Quotes About Presence

Man loves company - even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around.

The sense of being alone is a huge issue for so many people in this world. As a worshipper of Jesus, there's a very real sense that we are always seen, held and known.

It's often just enough to be with someone. I don't need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between you both. You're not alone.

Only when you can accept that you are alone, will you discover that you are not alone.

I sit in thy shadow but not alone.

You don't have the right to be left alone with that abortion decision. The child is present...you are not alone.

I am too alone in the world and not alone enough to make every moment holy.

And remember don't high post when you're far from home, and high posting when you're all alone.

It is a good idea to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.

There's such a history, and to be here, and to feel that, is really amazing.

Are you really angry, or simply aware of anger in the body and mind? Don't speculate, simply look at what is there.

I knew what he was doing. He was walking away from his thoughts but his thoughts were staying with him.

I have books to read, and much to sit and watch. I try not to let good things go by unnoticed.

For what seemed a long time Mat knelt there with his father's dead wrist in his hand, while his mind arrived and arrived and yet arrived at that place and time and that body lying still on the soiled and bloodied stones.

this country would always be populated with presences and absences, presences of absences, the living and the dead. The world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come.

And now in my tenderness of remembering it all again, I think I am still there with him too. I am there with all the others, most of them gone but some who are still here, who gave me love and called forth love from me. When I number them over, I am surprised how many there are. And so I have to say that another of the golden threads is gratitude. I was grateful because I knew, even in my fear and grief, that my life had been filled with gifts.

It is possible, as I have learned again and again, to be in one's place, in such company, wild or domestic, and with such pleasure, that one cannot think of another place that one would prefer to be—or of another place at all. One does not miss or regret the past, or fear or long for the future. Being there is simply all, and is enough. Such times give one the chief standard and the chief reason for one's work.

You have taken me and quieted me. You have been such light to me that others have been your shadows. You come near me with the nearness of sleep. --Marriage, Wendell Berry

Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up from the pages of books and from your own heart. Be still and listen to the voices that belong to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields. There are songs and sayings that belong to this place, by which it speaks for itself and no other.

There is time, and then there is timelessness. And if you're lucky, and if you can be still enough, observant enough, you may be able to know and speak about that intersection of time and timelessness, or time and eternity.

We stood and looked and knowed it was all the time we had and from now on we must remember. We must look now forever.

You'd have to stand twice in the same place to make a shadow.

He knew that I was living in loss. He knew, if anybody did, that there was nothing that could be done about it, nothing certainly that he could do, and yet he came. He came to offer himself, to be with us in Virgil's absence, to love us without hope or help, as he had to do. This was a baby that needed to be stood by, and he stood by her.