeared into the dark trees. I hadn't needed to get anything from my pack; I'd only wanted to be alone. Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Dark, Tree, Leaving

  Cheryl Strayed (2012). “Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found”, p.107, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man's intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man's self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.

  Francis Bacon

  Fall, Men, Self

  Francis Bacon (2016). “Essays”, p.16, Jazzybee Verlag

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• There is no shame in strategic retreat if it lets you remain strong enough to go after the enemy later.

  Jane Lindskold

  Strong, Enemy, Shame

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• Say a word, say a thousand to me on the telephone and I shall choose the wrong one to cling to as though you had said it after long deliberation when only I provoked it from you, I will cling to it from among a thousand, to be provoked and hurl it back with something I mean no more than you meant that, something for you to cling to and retreat clinging to.

  William Gaddis

  Mean, Long, Telephones

  William Gaddis (1955). “The Recognitions: A Novel”, Harcourt

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• as the shadows assume shapes I fight the slow retreat now my once-promise dwindling dwindling now lighting new cigarettes pouring more drinks it has been a beautiful fight still is.

  Charles Bukowski

  Beautiful, Fighting, Promise

  Charles Bukowski (2009). “You Get So Alone at Times”, p.43, Harper Collins

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• The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one's own style and creatively adjust this to one's author.

  Paul Goodman

  Style, Language, Problem

  Paul Goodman (1966). “Five years”

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• I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add it to my reading list. Then I'd follow another link to a book review. I'd add the review to my reading list, too, then download the first chapter of the book—third in a series about vampire police. Then, help-wanted ads forgotten, I'd retreat to the living room, put my laptop on my belly, and read all day. I had a lot of free time.

  Robin Sloan

  Reading, Book, Wine

  Robin Sloan (2012). “Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore”, p.7, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• He was rewarded with a silver-and-red can of soda. He brandished it at the dolphin warriors as if spraying them with bug repellant. "Behold!" Percy shouted. "The god's chosen beverage. Tremble before the horror of Diet Coke!" The dolphin-men began to panic. They were on the edge of retreat. Percy could feel it.

  Rick Riordan

  Warrior, Men, Dolphins

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• Feeling real is more than existing; it is finding a way to exist as oneself... and to have a self into which to retreat for relaxation.

  Donald Woods Winnicott

  Real, Self, Feelings

  Donald Woods Winnicott (2005). “Playing and Reality”, p.158, Psychology Press

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• Don't fret, Grannie. We're going to a Bible retreat to scare the devil out of her

  Jeaniene Frost

  Devil, Scare

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• Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / 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.../ Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?' / Let us go and make our visit"' 'I'm in love with you,' he said quietly.

  John Green

  Love You, Night, Oysters

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.90, Penguin

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