Quotes About Not Knowing What You Had

“I don't mean to be like some old guy from the olden days who says, "I walked thirty miles to school every morning, so you kids should too." That's a statement born of envy and resentment. What I'm saying is something quite different. What I'm saying is that by having very little, I had it good. Children need a sense of pulling their own weight, of contributing to the family in some way, and some sense of the family's interdependence. They take pride in knowing that they're contributing. They learn responsibility and discipline through meaningful work. The values developed within a family that operates on those principles then extend to the society at large. By not being quite so indulged and "protected" from reality by overflowing abundance, children see the bonds that connect them to others.”

— Sidney Poitier

“He licked his lips, still looking earnest. "Sara. We had such a special connection. It was real and it was fantastic. Maybe that's why I've spent so many years yearning for it too. We both knew what it was like, and we lost it. Even though you may not remember yet, it's somewhere in here." He reached over and touched my head. "And in there." He pointed a finger toward my heart.
I was speechless. I stared at Jack, knowing in my heart that he was being honest and truthful. And I was overwhelmed that he understood me so well.
Turning to face me, his eyes burned with intensity. He took my hands in his and said, "I love you Sara Jordan Hamilton, and I'm willing to give you all the desires of your heart, if only you'll let me. Nothing can take away my love for you. Not time, not distance, not even another husband.”

— Sharon Ricklin Jones

“Bryn," he said. "Do you know how much I love you?"
I smiled and answered with a hint of sarcasm in my tone, "Well, I'm not quite sure."
"No, I'm serious," Tyler said, turning over onto his side so that he was facing me. His eyes were serious, something that I only saw when he really had something to say.
"Yeah, I do. It's the kind that hurts so good, right? Almost like you can't breathe without the other person and the only thing that keeps you sane throughout the day is knowing that you'll see that person soon enough. Nothing can come between you and that person. You would do anything for them. Be anyone they need you to be. Without thinking twice, you know you will be there, no matter what. That's what loving you is to me.”

— Alexandria Rhodes

“One day a hummingbird flew in
It fluttered against the window til I got it down where I could reach it with an open umbrella
When I had it in my hand it was so small I couldn't believe I had it
but I could feel the intense life
so intense and so tiny
... You were like the humming bird to me ...
And I am rather inclined to feel that you and I know the best part of one another without spending much time together
It is not that I fear the knowing
It is that I am at this moment willing to let you be what you are to me
it is beautiful and pure and very intensely alive.”

— Georgia O'Keeffe

“This is your love; it has to be. I can't breathe. I can't fucking breathe without you, Synthia Raine. You weren't supposed to leave me, Pet; that wasn't the deal. I told you I would find you, damn you. How could you run from me in death where I cannot follow you? This isn't right, but I get it now, you taught me. I know what love is, and it hurts. It's tearing me apart, and I find I don't enjoy it at all. Had you told me of this kind of pain, I'd have denied wanting it. I'd have lied if I could have. But if not feeling this pain meant never knowing you, I'd feel it again and again-just for you. I'd do it all again for one more moment with you.”

— Amelia Hutchins

“Fifty minutes, huh?" he muttered.
"Too long?" she managed with a teasing smile, knowing she longer had the strength to turn him away. She wanted Dalton to make love to her again. Needed him to.
He arched a brow. "You questioning my stamina?"
Laughing softly, she reached for his shirt, pulling him to her. "Not on your life. I know better. I was just thinking that for a man who spent years perfecting the eight second ride, fifty minutes might be quite a stretch."
Threading his fingers through her hair, he looked down at her. "The stretching part is no longer in question. Hell, much longer and it's gonna take a crow bar to get me out of these jeans."
"Then what are you waiting for?”

— Lindsey Brookes

“I'm American. Like I told you. And I'm American and not something else because they failed that day. They couldn't do it and most of them probably knew they couldn't do it before they even started, but they went anyhow. There's honor in that. I don't reckon there's much honor left in the world now, but they had it that day and I honor them on both sides by knowing what I can about it. Much as I can.”

— Lance Weller

“When [what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be best in the world at and what drives your economic engine] come together, not only does your work move toward greatness, but so does your life. For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then, you might gain that rare tranquility that comes from knowing that you've had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time here on this earth has been well spent, and that it mattered.”

