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Quotes About Presence

and you could see that Mrs. Hunt had been a very beautiful girl down there in Atlanta, where she comes from. And she still had - has - that look, that don't-you-touch-me look, that women who were beautiful carry with them to the grave.
~ James Baldwin
I was there, then, for the , in a way that hadn't nothing to do with me. I was there, then, for them, like Fonny was present, like my baby, just beginning now, out of a long, long sleep, to turn, to listen, to awaken, somewhere beneath my heart.
~ James Baldwin
The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not he had ever, really, been present at his life. For if he had ever been present, then he was present still, and his world would open up before him.
~ James Baldwin
I missed the way the dark face closes, the way the dark eyes watch, the way the dark face opens and lights up the room.
~ James Baldwin
To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread. It
~ James Baldwin
I am referring to something much simpler and much less fanciful. To be sensual, I think, is to respect and to rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread. It will be a great day for America, incidentally, when we begin to eat bread again, instead of the blasphemous and tasteless foam rubber that we have substituted for it.
~ James Baldwin
I have never reached you, said Giovanni. You have never really been here.
~ James Baldwin
But for power truly to feel itself menaced, it must somehow sense itself in the presence of another power—or, more accurately, an energy—which it has not known how to define and therefore does not really know how to control.
~ James Baldwin
An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger: the stranger's presence making you the stranger, less to the stranger than to yourself.
~ James Baldwin
Granted, the Scott Paper story is one of the more dramatic in our study, but it's not an isolated case. In over two thirds of the comparison cases, we noted the presence of a gargantuan personal ego that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company.33
~ James C. Collins
We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things...but there are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen, and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.
~ James Carroll
For Christian faith, the death of God is not a question of his disappearance. On the contrary, it is one of the places where He is most fully present. Jesus is not Man standing in for God. He is a sign that God is incarnate in human frailty and futility.
~ James Carroll
The absence of Jesus is the mode of his presence.
~ James Carroll
God suffers with you!
~ James Carroll
Their souls touch and I seem to be more aware of God because of it.
~ James Clavell
The sea, as much as the light, gives this curve of coast it's flavor. The light takes it's color from the sea, sometimes seems to be emerging from it. And the sea here is ever-present. On clear days it coats the air with a transparent tinge of palest blue that salts and sharpens every detail.
~ James D. Houston
You don't build a bond without being present.
~ James Earl Jones
All that we can do with any spiritual discipline is produce within ourselves something of the silence, the humility, the detachment, the purity of heart and the indifference which are required if the inner self is to make some shy, unpredictable manifestation of his presence.11
~ James Finley
In prayer, like the stars before the rising sun, all the burdens of our autonomous self disperse before the "piercing presence" of God. God unclothes, undoes us, "prunes away every branch that does not bear fruit." He even takes God away from us
~ James Finley
To practice meditation as an act of religious faith is to open ourselves to the endlessly reassuring realization that our very being and the very being of everyone and everything around us is the generosity of God. For God is creating us in the present moment, loving us into being, such that our very presence in the present moment is the manifested presence of God. We meditate that we might awaken to this unitive mystery, not just in meditation, but in every moment of our lives.
~ James Finley
Practice not wanting, desiring, judging, doing, fighting, knowing. Practice just being. Everything will fall into place.
~ James Frey
That's the worst way to miss somebody. When they're right beside you and yo miss them anyway.
~ James Frey
If you aren't in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.
~ Jim Carrey
My uncles are always busy away acting, so I barely even see them much at all, but I always know that they are so supportive. Anytime I do see them, they always check up on it and make sure everything's okay and let me know that they're there for me.
~ Hero Fiennes-Tiffin