Why They Leave When They Still Love You

Why They Leave When They Still Love You

Quote of the day

Someone can be madly in love with you and still not be ready. They can love you in a way you have never been loved and still not join you on the bridge. And whatever their reasons you must leave. Because you never ever have to inspire anyone to meet you on the bridge. You never ever have to convince someone to do the work to be ready. There is more extraordinary love, more love that you have never seen, out here in this wide and wild universe. And there is the love that will be ready. 

— Nayyirah Waheed

Quote of the day

"Sometimes, despite what one may want, the door just has too many locks."

You see things differently on a motorcycle.

Transfagarasan Road, Romania

"You see things on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other.  In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV.  You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. 

On a cycle the frame is gone.  You’re completely in contact with it all.  You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.  That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness. 

(…) Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere.  Secondary roads are preferred.  Paved county roads are the best, state highways are next.  Freeways are the worst.  We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.  Twisting hilly roads are long in terms of seconds but are much more enjoyable on a cycle where you bank into turns and don’t get swung from side to side in any compartment.  Roads with little traffic are more enjoyable, as well as safer.  Roads free of drive-ins and billboards are better, roads where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to ask directions or information the answer tends to be longer than you want rather than short, where people ask where you’re from and how long you’ve been riding.”

- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Quote of the day

"He was convinced most of the planes would go down and there would be enough wandering Americans in Romania 'to call a general election, vote the Germans out, and make peace with the allies'"

from Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943 by James Dugan and Carroll Stewart

Dear God, where do we get such men?

Dear God, where so we get such men?
What loving God has provided,
that each generation, afresh,
there should arise new giants in the land.
Were we to go but a single generation
without such men, we should surely
be both damned and doomed.
-Anonymous military officer
as quoted by
Lt. Dave Grossman, On Combat

Reposted from February 26, 2010:

For lack of an original thought on my part, or a new quote, I dug into the "good" box and came up with this gem, originally posted by me on Sept. 6, 2009:

"Because you are a man,' she said. "Like other men, insecure. When a woman throws herself at you, you are incapable of just accepting your good fortune. You don't think you are worthy of what you are being given, so the woman has to have some ulterior motive."
-from Black Ops by W.E.B. Griffin hb pg 222

Apparently my lack of original thoughts is an ongoing problem. That is all. 

Quote of the day

"Keep thy nose down, and thy airspeed up, lest the earth rise up and smite thee."

The Night's Watch

"Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come." ―The Night's Watch oath

Quote of the day

A friend reminded me of this today:

Quote of the Day

"The further a society drifts from the truth,
the more it will hate those who speak it."
- George Orwell

Quote of the Day

Quote of the day

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."
- William E. Borah, former U.S. Senator from Idaho

Quote of the day

 

Fairytales don't tell children that dragons exist; children already know that dragons exist.
Fairytales tell children that dragons can be killed.

- G.K. Chesterton

Quote of the day

"You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?"
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Quote of the day

"The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life."
- Muhammad Ali

Quote of the day

There is no difference between the heart of a flower that lives but a single day, and the heart of a tree that lives for a thousand years.
- Samoan proverb

Quote of the day

Quote of the day

I looked at Quinn. "Just before I crushed his larynx, he patted my shoulder several times. Why do you suppose he did that?"
"I think he was tapping out. It's what they do in the quad cage when they've had enough."
"Oh. He should have said."
from Lethal People by John Locke

Quote of the day

"Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone's lifestyle, you must fear them or hate them. The second is that to love someone means that you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don't have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.

- Rick Warren