Quotes About Loss

William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life--live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, and the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition.

When I was 12, we moved from New Jersey to Florida. The Gulf of Mexico was literally my backyard. Every day, I could see the ocean. At low tide I went out and played in seagrass meadows that used to come right up to the shore, filled with tiny seahorses, pipefish and soft corals. There was so much life! But then I witnessed the change, the loss of the shoreline, the loss of the mangrove trees, the loss of the seagrass meadows. Shallow bay areas were turned into parking lots.

Express yourself completely, then keep quiet. Be like the forces of nature: when it blows, there is only wind; when it rains, there is only rain; when the clouds pass, the sun shines through. If you open yourself to the Tao, you are at one with the Tao and you can embody it completely. If you open yourself to insight, you are at one with insight and you can use it completely. If you open yourself to loss, you are at one with loss and you can accept it completely. Open yourself to the Tao, then trust your natural responses; and everything will fall into place.

Loss is essential. Loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life.

All change is loss, and all loss must be mourned.

The English language lacks the words 'to mourn an absence.' For the loss of a parent, grandparent, spouse, child or friend we have all manner of words and phrases, some helpful, some not. Still, we are conditioned to say something, even if it is only 'I am sorry for your loss.' But for an absence, for someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like silent, ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?

You know, your first album is about really amazing things. Your first album is always about coming of age, first love, first loss, usually you suffer a first loss of someone that you love to death, even, you know, really big life lessons, things you learn from your parents' divorce or from the travels that you took.

I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one's self-respect.

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.

Over the past few years, the road to confrontation has shown its consequences: loss of innocent lives, destruction and fear. Most costly, however, was the loss of hope. The most precious gift that you can present to your peoples over the coming weeks is renewed hope born out of tangible progress on the ground.

The post-war loss of Churchill may have damaged the Western world with the same impact as the post-civil war world was damaged by the loss of Lincoln.

Princess Diana talking to Prince William about the loss of her title Her Royal Highness: She turned to William in her distress. She (Princess Diana) told me how he had sat with her one night when she was upset over the loss of HRH, put his arms around her and said: Don't worry, Mummy. I will give it back to you one day when I am king.

You can see exile as loss, and then it will be a loss for you. You can treat it as opportunity and then all kinds of benefits accrue.

Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor.

Loss is very painful, because any kind of loss leaves a hole in the fabric of one's existence.

Persecutors fear loss of control. Rescuers fear loss of purpose. Rescuers need Victims-someone to protect or fix-to bolster their self-esteem.

When you are a part of a world that is within an enclosed system, the biggest threat is that the loss of contact with any voice from the outside - a point of reference that is different from you - becomes habitual. The loss of this reference makes the enclosed system seem perfect. I can still feel this kind of threat today, the voice that gives legitimacy to various kinds of enclosure.

It was quite a European war until 1917, when the Americans joined up. They don't have the same sense of the loss of innocence and the cataclysmic loss of life. A whole generation was wiped out.

Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.

The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

The loss of something that is never thought of, felt, or sought for when lost is not a loss at all.

Making a film is like raising a child. You have to be there every step of the way, guide it, provide for it, and finally let it go into the real world and hope you have done a good job. If you don't absolutely love your film then you will loss interest in it and the movie will suffer.

It's not just global warming, it's not just a loss of biodiversity, it's not just the pollution of our oceans and the clearing of our rainforests and all these complicated systems, The [11th Hour] movie talks about the world economy, it talks about politics, it talks about personal transformation and environmental consciousness that we need to have in this generation to implement a lot of these changes that need to occur.

None of the people's wars of the sixties did very well, including the one in Vietnam. Vo Nguyen Giap himself has admitted a loss of 600,000 men between 1965 and 1968...Moreover, by about 1970 at least 80% of the day-to-day combat in South Vietnam was being carried on by regular NVA troops...Genuine black-pajama southern guerrillas had been decimated and amounted to no more than 20% of the communist fighting forces.

Acting in anger and hatred throughout my life, I frequently precipitated what I feared most, the loss of friendships and the need to rely upon the very people I'd abused.

