Balance Quotes

“You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose... That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“The disturbing part is that no one teaches us how to deal with death at any point during our medical training, or even during our lifetime for that matter, particularly in a field such as mine where death was an inevitable certainty for some patients.”
― DEAN MAFAKO, M.D., Burned Out

“Faith gives you an inner strength and a sense of balance and perspective in life.”
― Gregory Peck

“Don't confuse symmetry with balance.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Briar: "They never tell you some things. They tell you mages have wonderful power and they learn all kinds of secrets. Nobody ever mentions that some secrets you don't ever want to learn."
Rosethorn: "All you can do is learn good to balance the bad. Learn and do all the good within your reach. Then, if you wake in a sweat, you have something to set against the dream.”
― Tamora Pierce, Street Magic

“Love does not dwell on how much one receives in return. If there is ever any balance in love, it is in a contest of who can love who more.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Sexual frenzy is our compensation for the tedious moments we must suffer in the passage of life. 'Nothing in excess,' professed the ancient Greeks. Why if I spend half the month in healthy scholarship and pleasant sleep, shouldn't I be allowed the other half to howl at the moon and pillage the groins of Europe's great beauties?”
― Roman Payne

“Living means constantly growing closer to death. Satisfaction only temporarily relieves hunger. Find the balance, and plant your feet.”
― Jackie Morse Kessler, Hunger

“Those who might be tempted to give way to despair should realize that nothing accomplished in this order can ever be lost, that confusion, error and darkness can win the day only apparently and in a purely ephemeral way, that all partial and transitory disequilibrium must perforce contribute towards the greater equilibrium of the whole, and that nothing can ultimately prevail against the power of truth.”
― René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World

“It’s not just the big moments that count, it’s all of the small actions that feed our heart and soul on a daily basis.”
― C. Toni Graham, Crossroads and the Dominion of Four

“A woman who holds her head up too high, is trying to breathe from her own pollution.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“With a philosophy education, one can infuriate his peers, intimidate his date, think of obscure, unreliable ways to make money, and never regret a thing.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“Here's a nice image for a life in balance,” she said. “You're juggling these four balls that you've named work, family, friends, spirit. Now, work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it bounces back. The other balls they're made of glass.”
“I've dropped a few of those glass balls in my day. Sometimes they chip, sometimes they shatter to pieces.”
― James Patterson, Roses Are Red

“You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value."--Nimit in "Thailand”
― Haruki Murakami, After the Quake

“Everyone needs a house to live in, but a supportive family is what builds a home.”
― Anthony Liccione

“As important as it is to have a plan for doing work, it is perhaps more important to have a plan for rest, relaxation, self-care, and sleep.”
― Akiroq Brost

“There is nothing that I so greatly admire as purposefulness. I have an enormous respect for people who know exactly what they are doing and where they are going. Such people are compact and integrated. They have clear edges. They give an impression of invulnerability and balance, and I wish I were one of them.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich

“Remember, you can be exalted without a college degree. You can be exalted without being slender and beautiful. You can be exalted without having a successful career. You can be exalted if you are not rich and famous. So focus the best that you can on those things in life that will lead you back to the presence of God - keeping all things in their proper balance.”
― M. Russell Ballard

“All great leaders find a sense of balance through their levels of reception. For instance, those who support a leader may soften him, those who ignore him may challenge him, and those who oppose him may stroke his ego.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.”
― Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

“He has no need for faith who knows the uncreated, who has cut off rebirth, who has destroyed any opportunity for good or evil, and cast away all desire. He is indeed the ultimate man.”
― Gautama Buddha, The Dhammapada

“If there were no emptiness, there would be no life.”
― Margaret Atwood, Dearly

“Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Both sleep and insomnolency, when immoderate, are bad.”
― Hippocrates, Aphorisms

“- 'Poise is perfect balance, an equanimity of body and mind, complete composure whatever the social scene. Elegant dress, immaculate grooming, and perfect deportment all contribute to the attainment of self-confidence.' -”
― Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means

“The body, the mind, and the spirit don't form a pyramid, they form a circle. Each of them runs into the other two. The body isn't below the mind and the spirit; from the point of view it's between them. if you reside too much in the mind, then you get too abstract and cut off from the world. You long for the spiritual life, but you can't get to it, and you fall into despair. The exercise of the senses frees you from abstraction and opens the way to transcendence.”
― Jane Smiley, Moo

“My husband says spring will be early.
He says this every year,
And every year I disagree.
He needs me, the dark side of the planetary equation.
Together we make the equinox.”
― Lisel Mueller, Alive Together

“A positive needs a negative to complete its cycle, as the Moon needs an embodiment of itself, the Sun, to complete the cycle of its illusory essence, the Earth. Now if the earth is in dire straits, is bombing the moon to discover whether water is ‘perceived’ in the natural stance of humans an intelligent move?”
― AainaA-Ridtz A R

“. . . the sole aim of Okinawa Karate is to teach A person to handle violence and violent individuals; whether it is tactile, mental or spiritual”
― Soke Behzad Ahmadi, KARATE POWER Lethal power of Fajin

“Centering, however, is easier said than done. This I learned from a ceramics class I once took. The teacher made throwing a pot look easy, but the thing is, it takes lots of precision and skill. You slam the ball of clay down in the absolute center of the pottery wheel, and with steady hands you push your thumb into the middle of it, spreading it wider a fraction of an inch at a time. But every single time I tried to do it, I only got so far before my pot warped out of balance, and every attempt to fix it just made it worse, until the lip shredded, the sides collapsed, and I was left with what the teacher called “a mystery ashtray,” which got hurled back into the clay bucket.

So what happens when your universe begins to get off balance, and you don’t have any experience with bringing it back to center? All you can do is fight a losing battle, waiting for those walls to collapse, and your life to become one huge mystery ashtray.”
― Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep