The Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, Ned is visited by the Chicken of Depression.
The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the world predictable by reining in creativity and enterprise. Progress as a neat blueprint, with no deviations and no surprise, may work in children's cartoons or utopian novels. But it's just a fantasy.
Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life.
All men die. You may say: 'Is that encouraging?' Surely yes, for when a man dies, his blunders, which are of the form, all die with him, but the things in him that are part of the life never die, although the form be broken.
I have had a number of less-than-enviable moments in my life when dealing with other people. I won't attempt to blunt that by saying I am not the only one.
The years of imprisonment hardened me... Perhaps if you have been given a moment to hold back and wait for the next blow, your emotions wouldn't be blunted as they have been in my case. When it happens every day of your life, when that pain becomes a way of life... there is no longer anything I can fear.
Life is a blur when one is essaying different roles; it is so fulfilling.
Life flies by, and it's easy to get lost in the blur. In adolescence, it's 'How do I fit in?' In your 20s, it's 'What do I want to do?' In your 30s, 'Is this what I'm meant to do?' I think the trick is living the questions. Not worrying so much about what's ahead but rather sitting in the grey area - being OK with where you are.
I've had my nose in a book my whole life. I never thought it would be useful, but it is now. What's really nice is that I don't have a photographic memory, so words get blurred, thoughts get mixed up, and they come out as something new.
I was freeborn according to the flesh; I am born of a father who was a decurion, but I sold my noble rank - I blush not to state it, nor am I sorry - for the profit of others. In short, I am a slave in Christ to a foreign nation for the unspeakable glory of the eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, and flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat or girl?
I remember - when I was little, I remember playing 'Tecmo Bowl,' and I would be so excited to be Bo Jackson in the game that I wanted to watch him play in real life.
You can make a board for all the goals you want in your life with the pictures on it, and that's great, daydreaming is wonderful, but you can never plan your future.
Life is a full-contact sport, and there's a score up on the board.
The two things I was positive about in life were that I was going to be a teacher at a boarding school or an operative with the CIA posted abroad. I could write a book about all the things I was sure about.
I didn't go to the Bob Marley and the Wailers show twice in my life, and I've regretted it every day since.
Every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity.
Will you lose everything you've got if you open your own restaurant? Who knows. Will unleashing your secret desire to teach tap dancing ruin your reputation as a professional wrestler? Who knows. And who cares? Unless your unknown puts you at risk of death, prison, or bodily harm, you have nothing to lose except living a dull, uninspired life.
Physiology is concerned with all those phenomena of life that present them selves to us in sense perception as bodily processes, and accordingly form part of that total environment which we name the external world.
With man, the life of the body depends on the life of the spirit.
