Quotes About Loss

The Midway battle was crucial. In exchange for 307 lives, the Yorktown and a destroyer, and 147 airplanes, the American fleet had destroyed four Japanese carriers, more than three hundred planes, a cruiser and a destroyer, and nearly five thousand Japanese sailors and airmen. It has been called, with justification, "the turning point" in the Pacific war.

During one raid alone in 1945, using conventional bombs, it was estimated that eighty-eight thousand Japanese were killed and six square miles of Tokyo were completely destroyed. But

Dying - you can't do that to a cat.

if we lust for ease and comfort today—caring only for ourselves, stopping halfway, and giving up our rights in the matter of pursuing the Lord—we will not be able to recover those rights; neither will there be any compensation for them. This is an eternal loss.

For a long time he watched her. When she was lost to sight, he was almost a little moved. But that's life, thought death.

Lange schaute er ihr nach. Als er sie aus den Augen verlor, war der Tod fast ein wenig betrübt. Aber so war das Leben.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; For nothing now can ever come to any good.

La muerte toma siempre la forma de la alcoba que nos contiene.

It was not that he didn't remember he once had another sort of life. But, like the old yellowing photograph at home, which he did not burn, it was sad to think about, and far away, like another world that had disappeared forever.

But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, "Find your left eye," I suppose it would be difficult to do so.

The traces of my father's presence, which I had done my best to preserve, had vanished, replaced by an emptiness that would not be filled. I stood in the middle of that emptiness, feeling myself on the verge of being drawn into its terrible depth.

Since that time, I've had many similar moments, and I can never hear the words "family" and "home" without feeling that they sound strange, never simply hear them and let them go. When I stop to examine them, though, the words seem hollow, seem to rattle at my feet like empty cans.

Disappeared' is the only way to describe it-it was as if he dissolved into thin air without so much as a whimper. I wouldn't have believed that a human being with a brain, a heart, with arms and legs and the power of speech could have simple vanished like that. There was nothing about him that suggested he would disappear.

Memories don't just pile up—they also change over time. And sometimes they fade of their own accord. Though the process, for me, is quite different from what happens to the rest of you when something disappears from the island.

As I traced his profile with my eyes, I realized that I could never ask anything of him again: not caresses, not protection, not warmth. He would never dive into the pool inside me, clouded as it was with the little girl's tears. The waves of regret were gentle, but I knew they would ripple on forever.

Sometimes I wish I could describe how wonderful I feel in those few seconds from the time he spreads his arms above his head, as if trying to grab hold of something, to the instant he vanishes into the water. But I can never find the right words. Perhaps it's because he's falling through time, to a place where words can never reach.

And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.

If it goes on like this and we can't compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it's completely hollowed out, we'll all disappear without a trace. Don't you ever feel that way?

Ad what will happen if words disappear? I whispered to myself, afraid that if I said it too loudly, it might come true

When they were gone, a calm fell as though the air itself were breathing with infinite care. The owners turned for home, empty cages in hand. And that was how the birds disappeared.

goes on like this and we can't compensate for the things that get lost, the island will soon be nothing but absences and holes, and when it's completely hollowed out, we'll all disappear without a trace. Don't you ever feel that way?

And what will happen if words disappear?

You'll see for yourself. Something will disappear from your life.

And what will happen if words disappear? I whispered to myself, afraid that if I said it too loudly, it might come true.