Retreat Quotes - Page 19

• When the mind grasps the universe, the senses retreat.

  Subhash Kak

  Mind, Senses, Universe

  "The Prajna-sutras: Aphorisms of Intuition". Book by Subhash Kak, 2007.

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• A mother and daughter are an edge.
  Edges are ecotones, transitional zones,
  places of danger or opportunity.
  House-dwelling tension.
  When I stand on the edge of the land and sea,
  I feel this tension, this fluid line of transition.
  High tide. Low tide.
  It is the sea's reach and retreat
  that reminds me
  we have been human
  for only a very short time.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Daughter, Mother, Opportunity

  Terry Tempest Williams (2012). “When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice”, p.15, Macmillan

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• I retreat to my cave in a very male fashion.

  Ed Stoppard

  Fashion, Males, Caves

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• The terrorists believe that free societies are essentially corrupt and decadent and, with a few hard blows, they can force us to retreat. They are mistaken.

  George W. Bush

  Believe, Blow, Force

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

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• Our language, once homely and colloquial, seeks to aggrandize our meanest activities with polysyllabic terms or it retreats from frankness into a stammering verbosity.

  Mary McCarthy

  Language, Stammering, Term

  Mary McCarthy (1985). “Occasional prose”, Harcourt

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• When there is no possibility of retreat, we will find the innovation that only the liminal situation can bring. In short, we find the faith of leap.

  Alan Hirsch

  Innovation, Possibility, Situation

  Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch (2011). “The Faith of Leap (Shapevine): Embracing a Theology of Risk, Adventure & Courage”, p.101, Baker Books

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• Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded in ebullient despatches as the enemy falls back; then the beginning of a long, morale-sapping trudge with rations getting shorter and the first snowflakes upon your face. The enemy burns Moscow and you yield to General January, whose fingernails are very icicles. Bitter retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually you fall beneath a boy-gunner's grapeshot while crossing some Polish river not even marked on your general's map.

  Julian Barnes

  Fall, Boys, Yield

  "Talking It Over". Book by Julian Barnes, books.google.ru. February 23, 2010.

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• I'm not surprised that people are unsettled because of war. The enemy has got a powerful tool, and that is to get on your TV screen by killing innocent people. And my job is to continue to remind the people it's worth it, we're not going to retreat hastily, and we're not going to pull out of there before the job is done. And we have got a plan for victory.

  George W. Bush

  Jobs, Powerful, War

  "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, www.nbcnews.com. May 22, 2006.

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• The changes in the Catholic Church since Vatican II can certainly be scanned in terms of this long retreat from the sacred which has followed the inception of consciousness into the human species.

  Julian Jaynes

  Long, Catholic, Church

  "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes, (Book III, Chapter 6, p. 439), 1976.

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• Millions of Americans would still despair in the eight long years of the Depression that lay ahead and many of their individual dreams would be dashed on the rocks of economic hardship. But collectively, the country was in a new place, with a new confidence that the federal government would actively try to solve problems rather than fiddle or cater to the rich. Hope was no longer for Pollyannas; the cynics about the American system were in retreat.

  Jonathan Alter

  Dream, Country, Eight

  Jonathan Alter (2007). “The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope”, p.306, Simon and Schuster

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• Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Country, Art, Men

  Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2016). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Golden Sayings, Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus, Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.38, Enhanced Media Publishing

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• The heavy casualties, the constant retreat, the shortage of food and munitions, the difficulty of receiving reinforcements... all this had a very bad effect on morale. Many longed to get across the Volga, to escape the hell of Stalingrad.

  Vasily Chuikov

  Receiving, Reinforcement, Hell

  "Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army". Book by Catherine Merridale, p. 174, 2007.

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• I like the idea of going to one of those retreats where you don't speak - like, silence for five days.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Ideas, Silence, Speak

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• There's a cool web of language winds us in, Retreat from too much joy or too much fear: We grow sea-green at last and coldly die In brininess and volubility.

  Robert Graves

  Wind, Sea, Joy

  'The Cool Web' (1927)

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• Each of the major sciences has contributed an essential ingredient in our long retreat from an initial belief in our own cosmic importance. Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among millions; biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God; geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our own species has occupied.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Home, Average, Taught Us

  Stephen Jay Gould (1992). “Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History”, p.147, W. W. Norton & Company

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• But it is evident, that these bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than felt; thousands and ten thousands flourish in youth, and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domestic evils, and share the same pleasures and vexa­tions, whether their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country pursue their enemies or retreat before them.

  Samuel Johnson

  Country, Kings, Army

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1857). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.474

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• In a retreat the lame are formost.
  [In a retreat the lame are foremost.]

  George Herbert

  Lame

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• Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Greek, World

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.195, Routledge

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• Life doesn't retreat.

  Dan Simmons

  Life

  Dan Simmons (2011). “Rise of Endymion”, p.537, Spectra

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• When the corpses are cleared no new order will emerge. Power, society, relationships, will descend in all their confusion on a new generation. The old, who started this conflagration, will retreat, worn out, the survivors and the young will continue the dance.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Order, Confusion, Survivor

  Rita Mae Brown (2017). “Six of One”, p.100, Bantam

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• If you view everything through the lens of fear, then you tend to stay in retreat mode. You can just as easily see a crises or problem as a challenge, an opportunity to prove your mettle, the chance to strengthen and toughen yourself, or a call to collective action. By seeing it as a challenge, you will have converted this negative into a positive purely by a mental process that will result in positive action as well.

  Robert Greene

  Opportunity, Views, Challenges

  50 Cent, Robert Greene (2010). “The 50th Law”, p.6, Profile Books

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• Man is but mortal: and there is a point beyond which human courage cannot extend. Mr. Pickwick gazed through his spectacles for an instant on the advancing mass, and then fairly turned his back and-we will not say fled; firstly, because it is an ignoble term, and, secondly, because Mr. Pickwick's figure was by no means adapted for that mode of retreat-he trotted away, at as quick a rate as his legs would convey him;.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Humorous, Mean

  Charles Dickens (1870). “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”, p.31

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• Perhaps dirt is the necessary condition of beauty.... Perhaps hygiene and art can never be bedfellows. No Verdi, after all, without spitting into trumpets. No Duse without a crowd of malodorous bourgeois giving one another their coryzas. And think of the inexpugnable retreats for microbes prepared by Michelangelo in the curls of Moses' beard!

  Aldous Huxley

  Art, Reality, Thinking

  Aldous Huxley (1953). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• Many children grow through adolescence with no ripples whatever and land smoothly and predictably in the adult world with both feet on the ground. Some who have stumbled and bumbled through childhood suddenly burst into bloom. Most shake, steady themselves, zigzag, fight, retreat, pick up, take new bearings, and finally find their own true balance.

  Stella Chess

  Children, Fighting, Land

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• Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own. Beware lest you fight a rearguard retreat against the evidence, grudgingly conceding each foot of ground only when forced, feeling cheated. Surrender to the truth as quickly as you can.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Fighting, Blow, Feet

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