Quotes About Transition

The Americans will probably to some extent modify their past system of total administrative cataclysms, but their very existence in the only competing form of free government should prepare us for and make us patient with the mild transitions of Parliamentary government.

The best mode of comprehending the nature of the two Governments, is to look at a country in which the two have within a comparatively short space of years succeeded each other.

Everything changes; the old world—-the classical civilization of form and definition—passes away, a new world of free spirit and inward growth emerges; between the two lies a mixed weltering interval of trouble and confusion.

What of me after parting? I know not-- I'll go back, perhaps, to my old fishing rock on the beach.

I can't tell anymore. Which is long and which short, the river flowing east or thoughts farewell brings on?

But Springlike preludes suggest a happy world where the young are philosophers and the old gracefully get out of their way.

In every development, just or false, real or imaginary, collective or individual, it is always the first step, the first act that is the most difficult. That step once taken, the rest follows naturally as a necessary consequence.

Every development, I have said, implies the negation of its point of departure.

I have not written about being a Negro at such length because I do not expect that to be my only subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock before I could hope to write about anything else.

There are people in the world for whom "coming along" is a perpetual process, people who are destined never to arrive.

We had crossed from death into what certainly sounded like life. And not only did it sound like life, it looked like life; and not only did it look like life, it looked like a particular life, a life which was a particular reproach to me.

Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

The movements of belief are gradual. They resemble the slow rise or fall of ancient coast-lines, where, by imperceptible degrees, sea turns into land, or land into sea. So, without shock or clamor, man smoothly modifies his point of view, till, gazing over the spaces he has traversed, he greatly marvels at the change.

Religions emerged too early in human evolution — they set up symbols that people took literally, and they're as dead as a line of totem poles. Religions should have come later, when the human race begins to near its end.

Prosperity often presages adversity.

When desire dies, fear is born.

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane

Bama captures a moment that contains a paradox: she seeks an identity, but seeks a change which means an end to that identity.

For ten years I had been protected, wrapped up in something like a blanket that had been stitched together from all kinds of different things. But people never notice that warmth until after they've emerged. You don't even notice that you've been inside until it's too late for you ever to go back-- that's how perfect the temperature of that blanket is.

I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didn't grow up. I had thought about that often since my sister got married. Do you become a character in a story native to that land, or do you, somewhere in your heart, want to return to your homeland.

Chilled-looking people walking along the riverside, the snow beginning, faintly, to pile up on the roofs of cars, the bare trees shaking their heads left and right, dry leaves tossing in the wind. The silver of the metal window sash sparkling coldly. Soon after, I heard sensei call, "Mikage! Are you awake? It's snowing, look! It's snowing!" "I'm coming!" I called out, standing up. I got dressed to begin another day. Over and over, we begin again.

Whenever you get something in this world, you lose something too — that's just the way things work.

So, have you been enjoying yourself these days, Kazami?' I'm having lots of fun.' It was true. That made the sense of regret even keener, that this time in my life would soon be a thing of the past. I felt as if I could understand a little of what my mother had been through, and the feelings she may have had at different times. I wasn't a child anymore, and this made me feel awfully lonesome, and utterly alone.

Tutti di solito sono convinti che le persone si separano perché una si è stancata dell'altra, per propria volontà o per volontà dell'altra persona. Ma non è così. I periodi finiscono, come cambiano le stagioni