Dreams Unfulfilled Quotes

If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.

We can't possibly have a summer love. So many people have tried that the name's become proverbial. Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It's a sad season of life without growth...It has no day.

When scorching passion only leaves ashes of unfulfilled dreams, hope may entice the sprinkling magic of our imagination into livening up the footlights on a new stage of life. ("Taken for a ride")

The sight of a child…will arouse certain longings in adult, civilized persons — longings which relate to the unfulfilled desires and needs of those parts of the personality which have been blotted out of the total picture in favor of the adapted persona.

It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin.

Failures plagued me. Things I had omitted or ignored, neglected. What I should have given and hadn’t. I felt the biting pang of every unfulfillment.

Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It’s a sad season of life without growth…It has no day.

All women on earth-- and men, too for that matter-- hope for the kind of love that transforms us, raises us up out of the everyday, & gives us the courage to survive our little deaths: the heartache of unfulfilled dreams, of career and personal disappointments, of broken love affairs.

Always having what we want may not be the best good fortune Health seems sweetest after sickness, food in hunger, goodness in the wake of evil, and at the end of daylong labor sleep.

May there be no unfulfilled dreams like this may there be realities that satisfy me someday, may I meet you just like this.

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.

I can have patience for anything, but it's waiting for love, that kills me a little each day.

he knew that a part of his life was complete and that whatever path he chose, he would experience the ache of unfulfilled dreams.

Summer has no day,' she said. 'We can't possibly have a summer love. So many people have tried that the name's become proverbial. Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It's a sad season of life without growth...it has no day.

I wouldn't mind if life left me... wingless burnt to cinders ripped by storms scattered...like weeds celestially wounded without cherry blossoms to perish with but I would cry with head held in my hands if it left me... unfulfilled.

Then there came a faraway, booming voice like a low, clear bell. It came from the center of the bowl and down the great sides to the ground and then bounced toward her eagerly. 'You see I am fate,' it shouted, 'and stronger than your puny plans; and I am how-things-turn-out and I am different from your little dreams, and I am the flight of time and the end of beauty and unfulfilled desire; all the accidents and imperceptions and the little minutes that shape the crucial hours are mine. I am the exception that proves no rules, the limits of your control, the condiment in the dish of life.

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled.

Cemeteries are full of unfulfilled dreams... countless echoes of 'could have' and 'should have'… countless books unwritten… countless songs unsung... I want to live my life in such a way that when my body is laid to rest, it will be a well needed rest from a life well lived, a song well sung, a book well written, opportunities well explored, and a love well expressed.

I dreamed of dying, long before my dreams have died.

Not only did I rediscover every experience of my life, I had to live each unfulfilled desire as well—as though they’d been fulfilled. I saw that what transpires in the mind is just as real as any flesh and blood occurrence. What had only been imagination in life, now became tangible, each fantasy a full reality. I lived them all—while, at the same time, standing to the side, a witness to their, often, intimate squalor. A witness cursed with total objectivity.

Might there come a time When we stand over a grave And mourn ourselves? Mourn the past, a previous life? Shall we weep for the passing of time? Shall we grieve for unfulfilled dreams? In my naivety; in my belief In immortal youth, I sleep walk through life. Someone... wake me up. Please. Wake me up.

Once you become aware of your impending death, you have to make a compromise in accepting the loss of the life you wish you could have led and the reality of your imminent death. Sure, there will always be regrets and broken dreams, but you have to go easy on yourself. Over the last few days, I’ve come to realise that there is certain beauty in those regrets, they are proof of having lived. Maybe I will regrets some of my decisions when the moment comes, but that’s ok, No matter how you slice it, life is full of regrets anyway. I was never able to be myself completely or live my life exactly how I wanted to, I am not even sure if I ever figure out what exactly being myself and living out my dreams really meant. So I guess I am going to die with all those failures and regrets, all those unfulfilled dreams, all the people I’ve never met, all the things I’ve never tasted and all the places I’ve never been. I am taking all that with me to my grave, and I am ok with that. In the end, I am satisfied with who I am and the life I’ve lived, I am just happy to have been here at all.

After that day, I discovered one indelible truth. I discovered that love wasn’t everything that mattered in life. It was an emotion that not many had the luxury of feeling without any pain attached to it. Many say that love will set you free, but I disagree. Love is a cage, a very painful one; its gilded bars made with yearning, heartache, and unfulfilled dreams. And the moment I realized that love wasn’t necessary to one’s survival I became free. No one would have the power to hurt me again.