— James C. Collins

“I did not care if Ella went to Princeton, if she was exceptionally pretty, if she grew up to marry a rich man, or really if she married at all - there were many incarnations of her I felt confident I could embrace, a hippie or a housewife or a career woman. But what I did care about, what I wanted most fervently, was for her to understand that hard work paid off, that decency begat decency, that humility was not a raincoat you occasionally pulled on when you thought conditions called for it, but rather a constant way of existing in the world, knowing that good luck and bad luck touched everyone and none of us was fully responsible for our fortunes or tragedies. Above all, I wanted my daughter to understand that many people were guided by bitterness and that it was best to avoid these individuals - their moods and behavior were a hornet's nest you had no possible reason to do anything other than bypass and ignore.”

— Curtis Sittenfeld

“The four men were in the kitchen laughing over breakfast when the door slammed open with such force that it knocked a picture off the wall. In unison, they jumped to their feet, not knowing what had hit them.
"What?! It wasn't enough for you to shoot me and kidnap me, so you had to go and butcher my hair? IS THAT IT?" she yelled at the top of her lungs.”

— Debra Trueman

“Three years with Claudia had taught Ruso that when a woman said something did not matter and refused to tell you what it was, it usually mattered a great deal-to her, if not to you. Frequently her way of punishing you for not knowing what it was in the first place was to refuse to tell you until you gave up asking. This was her cue to accuse you of not caring about her, otherwise you would have known what she wanted you to know without having to be told. Finally, if you were lucky, she would explain the latest way in which you had failed her expectations. If you were not lucky, she would explain ...”

— Ruth Downie

“People believe things that aren't true about other people just because of how they look and what kind of vehicle they drive. Why can you not wait and see who they are inside before you make a decision". "Because we're afraid" I said. "If I had trusted them and they turned out to be bad people, they might have robbed us or attack us. It's better to be cautious". "That is a sad thing" he said. "Always thinking the worst of other people". "Sad, but that's the way it is. We have to judge them on how they act and other was of knowing about them except what we can see on the outside”

— Karen McQuestion

“Knowing what Dan's face had looked like in Kabul, the night they'd spent in the hotel room. What he'd said. My light, my life, my sanity, my love. Nothing of that had been wrong. Not the sex, the kisses, the teenager oaths of staying together, always, rain, shine, life, death. I'd die for you. Live for me. Hold me. Fucking hold me.”

— Aleksandr Voinov

“And, at such a time, for a few of us there will always be a tugging at the heart-knowing a precious moment had gone and we not there. We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever-the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on belfry floor, a remembered voice, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.”

— J.L. Carr

“If there is an after, I hope it's not dark. And I hope you can remember. I'd hate to wander around in the dark forever, not knowing who I was or what I was doin' here, or not even knowing that I'd ever had anything different.”

— Richard Bachman

“One day I was living silently in a personal hell, without anyone to tell what I felt, without even knowing that the feelings I had were possible to have; and then one day I was not living like that at all. I had begun to see the past like this: there is a line; you can draw it yourself, or sometimes it gets drawn for you; either way, there it is, your past, a collection of people you used to be and things you used to do. Your past is the person you no longer are, the situations you are no longer in.”

— Jamaica Kincaid

“You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have been Hailsham if we hadn't. Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you, I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods. Lucy was well-meaning enough. But if she'd have her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered. Look at you both now! I'm so proud to see you both. You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn't be who you are today if we'd not protected you. You wouldn't have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn't have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you? So she had to go.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

“You know, my love, you are not responsible for my happiness, or even my health. I've had a choice every step of the way, from our very first meeting. I chose you. Clearly, in my heart and in my head, I chose you. If I had it to do all over again, even knowing what I would have to go through, I would choose you without hesitation.”

— Christine Feehan

“As as result of your "not knowing," this country has lost its freedom, lost it for centuries, perhaps, and you shout that you feel no guilt?
How can you stant the sight of what you've done?
How is it you aren't horrified? Have you no eyes to see?
If you had eyes, you would have to put them out and wander away from Thebes!”

