Returning Quotes (page 8)
The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium. What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism.
Primo Levi
A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginning and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree.
Herman Hesse
I thought I loved him when he went away; I love him now in another degree: he is more my own. [ . . . ] Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered--not uttered till; when the hush came, some could not feel it: till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some!
Charlotte Bronte
The return from your work must be the satisfaction which that work brings you and the world's need of that work. With this, life is heaven, or as near heaven as you can get. Without this? with work which you despise, which bores you, and which the world does not need? this life is hell.
W. E. B. Du Bois
As for herself, she returned to her seat with a smile of savage scorn upon her lips, and she blasphemously repeated the fearful name of that God by whom she had just sworn, without ever having learned to know Him. "My God!" said she. "Fanatical fool! -My God is myself; and whoever will assist in my revenge!
Alexander Dumas
Alexander offered him (Aristotle)a hand to mount the gangplank, andtried the effect of a smile. When the man returned it, it could be seen thatsmiling was what he would do best; he would not often be caught withhis head back laughing. But he did look like a man who would answerquestions.
Mary Renault
How the miracle of our meeting. Shone there and sang, I didn't want to return. From there to anywhere. Happiness instead of duty. Was bitter delight to me. Not obliged to speak to anyone, I spoke for a long while. Let passions stifle lovers, Demanding answers, We, my dear, are only souls. At the limits of the world.
Anna Akhmatova