Quotes about presence
page 3

“How strange too and unfamiliar to think that one had been loved, that one's presence had once had the power to make a difference between happiness and dullness in another's day.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Love, Happiness, Thinking

“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.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

God, People, Dogs, Fish

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

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Love

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

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

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

Shana Abe U.S. American novelist

Source: The Smoke Thief

“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.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Thinking, Parent, Hurt

“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.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

God, 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”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Love, Secret, Time

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

Erich Segal book Love Story

Source: Love Story

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

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Silence

“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.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

Life, Death

“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.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

Love, Personality

“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.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

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.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Way, Rage

“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.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

Passion, Parting, Indifference

“Absence, the highest form of presence.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

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

Ross Macdonald (1915–1983) Novelist

Angels, Sun

“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”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Dreams, Feeling, Girl

“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.”

Tariq Ramadan (1962) Swiss muslim scholar

Source: What I Believe

Peace, Learning

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

Charles Simic (1938) American poet

Star, Distant, Reading

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

Ian Frazier (1951) author and journalist

People

“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.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Hope, Suffering

“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.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Truth, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“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.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing (1972)
Context: According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man... A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you... By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. (p. 45-46)

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

Gillian Rubinstein Tales of the Otori

Source: Across the Nightingale Floor

People, Thinking

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

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

Wise

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

Lisa Unger book Sliver of Truth

Source: Sliver of Truth

People, Thinking, Evil

“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”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

Clothes

“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.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

“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.”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

Life, Anger

“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)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Boy

“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.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Love, Evil

“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.”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer (1954) Canadian author

Life, Beauty

“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.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Business, Suffering

“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.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

God, Dependency

“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…”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

O May I Join the Choir Invisible (1867)
Source: O May I Join the Choir Invisible! And Other Favourite Poems
Context: 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 scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's search To vaster issues.
Context: 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 scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's search
To vaster issues.

Dead

“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.”

Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter

Source: Letter to My Daughter

God

“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.”

Rudolfo Anaya book Bless Me, Ultima

Source: Bless Me, Ultima

Soul, Learning

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

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

God, Search

“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)”

Cornel West book Race Matters

Source: Race Matters

People

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

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: On Peace

War, Peace, Justice, Law

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

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“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.”

Mohsin Hamid book The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Source: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

People, Strong

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

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

God, Idea, Universe

“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.”

Charles Stross book The Fuller Memorandum

Source: The Laundry Files, The Fuller Memorandum (2010), Chapter 2, “Pointing the Finger” (p. 32)

“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?”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Soul

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

Jonathan Franzen book Freedom

Source: Freedom

Feeling

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

Janet Evanovich book One for the Money

Source: One for the Money

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

David Mamet Boston Marriage

Source: Boston Marriage

“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.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, Life, People

“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.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: Transformations

Lie, Fear, Sleep

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

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Reading

“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.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: How Proust Can Change Your Life

Dead

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

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Fools

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

Toni Morrison book Sula

Source: Sula

Evil

“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?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Love, Hate

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

Glen Duncan book I, Lucifer

Source: I, Lucifer

God, Hell, 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.”

Scott Lynch book The Republic of Thieves

Source: The Republic of Thieves

“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.”

Martin Buber book I and Thou

Source: I and Thou

God, World, Help

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

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Viscount Who Loved Me

Pain

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

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

God

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

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Fate, Change, Powerful

“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.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Peace

“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.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Reality, Sense

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

Helen Oyeyemi (1984) British author

Source: Mr. Fox

World

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

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: Nightfall One

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.”

Ann Brashares (1967) American children's writer

Feeling, Imagination, Time

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

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Death, Dependency

“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.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Literature, Silence

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

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

God, Time

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

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Football

“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.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

World, Light

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

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

Memory

“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.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Dependency, Sincerity

“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.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Dark Visions

Feeling, Night

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

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

People

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

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Learning, Memory

“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.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

World, Family

“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.”

Kevyn Aucoin (1962–2002) American make-up artist and photographer

Angels, Light

“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.”

William Nicholson movie Shadowlands

Source: Shadowlands

God, World, Suffering, Selfishness

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

Charles Stross The Atrocity Archives

Source: The Atrocity Archives

“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.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Smile, Feeling

“… 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.”

Robin McKinley (1952) American fantasy writer

Source: Pegasus

Pleasure

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

Toni Morrison book The Bluest Eye

Source: The Bluest Eye

Love, Reality, Sense, Anger

“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.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Pain, Sense, Hurt

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

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart

Love, Women, Men

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

Isabel Allende book Daughter of Fortune

Source: Daughter of Fortune

Angels, 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.”

Martin Buber book I and Thou

Source: I and Thou

Personality

“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.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, People

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

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

“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.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

Nature

“Bewilderment increases in the presence of the mirrors.”

Tarjei Vesaas book The Boat in the Evening

Source: The Boat in the Evening

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

Nancy Leigh DeMoss (1958) American radio host

Source: Lies Women Believe: And the Truth that Sets them Free

Pain, Joy

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

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Soul, Memory

“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.”

Rod McKuen (1933–2015) American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer

Country

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

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Source: Four Quartets
Context: The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

Sense, Past

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

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Time

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

Zoë Heller (1965) British writer

Stupidity

“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.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

Love

“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.”

Curt Flood (1938–1997) baseball player

In an interview from Ken Burns' 1994 documentary Baseball
Source: http://books.google.ca/books?id=gROuoggesCoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Business+of+Baseball#PPA162,M1

Guy, Thinking, Chance

Quotes about presence page 3

Quotes about presence
page 3