— Milan Kundera

“It's not your fault. You had no way of knowing I'd traded my soul. It's not exactly how I start out conversations. Hi, I'm Kyrian. I have no soul. What about you? (Kyrian)”

— Sherrilyn Kenyon

“She sat down on the stool next to Syn. "Out of curiosity, why are you keeping me here?" It was against military protocol. In the past, whenever her father had "protected" her, she'd been moved to a safe location.
Nykyrian took a drink of his juice before he answered. "When you're being hunted to the extent you are, there's no real safe place. You're famous, which makes it all the harder to hide you. Better to keep you here where you have the advantage of knowing the terrain and are most comfortable."
"Not to mention, we're using you for bait."
Nykyrian cocked his head at Syn. "Are you that/I> drunk?"
Syn's eyes widedened. "What? I wasn't supposed to tell her that?"
Kiara was horrified. "I'm bait?"
"No, you're not bait. Ignore the alcoholic whose view of reality is distorted by his brain-damaged hallucinations."
-Kiara, Nykyrian, & Syn”

— Sherrilyn Kenyon

“I will not die. I will not break. I will not move. Face it. You'll go to your grave knowing you never had what it took to stop me.”

— Henry Rollins

“Do you see, Harry? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now? I had fallen into the trap I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid."
"I don't -"
"I cared about you too much," said Dumbledore simply. "I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act.
"Is there a defense? I defy anyone who has watched you as I have - and I have watched you more closely than you can have imagined - not to want to save you more pain than you had already suffered. What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands.”

— J.K. Rowling

“All these crushing questions; but whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday. The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same. And it would be astonishing to find how soon the change is felt if we had no kindred changes to compare with it. To share lodgings with a brilliant dinner companion, or to see your favourite politician in the Ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in these cases too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities.”

— George Eliot

“Wherever I was, I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn't mean anything, nothing had form but I was still me, you know? And I was warm and I was loved and I was finished. Complete. I don't understand about theology or dimensions, or any of it, really but I think I was in heaven. And now I'm not. I was torn out of there. Pulled out by my friends. Everything here is hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch this is hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that knowing what I've lost ...”

— Joss Whedon

“I wasn't sure what would happen with us. I knew that there were no guarantees. Terrible things happened when you were least expecting them, on sunny Saturday mornings, and the consequences just had to be lived with, every day. But it seemed that wonderful things could happen too. You could be forced to take a trip, not knowing who you would meet. Not knowing that it would change your life.”

— Morgan Matson

“Did they all live happily ever after?
They did not. No one ever does, in spite of what the stories may say. They had their good days, as you do, and they had their bad days, and you know about those. They had their victories, as you do, and they had their defeats, and you know about those, too. There were times when they felt ashamed of themselves, knowing that they had not done their best, and there were times when they knew they had stood where their God had meant them to stand. All I'm trying to say is that they lived as well as they could, each and every one of them; some lived longer than others, but all lived well, and bravely, and I love them all, and am not ashamed of my love.”

— Stephen King

“What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.”

— Jane Austen

“While we were together, you know, there was nothing to be feared ... The only time that I ever really suffered in body or mid, the only time that I ever fancied myself unwell, or had any ideas of danger, was the winter that I passed by myself at Deal, when the Admiral (Captain Croft then) was in the North Seas. I lived in perpetual fright at that time, and had all manner of imaginary complaints from not knowing what to do with myself, or when I should hear from him next; but as long as we could be together, nothing ever ailed me, and I never met with the smallest inconvenience.”

— Jane Austen

“Yes and I had heard it before. But what is that to me? If there is no other objection to my marrying your nephew, I shall certainly not be kept from it by knowing that his mother and aunt wished him to marry Miss de Bourgh. You both did as much as you could in planning the marriage. Its completion depended on others. If Mr. Darcy is neither by honour or inclination confined to his cousin, why not is he to make another choice? And if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?”

— Jane Austen

“(Did you love your wife) I convinced myself I did when I married. I willed myself into the appropriate feelings without knowing what the appropriate feelings were. I endowed her with qualities she did not have and then despised her for not having them. Afterwards I might have learned to love her if I had thought more of her needs and less of my own.”

