Best 78 quotes in «retreat quotes» category

Think about it: If you have saved just enough to have your own house, your own car, a modicum of income to pay for food, clothes, and a few conveniences, and your everyday responsibilities start and end only with yourself… You can afford not to do anything outside of breathing, eating, and sleeping. Time would be an endless, white blanket. Without folds and pleats or sudden rips. Monday would look like Sunday, going sans adrenaline, slow, so slow and so unnoticed. Flowing, flowing, time is flowing in phrases, in sentences, in talk exchanges of people that come as pictures and videos, appearing, disappearing, in the safe, distant walls of Facebook. Dial fast food for a pizza, pasta, a burger or a salad. Cooking is for those with entire families to feed. The sala is well appointed. A day-maid comes to clean. Quietly, quietly she dusts a glass figurine here, the flat TV there. No words, just a ho-hum and then she leaves as silently as she came. Press the shower knob and water comes as rain. A TV remote conjures news and movies and soaps. And always, always, there’s the internet for uncomplaining company. Outside, little boys and girls trudge along barefoot. Their tinny, whiny voices climb up your windowsill asking for food. You see them. They don’t see you. The same way the vote-hungry politicians, the power-mad rich, the hey-did-you-know people from newsrooms, and the perpetually angry activists don’t see you. Safely ensconced in your tower of concrete, you retreat. Uncaring and old./HOW EASY IT IS NOT TO CARE

Possession is not only when the devil plays hide and seek in your brain or poison your medula oblongata with negativity, but it is also when you are under the influence of the same specie as you!

Sometimes advance is the best form of retreat.

This is the supreme anguish of the soul; it realizes itself as itself, as thing separate from that which is not itself, from God. In this spasm there are two ways: if fear and pride are left in the soul, it shuts itself up, like a warlock in a tower, gnashing its teeth with agony. "I am I," it cried, "I will not lose myself," and in that state damned, it is slowly torn by the claws of circumstance disintegrated bitterly, for all its struggles, throughout ages and ages, its rags to be cast piecemeal upon the dungheap without the city. But the soul that has understood the blessedness of that resignation which grasps the universe and devours it, which is without hope or fear, without faith or doubt, without hate or love, dissolves itself ineffable into the abounding bliss of God. It cries with Shelley, as the "chains of lead about its flight of fire" drop molten from its limbs: "I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire," and in that last outbreaking is made one with the primal and final breath, the Holy Spirit of God. Such must be the climax of any retirement to the Desert on the part of any aspirant of the Mysteries who has the spark of that fire in him.

Some details in life may look insignificant but appear to be vital leitmotifs in a person's life. They may have the value of "Rosebuds" of Citizen Kane or "Madeleine cookies" of Marcel Proust or "Strawberry fields" of the Beatles. People regularly walk down the memory lane of their early youth. The paper boats of their childhood are recurrently floating on the waves of their mind and bring back the mood and the spirit of the early days. They enable us to retreat from the trivial, daily worries and can generate delightful bliss and true joy in a sometimes frantic and chaotic life. ("Paper boats forever" )

The land is always there...it is you who has to return

To withdraw isn't a sign of weakness... It is a sign that a man knows the limits of his capabilities and the most probable outcome of the future. One who retreats to fight another day isn't running away, but looking for another road towards the same destination.

When someone puts an end to something, it doesn't mean that he gave up, it means that thing is not taking him anywhere.

When I snatched the gun out of his hand, it fired because the hammer was already pulled back. It made the thunderous sound that the .357 magnum is known for. Even though the sound itself was deafening, it was like beautiful music to my ears. Just a few short seconds ago, the odds were greatly stacked against me. Now the tides had turned. The odds were now stacked against them, and they knew it. When I turned around to face my pursuers, they were in an all-out retreat. All I saw were their backs.

A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack.

You’ll do fine if you have any strength at all, but listen to your Green angel and give yourself more exit points. You’re in for some rude awakenings in battle, and young souls often retreat under fire. You’ll end up trying to find a shortcut back home and that always makes a big mess.

A masterful retreat is itself a victory.

Better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to speak out and confirm that you didn't do the assigned readings before the strategic planning retreat.

A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious retreat of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom.

Basically, I want to spend my time in retreat, but to my own amazement, I agreed to help with a project to start a training center for nuns. I agreed because I think it's really very important for the Western Sangha. I don't know how I'm going to help, but it's important.

A woman's noblest station is retreat.

But see, the shepherds shun the noonday heat, The lowing herds to murmuring brooks retreat, To closer shades the panting flocks remove; Ye gods! And is there no relief for love?

Can it be believed that the democracy, which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?

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

I did not enjoy the violence of boxing so much as the science of it. I was intrigued by how one moved one's body to protect oneself, how one used a strategy both to attack and retreat, how one paced oneself over a match.

Every morning, after a few sips of coffee and a bit of small talk, each of us retreats with our books, and travels centuries away from this place.

Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat.

Follow me if I advance, kill me if I retreat, avenge me if I die.

Going forward seems like retreat.

Dont retreat. Retweet!

If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order to survive, to protect some aspect of myself that was now in constant retreat.

If you do not leave this pasturage, Saladin will come and attack you here. And if you retreat from this attack the shame and reproach will be very great.

If literature survives at all, it is as retreat for those who refuse to assimilate to American mass culture.

I shall never surrender or retreat.

I knew I was in the vicinity of a serious lesson, if not about how to live life, then at least how to put some poetry into your craven retreat from it.

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

Indomitable in retreat, invincible in advance; insufferable in victory.

In this Revolution, no plans have been written for retreat. Those who will not get into step will find that the parade has passed them by.

Labor cannot stand still. It must not retreat. It must go on, or go under.

I've decided to retreat to the spirit world where I feel appreciated and understood.

I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.

Masterly retreat is in itself a victory.

Peace is purchased from strength. It's not purchased from weakness or unilateral retreats.

Once women begin to question the inevitability of their subordination and to reject the conventions formerly associated with it, they can no longer retreat to the safety of those conventions.

Social solidarities are torn apart, furthering the retreat into orbits of the private that undermine those spaces that nurture non-commodified knowledge, values, critical exchange and civic literacy.

Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it.

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.

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.

Sin is never at a stay; if we do not retreat from it, we shall advance in it; and the farther on we go, the more we have to come back.

The march of good fortune has backward slips: to retreat one or two paces gives wings to the jumper.

The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue

There were times, however, when a man had to make a strategic retreat to win the game.

The temptations are great to simply retreat to the domain of private life and give up on our public problems.

Time ... advances like the slowest tide, but retreats like the swiftest torrent.

To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.