Quotes About Transition

And yet in the short space of half an hour all of life had changed, lost its color, its vividness, its whole meaning. No, she reflected, it wasn't that that had happened. Life about her, apparently, went on exactly as before.

I recall very well a time when things were better at answer the age-old question: Do I move or make home improvements?

And there was a time, you know, not so long ago, as recently as my own childhood in fact, when everyone believed in the future and eagerly awaited it or rushed to meet it. But now nearly everyone I know or used to know is trying to slow the speed of the world as the future starts to look more and more like someplace you don't want to be.

I recall very well a time when things were better at home. So, I must answer the age-old question: Do I move or make home improvements ?

The summer of '63, Keith reflected, had been called the last summer of American innocence

I was starting to get to know the city, and when that happens in a screwed-up place, it's time to leave.

one has to make an effort at a time like that, and a clean break. It's no good going on living in the ashes of a dead happiness.

One had to live in the new world and do one's best, forgetting about the old; now it was push bikes

Leave-takings are stupid things, and best forgotten about as quickly as possible.

Por consiguiente nadie muere, por el simple hecho de que en realidad nadie ha nacido. El momento de la concepción en el útero de nuestra madre no es el momento en que empezamos a existir. Existimos antes, en nuestra madre, en nuestro padre, en nuestros antepasados. No hemos surgido de la nada. Somos una continuación. Somos como el río en la superficie de la tierra, que es una continuación de la nube en del cielo.

All these people want is a chance for the future, a chance they will follow with a strict consequentness [sic]. They will resent pity, they will be suspicious of oversolicitousness. They have seen man from his most evil side, who can blame them for being suspicious? They will resent having somebody plan every little detail for them. And in all fairness, who can blame them for that? Have they not lived in the land of the dead and so what can be so terrifying about the land of the living?

Como Keynes dijo una vez, cuando los hechos cambian uno debe cambiar de opinión.

La carrera de Morgan ilustra perfectamente el modo como se construyó el imperio, que consistió en la transición de la piratería al poder político, hecho que cambiaría el mundo para siempre.

For a Monarchy readily becomes a Tyranny, an Aristocracy an Oligarchy, while a Democracy tends to degenerate into Anarchy. So that if the founder of a State should establish any one of these three forms of Government, he establishes it for a short time only, since no precaution he may take can prevent it from sliding into its contrary, by reason of the close resemblance which, in this case, the virtue bears to the vice.

The salvation of a republic or a kingdom is not, therefore, merely to have a prince who governs prudently while he lives, but rather one who organizes the government in such a way that after his death it can be maintained.

The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new.

One should bear in mind that there is nothing more difficult to execute, nor more dubious of success, nor more dangerous to administer, than to introduce new political orders. For the one who introduces them has as his enemies all those who profit from the old order, and he has only lukewarm defenders in all those who might profit from the new order.

For one change always leaves the toothing for another.

He who has annexed them, if he wishes to hold them, has only to bear in mind two considerations: the one, that the family of their former lord is extinguished; the other, that neither their laws nor their taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will become entirely one body with the old principality.

one change always leaves the toothing for another.

For one change always leaves a dovetail into which another will fit.

Thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.

A language brings with it a mass of perceptions, clichés, judgements and inspirations. In some sense, then, when one language replaces another, a people's view of the world must also be changing.

People come, people go – they'll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, complete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past.