— P.D. James

“I am not bitter because of what has happened. On the contrary. I am secure in knowing that what we had was real, and I am happy we were able to come together for even a short period of time. And if, in some distant place in the future, we see each other in our new lives, I will smile at you with joy, and remember how we spent a summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. And maybe, for a brief moment, you'll feel it, too, and you'll smile back, and savor the memories we will always share together.
I love you, Allie.
Noah”

— Nicholas. Sparks

“I managed to ask a question that had been burning inside me. "Do you still love her? Rose?" Along with not knowing what it felt like to be in love, I also didn't know how long it took to recover from love.
Adrian's smile faded. His gaze turned inward. "Yes. No. It's hard to get over someone like that. She had a huge effect on me, both good and bad. That's hard to move past. I try not to think about her much in terms of love and hate. Mostly I'm trying to get on with my life. With mixed results, unfortunately.”

— Richelle Mead

“Kaushik, what about a picture?" my father suggested. I shook my head. I had left my camera, my father's old Yashica, at school. "But you always have it with you." That look of irritated disappointment, the one that had appeared the day my mother died and was missing now that he'd married Chitra, passed briefly across my father's face. "I forgot it," I said. It was true, I did always have the camera with me. Even on quiet weekends when I came home and my father and I saw no one I would bring it, taking it with me on walks. This time I had left it behind, knowing that I would not want to document anything. "I don't understand," my father said. "Neither do I," I replied. "You haven't wanted a picture of anything in years." "That's not true." "It is." We were stating facts and at the same time arguing, an argument whose depths only he and I could fully comprehend.”

— Jhumpa Lahiri

“A heckler once interrupted Nikita Khrushchev in the middle of a speech in which he was denouncing the crimes of Stalin. "You were a colleague of Stalin's," the heckler yelled, "why didn't you stop him then?" Khrushschev apparently could not see the heckler and barked out, "Who said that?" No hand went up. No one moved a muscle. After a few seconds of tense silence, Khrushchev finally said in a quiet voice, "Now you know why I didn't stop him." Instead of just arguing that anyone facing Stalin was afraid, knowing that the slightest sign of rebellion would mean certain death, he had made them feel what it was like to face Stalin-had made them feel the paranoia, the fear of speaking up, the terror of confronting the leader, in this case Khrushchev. The demonstration was visceral and no more argument was necessary.”

— Robert Greene

“It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that you knew or had seen or had heard someone say.”

— Ernest Hemingway

“Just supposing," he said, "just supposing"
he didn't know what was coming next, so he thought he'd just sit back and listen
"that there was some extraordinary way in which you were very important to me, and that, though you didn't know it, I was very important to you, but it all went for nothing because we only had five miles and I was a stupid idiot at knowing how to say something very important to someone I've only just met and not crash into lorries a the same time, what would you say ... " He paused, helplessly, and looked at her.
"I should do.”

— Douglas Adams

“The hardest thing is deciding what I should tell you and what not to. Well, anyway, I've got a while yet before you're old enough to understand the tapes. They're more for me at this point ... to help get it all straight. Should I tell you about your father? That's a tough one. Will it change your decision to send him here ... knowing? But if you don't send Kyle, you could never be. God, you can go crazy thinking about all this ... I suppose I'll tell you ... I owe him that. And maybe it'll be enough if you know that in the few hours we had together we loved a lifetime's worth.”

— Sarah Connor

“When you rest deeply in the Unknown without trying to escape, your experience becomes very vast. As the experience of the Unknown deepens, your boundaries begin to dissolve. You realize, not just intellectually but on a deep level, that you have no idea who or what you are. A few minutes ago, you knew who you were-you had a history and a personality-but from this place of not knowing, you question all of that.”

— Adyashanti

“Having read the source material, I had to have drawn from that. As a fan, I wanted to remain true to that character, but it was really cool because, as we were figuring these characters out, I realized that there was a lot more backstory, rather than what I had gotten just from reading the book. Glenn doesn't really get much of a backstory there. He's just seen as this kid who is put in this situation, not knowing where his mind-set is, but then you slowly see him start to develop.”

— Steven Yeun