Best 78 quotes in «retreat quotes» category

Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow. Invasions can be arrested or modified in a manner to keep an area usable either for recreation, science or for wildlife, but the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible. It follows, then, that any wilderness program is a rearguard action, through which retreats are reduced to a minimum.

Will we fight or will we retreat? That is the question that is posed to us. Some of my friends on the other side of the aisle often refer to Iraq as a distraction.

You know what else I've learnt? That it's all right not to ride the crest of the wave. Every time a wave comes along I retreat, and I haven't come to any harm yet.

A lion will only retreat if you stare it in the eyes; likewise, so will fear.

Be bold in life. Seize the moment. There is no surrender, no retreat. There is only conquer or be conquered, victory or defeat. Anything less is to be forgotten to history.

Go deeply into the urge to be silent and not the mental interference of how, where and when. If you follow silence to its source you can be taken by it in a moment.

Astrid had gone to look at the burn zone. Doing the right thing. Kids had yelled at her. Demanded to know why she had let it happen. Demanded to know where Sam was. Deluged her with complaints and worries and crazy theories until she had retreated. She’d hidden out after that. She’d refused to answer the door when kids knocked. She had not gone to her office. It would be the same there. But through the day it had eaten at her. This feeling of uselessness. A feeling of uselessness made so much worse by the growing realization that she needed Sam. Not because they were up against some threat. The threat was mostly past now. She needed Sam because no one had any respect for her. There was only one person right now who could get a crowd of anxious kids to settle down and do what needed to be done. She had wanted to believe that she could do that. But she had tried. And they hadn’t listened. But Sam was still nowhere to be seen. So despite everything it was still on her shoulders. The thought of it made her sick. It made her want to scream.

Certain battles were won by retreating.

Despair dragged at me like an anchor, pulling me down. I closed my eyes and retreated to some dim place within, where there was nothing but an aching grey blankness…

Faced with the prospect of a black depression, Highsmith once again retreated into fantasy, dreaming about an affair with the actress Anne Meacham, whose picture she had seen in a magazine publicising her role in the Tennessee Williams' play, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel. After the disasters of recent years, she reckoned that the safest option was to escape into romantic imagination. She reviewed her failures over the past five years and concluded that 'the moral is: stay alone. Any idea of any close relationship should be imaginary, like any story I am writing. This way no harm is done to me or to any other person'.

He wanted the teahouse to blend in with nature and become more of a backdrop for the tea ceremony, so he helped influence its redesign. Over time, the teahouse became a simple hut set in a garden with mud and plaster walls, a thatched roof, a bamboo lattice ceiling, tatami floors, and small paper-covered windows. It became a refuge in the city meant to echo a mountain retreat, where samurai from warring clans, lowly merchants, and even the emperor could come together on equal footing and focus on nothing more than the sensory pleasures of the tea ceremony, such as the gentle bubbling of the tea water on the brazier, the seasonal flower arrangement in the alcove, and the smell of the particular incense chosen to represent the time of year.

He tried to get drunk, “to forget about life for awhile,” as that old Billy Joel song once said, but the scotch couldn't anesthetize his pain and provide a retreat from the reality of his latest failures.

He who advances without seeking fame, Who retreats without escaping blame, He whose one aim is to protect his people and serve his lord, The man is a jewel of the Realm

If we seek solitary retreat, you will be more often refreshed.

I’ll find out who’s inside. Wait here and keep alert!’ Hallam rasped. He skirted the main path to skulk towards one of the shuttered windows on the building’s eastern wall. There was a crack in the wood and he gently inched closer to peer inside. There was a hearth-fire with a pot bubbling away and a battered table made of a length of wood over two pieces of cut timber. A small ham hung from the rafters, away from the rats and mice. He couldn’t see anyone but there was a murmur of voices. Hallam leaned in even closer and a young boy with hair the colour of straw saw the movement to stare. It was Little Jim. Thank God, the child was safe. Snot hung from his nose and he was pale. Hallam put a finger to his lips, but the boy, not even four, did not understand, and just gaped innocently back. Movement near the window. A man wearing a blue jacket took up a stone bottle and wiped his long flowing moustache afterwards. His hair was shoulder-length, falling unruly over the red collar of his jacket. Tied around his neck was a filthy red neckerchief. A woman moaned and the man grinned with tobacco stained teeth at the sound. Laughter and French voices. The woman whimpered and Little Jim turned to watch unseen figures. His eyes glistened and his bottom lip dropped. The woman began to plead and Hallam instinctively growled. The Frenchman, hearing the noise, pushed the shutter open and the pistol’s cold muzzle pressed against his forehead. Hallam watched the man’s eyes narrow and then widen, before his mouth opened. Whatever he intended to shout was never heard, because the ball smashed through his skull to erupt in a bloody spray as it exited the back of the Frenchman’s head. There was a brief moment of silence. ‘28th!’ Hallam shouted, as he stepped back against the wall. ‘Make ready!

I have learned that I must push the pause button occasionally and retreat into that private place in my soul where it is only me and God!

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion." [The Minotaur]

...I retreat into my fictional world where everything makes sense - but even there I can't even control what people do...

I want my heart to be the thin place. I don't want to board a plane to feel the kiss of heaven. I want to carry it with me wherever I go. I want my fragile, hurting heart, to recognize fleeting kairos, eternal moments as they pass. I want to be my own mountain and my own retreat.

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

Napoleon's aides broadcast the news to the people that the Emperor had covered the 1,000 kilometres from Dresden in only four days. In other words, he had broken the world retreating record, vive l'Empereur.

Sometimes advance is the best form of retreat.

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!

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" )

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

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.

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.

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.

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 woman's noblest station is retreat.

A masterful retreat is itself a victory.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Dont retreat. Retweet!

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.

Going forward seems like retreat.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.