Quotessence
Home / Quotes / W Quotes

W Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All W Quotes

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow-mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go.”

“When we turn around & come face to face with our destiny, we discover that words (spoken) are not enough. I know so many people who are brilliant speakers but are quite incapable of practising what they preach. It's one thing to describe a situation & quite another to experience it. I realised a long time ago that a warrior in search of his dream must take his inspiration from what he actually does & not from what he imagines himself doing.”

“When we turn away from the reality of what we do to animals for our gustatory pleasure, we play a game of pretend, like the child who covers her eyes and thinks you can't see her. And yet, there she remains. Closing our eyes doesn't make violence disappear; it only closes our minds and hearts and enables the violence to continue.”

“When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word, we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don’t quite fit our preferences and presuppositions. In an attempt to simplify, we force the Bible’s cacophony of voices into a single tone and turn a complicated, beautiful, and diverse holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says.”

“When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded work (like manhood, womanhood, politics, economics, marriage, and even equality), we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don't fit our tastes. In an attempt to simplify, we try to force the Bible's cacophony of voices into a single tone, to turn a complicated and at times troubling holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says.”

“When we turn the body into human capital, the political consequences of the body disappear. Hands that are raised, legs that move, fingers that point, floors that are mopped, mouths that are fed. Our economy is built on bodies. If the body was taken seriously as a starting point for the economy, it would have far-reaching consequences. A society organized around the shared needs of human bodies would be a very different society from the one we know now. Hunger, cold, sickness, lack of healthcare, and lack of food would be central economic concerns. Not like today: unfortunate by-products of the one and only system. Our economic theories refuse to accept the reality of the body and flee as far from it as they can. That people are born small and die fragile, and that skin cut with a sharp object will bleed no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter what you earn, and no matter where you live. What we have in common starts with the body. We shiver when we are cold, sweat when we run, cry out when we come, and cry out when we give birth. It's through the body that we can reach other people. So, economic man eradicates it. Pretends it doesn't exist. We observe it from the outside as if we were foreign capital. And we are alone.”

“When We Two Parted When we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted To sever for years, Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss; Truly that hour foretold Sorrow to this. The dew of the morning Sunk chill on my brow— It felt like the warning Of what I feel now. Thy vows are all broken, And light is thy fame: I hear thy name spoken, And share in its shame. They name thee before me, A knell to mine ear; A shudder comes o'er me— Why wert thou so dear? They know not I knew thee, Who knew thee too well: Long, long shall I rue thee, Too deeply to tell. In secret we met— In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee After long years, How should I greet thee? With silence and tears.”

“When we understand clearly that inner peace is the real source of happiness, and how, through spiritual practice, we can experience progressively deeper levels of inner peace, we will develop tremendous enthusiasm to practice”

“When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abusive cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care.... An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught that we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as we were also taught to believe that we were loved. For most folks it is just too threatening to embrace a definition of love that would no longer enable us to see love as present in our families. Too many of us need to cling to a notion of love that either makes abuse acceptable or at least makes it seem that whatever happened was not that bad.”

“When we understand our oneness with God, we are able to heal spiritually because we know that in divine Reality there is no human concept of anything or anybody to fix up. The more clearly we realise this, the more the human scene becomes subservient and harmonious. It falls into line with the overriding power and completeness of the infinite All.”

“When we understand people; when we understand situations; when we understand what matters; when we understand the why’s, the what’s and the how’s; when we understand the trigger of actions, we least inflict pain on ourselves and unto others.”

“When we understand that we are a human race, what affects you affects me, what affects her affects you and so on and so on, then we'll look at this thing [HIV/AIDS] for what it really is. It's a disease that's out to kill all of us. What will make it continue is our prejudices, our ideas about it, and the fact that we don't look at ourselves as one giant community.”

“When we understand the character of God, when we grasp something of His holiness, then we begin to understand the radical character of our sin and hopelessness. Helpless sinners can survive only by grace. Our strength is futile in itself; we are spiritually impotent without the assistance of a merciful God. We may dislike giving our attention to God's wrath and justice, but until we incline ourselves to these aspects of God's nature, we will never appreciate what has been wrought for us by grace. Even Edwards's sermon on sinners in God's hands was not designed to stress the flames of hell. The resounding accent falls not on the fiery pit but on the hands of the God who holds us and rescues us from it. The hands of God are gracious hands. They alone have the power to rescue us from certain destruction.”

“When we understand the fragility of life, we live consciously. People generally live as if they have all the time in the world. They don’t. They have the time of one lifetime, however long that will be. It’s not a lot. We don’t have enough time to procrastinate and waste large chunks of our lives. It is a valuable offering when we give our attention and love to anything in life. What we spend our time on will determine the course of our life. If we know that we are here for a short time, our choices will become more meaningful and satisfying. We don’t have to be told to be brave and follow our inner leanings when we are aware of our limited time. Who cares what other people think of us when we are busy living a brief life to the best of our ability? We will want to use it every day to better ourselves and the world we live in.”