Environmental science is telling us a lot about our future and what it could look like, whether we're talking about global warming (the current poster child for the environment) or a loss of genetic diversity in our food supplies, or the effects of low-dose chemicals on human development.

So now I have sworn to bury All this dead body of hate I feel so free and so clear By the loss of that dead weight

My book 'Trust Your Heart', which is the story of my life, will be followed by 'Singing Lessons', a memoir of love, loss, hope, and healing, which talks about the death of my son and the hope that has been the aftermath of the healing from that tragedy.

At the end of the day, everyone knows what it is to be loved and to aspire to love someone, to want to be loved, the loss of love, or having their love be opposed, whether it is family, friends or politically.

There are stories that are true, in which each individual's tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it to deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others' pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.

We feel led to caution . . . against forming the bad habit of incurring debt and taking upon themselves obligations which frequently burden them heavier than they can bear, and lead to the loss of their homes and other possessions. We know it is the fashion of the age to use credit to the utmost limit. . . . We, therefore, repeat our counsel . . . to shun debt. Be content with moderate gains, and be not misled by illusory hopes of acquiring wealth. . . . Let our children also be taught habits of economy, and not to indulge in tastes which they cannot gratify without running into debt.

If my acceptance of the office of Governor would serve my country, though my administration would be attended with the loss of personal credit and reputation, I would cheerfully undertake it.

It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.

Man seeks to learn, and man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his religious society; he does not kill himself because of his learning. It is certainly not the learning he acquires that disorganizes religion; but the desire for knowledge wakens because religion becomes disorganized.

Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man-his courage and hope, or lack of them-and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. The ultimate cause of my friend's death was that the expected liberation did not come and he was severely disappointed.

The Old Testament contains in many places, but especially in the book of Job, one of the most far-reaching defenses ever written of wilderness, of nature free from the hand of man. The argument gets at the heart of what the loss of nature will mean to us....God seems to be insisting that we are not the center of the universe, that he is quite happy if it rains where there are no people - that God is quite happy with places where there are no people, a radical departure from our most ingrained notions.

He played of love and loss and years of silence, words unsaid and vows unspoken, and all the spaces between his heart and theirs; and when he was done, and he'd set the violin back in its box, Will's eyes were closed, but Tessa's were full of tears.

I guess by now I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.

There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.

Michael Jackson is the reason why I do music and why I am an entertainer. I am devastated by this great loss, and I will continue to be humbled and inspired by his legacy. My prayers are with his family. Michael will be deeply missed, but never forgotten. He's the greatest, the best ever. No one will ever be better.

The Gospel having spread itself into Persia, the pagan priests, who worshipped the sun, were greatly alarmed, and dreaded the loss of that influence they had hitherto maintained over the people's minds and properties.

Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating.

Losses have propelled me to even bigger places, so I understand the importance of losing. You can never get complacent because a loss is always around the corner. It's in any game that you're in - a business game or whatever - you can't get complacent.

The band name came about when the original vocalist died when a huge radio fell on his head. He trotted about for a while dancing with the radio on his head, before he died of asphyxiation and blood loss. *Laughs* it was hilarious

The impact of the earthquake on mental health was huge and unimaginably deep in people's lives. Some lost all benchmarks and references because of their great loss, we still have people coming to clinics with mental health problems related to the earthquake. They talk about the earthquake, about being under the rubble.

The revolution taught me not to be consoled by other people's miseries, not to feel thankful because so many others had suffered more. Pain and loss, like love and joy, are unique and personal; they cannot be modified by comparison to others.

In Egypt: Under no conditions, under threat of death could anyone kill a cat. People were exceuted for even killing a cat accidentally. And when a cat died, the whole family, and probably their closest friends, went into mourning, the measure of their personal loss signalled by their shaving off their eyebrows.

A lot of people approach their barn or horse like they are going to war, because it's been going badly. So you pick up the next day in a defensive mode instead of cleaning the slate and starting fresh. Animals live so much in the moment, so if you're bringing baggage from yesterday you're already at a loss. We do that with people too.