Quotes about presence

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“If pinpointing God's presence were really that simple, then he supposed the beaches would be more crowded in the mornings. They would be filled with people on their own quests, instead of people jogging or walking their dogs or fishing in the surf.”

“The miracle of love comes to us in the presence of the uninterpreted moment.”

“I had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to confirm my own presence.”

“She was spirit and presence, as rare and brilliant as snowflakes in sunlight, and he could not bring himself to harm her.”

“When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know? I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.”

“There is a reason they call God a presence - because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time.”

“There is
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time”

“And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.”

“When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence. When silence is imposed, it is censorship.”

“Bushido is realized in the presence of death. This means choosing death whenever there is a choice between life and death. There is no other reasoning.”

“When you love someone, you have to offer that person the best you have. The best thing we can offer another person is our true presence.”

“These were everyday sounds magnified by darkness. And darkness was nothing - it was not a substance, it was not a presence, it was no more than an absence of light.”

“I didn’t care about anything except her and the way touching her drove me wild, even as her calm and steady presence soothed the storms that raged within me.”

“My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight.”

“Absence, the highest form of presence.”

“Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.”

“I look back over my shoulder and feel the presence of an intense young girl and then a volatile and disturbed young woman, both with high dreams and restless, romantic aspirations”

“I have learned that one should say "Peace!" to those who shout their hatred for one's being and presence or at one's passage.”

“The stars know everything,
So we try to read their minds.
As distant as they are,
We choose to whisper in their presence.”

“Every once in a while, people need to be in the presence of things that are really far away.”

“I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.”

“Dearest Cecilia, You’d be forgiven for thinking me mad, the way I acted this afternoon. The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don’t think I can blame the heat.”

“A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence… defines what can and cannot be done to her.”

“The less people think of you, the more they will reveal to you or in your presence.”

“Like a missing tooth, sometimes an absence is more noticeable than a presence.”

“Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.”

“All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best”

“It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed.”

“There is only one reason I did not go down in flames over the Angers, and that is because I knew I had Julie in the back. Would never have had the presence of mind to put that fire out if I hadn't been trying to save her life.”

“Boy, you better check that tone. (Wulf)
Yeah, yeah, ya scare me. I’m even wetting my pants while in your terrifying, gut-wrenching presence. See me shiver and quiver? Ooo, ahhh, ooo. (Chris)”

“I saw Herschel and he saw me and we stood next to each other because that is what friends do in the presence of evil or love.”

“I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.”

“It is better to look suffering straight in the eye, acknowledge and respect it’s presence, and then get busy as soon as possible focusing on things we choose to focus on.”

“I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself; my existence depends on the nearness and the presence of God.”

“O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude…”

“In all the institutions I try to be present and accountable for all I do and leave undone. I know that eventually I shall have to be present and accountable n the presence of God. I do not wish to be found wanting.”

“I had been afraid of the awful presence of the river, which was the soul of the river, but through her [Ultima] I learned that my spirit shared in the spirit of all things.”

“The search for God's presence was much of a mystery as God himself, and what was God if not a mystery?”

“Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. (p. 107-108)”

“Peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice, of law, of order —in short, of government.”

“Desire is like fog on a bathroom mirror -- its presence incites you to wipe the mirror, and see yourself clearly again.”

“She attracted people to her; she had presence, an uncommon. Documenting her effect on her habitat, a naturalist would likely have compared her to a lioness: strong, sleek, and invariably surrounded by her pride.”

“That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”

“Unfortunately it’s also true to say that good management is a bit like oxygen—it’s invisible and you don’t notice its presence until it’s gone, and then you’re sorry.”

“Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?”

“But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.”

“It's not the pizza, darlin', its my masculine presence."
Joe Morelli”

“We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”

“People take love's continuity for granted, just as they take their body's continuity for granted. They don't realize that the best thing about love is its regular presence. Once you can establish that, it's an added foundation to your life.”

“She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear —
the fear of sleep.

Briar Rose
was an insomniac…
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence.”

“One reads alone, even in another's presence.”

“Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.”

“Prefer to be defeated in the presence of the wise than to excel among fools.”

“The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.”

“This is love, she thought, isn't it? When you notice someone's absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence?”

“Hell […] is the absence of God and the presence of Time.”

“You’ve the presence of a mouse fart in a high wind. Stand aside, and try not to catch fire if I shed sparks of genius.”

“To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence.”

“Suddenly it was too hard to be in his presence, too painful to know that he would belong to someone else.”

“The presence of God is the finest of rewards.”

“To keep our faces toward change, and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate, is strength undefeatable.”

“Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.”

“We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole.”

“She encouraged herself to see her very small presence in the world as a good thing, a power, something that a hero might possess.”

“In the presence of total Darkness, the mind finds it absolutely necessary to create light.”

“She glared at him, feeling the old frustration. Sometimes in his presence she felt the deepest connection to him, and other times she felt completely alone-as though any bond to him was her own bitter imagination.”

“Like death, his father's presence was cold and often callous, but it was real -- brutally honest, inescapably dependable.”

“Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.”

“He finally understood that God's presence was everywhere, at all times, and was experienced by everyone at one time or another.”

“In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.”

“Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same.”

“The more distressing the memory, the more persistent it's presence.”

“She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.”

“Amazing how he could make her feel. Safe in a vacant lot, warm in the middle of the night. Just being this close to him, being able to touch his thoughts and feel his presence, was comforting-and dizzying.”

“I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator.”

“I've learned that memories can have a physical, almost living presence.”

“Practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world.”

“Audrey had an angelic quality about her. She didn't act like she was better than everyone, she just had a presence, an energy, a sort of light coming from within her that was overwhelming.”

“God creates us free, free to be selfish, but He adds a mechanism that will penetrate our selfishness and wake us up to the presence of others in this world, and that mechanism is called suffering.”

“Idiots emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System administrators absorb bogons, letting machinery work again.”

“Encourage everyone you meet with a smile or compliment. Make them feel better when you leave their presence and they will always be glad to see you coming.”

“… there remained a strange formality between them, and her pleasure in his presence felt too much like missing him had felt during the last week.”

“Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.”

“You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.”

“Women tend to love men in their presence, while men tend to love women in their absence.”

“You are my angel and my damnation; in your presence I reach divine ecstasy and in your absence I descent to hell.”

“Man wishes to be confirmed in his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the being of the other….
Secretly and bashfully he watches for a YES which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another.”

“People take love's continuity for granted, just as they take their body's continuity for granted. They don't realize that the best thing about love is its regular presence.”

“I began to measure things in absence instead of presence.”

“There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.”

“Bewilderment increases in the presence of the mirrors.”

“True Joy is not the absence of pain but the sanctifying, sustaining presence of the Lord Jesus in the midst of the pain”

“Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence.”

“Unless you call attention
to your presence
who will know you're there?

Even a country
has to weave and wave a flag
as proof of its existence.”

“The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence”

“When time is reduced to linear progress, it is emptied of presence.”

“… elegance loses its power in the presence of the properly stupid…”

“Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.”

“My guys, my colleagues didn't stand up with me. And I can't make any excuse for them. Had we shown any amount of solidarity, if the superstars had stood up and said 'We're with Curt Flood,' if the superstars had walked into the courtroom in New York and made their presence known, I think that the owners would have gotten the message very clearly and given me a chance to win that case.”