Even Colin - the golden boy, the man with the easy smile and devilish humor - had raw spots of his own. He was haunted by unfulfilled dreams and secret insecurities. How unfair she had been when she'd pondered his life, not to allow him his weaknesses.

The hardest dream of all is the dream of not being tormented by our unlived dreams. To cope with and accept unfulfillment as a natural human condition. To be complete in our incompleteness. To be free from the shackles of memory, and ambition, to be free from comparison to other people and other hypothetical selves, and to meet the moment without any other agenda, to exist as freely as time itself.

A son is an unfulfilled man’s last attempt to fulfill his unfulfilled dreams.

These books promise closure and justice, but ultimately they reinforce the reality that so many lives are interrupted, so many dreams unfulfilled.

The right lifestyle is something that is worn, not discussed. Money, fame, and looks, though helpful, are not required. It is, rather, something that screams: Ladies, abandon your boring, mundane, unfulfilled lives and step into my exciting world, full of interesting people, new experiences, good times, easy living, and dreams fulfilled.

The only difference between you and a dream is I haven’t woken up with you

At the edge of his dreams, there was often a sound like the faint, distant cry of someone in distress, and for minutes after waking, he would feel the anxiety of some duty unfulfilled.

You go into extinction by being obsessed about becoming something else and then travelling in the wrong car while your real self keeps waiting at the bus stop for your unfulfilled return!

Her unfulfilled life has always been a prison of her own making, the thoughts she chose and believed, the fear and blame, paralyzing her in her unhappiness, telling her that her dreams were too big, too impractical, too unlikely, too hard to achieve, that she didn’t deserve them, that she shouldn’t want them, that she didn’t need them.

Artists are strange people. They make the world a beautiful place, and make others feel good, but they are a bunch of lonely people. Artists are people with unfulfilled, unrealistic dreams, lonely, and always searching for perfection.

Rose once jotted down a quotation she attributed to her mother: “I don’t know which is more heartbreaking, a dream un[ful]filled or a dream realized.

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.

My mother, stuck in Two Rivers with a head full of unfulfilled dreams, escaped every chance she got via the Two Rivers Free Library - her library card both a passport and necessary currency for her travels.

Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Anne?” asked Gilbert. Something in his tone—something she had not heard since that miserable evening in the orchard at Patty’s Place—made Anne’s heart beat wildly. But she made answer lightly. “Of course. Everybody has. It wouldn’t do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about. What a delicious aroma that low-descending sun is extracting from the asters and ferns. I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them. I’m sure they would be very beautiful.” Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked. “I have a dream,” he said slowly. “I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends— and YOU!” Anne wanted to speak but she could find no words. Happiness was breaking over her like a wave. It almost frightened her. “I asked you a question over two years ago, Anne. If I ask it again today will you give me a different answer?” Still Anne could not speak. But she lifted her eyes, shining with all the love-rapture of countless generations, and looked into his for a moment. He wanted no other answer.

Theologian and scholar Walter Brueggemann writes beautifully in 'The Prophetic Imagination' that real hope comes only after despair. Only if we have tasted despair, only if we have known the deep sadness of unfulfilled dreams and promises, only if we can dare to look reality in the face and name it for what it is, can we dare to begin to imagine a better way. Hope is subversive precisely because it dares to admit that all is not as it should be. And so we are holding out for, working for, creating, prophesying, and living into something better---for the kingdom to come, for oaks of righteousness to tower, for leaves to blossom for the healing of the nations, for swords to be beaten into plowshares, for joy to come in the morning, and for redemption and justice.

Cemeteries are full of unfulfilled dreams... countless echoes of 'could have' and 'should have'… Don’t choose to walk the well-worn path to regret.

We live for our unfulfilled dreams when we are alive. Our fulfilled dreams live for us when we are gone!

I believe that unfulfilled frustrated people probably spend a lot of their lives in pure fantasy-dreaming. This can I am sure be a great source of consolation though not always harmless.

many of the most famous people in our culture have achieved their dreams but have still not found a way to enjoy them. They often turn to drugs because they feel unfulfilled. This is because they are missing the distinction between achieving one’s goals and living one’s values,

...most of us build prisons for ourselves and after we occupy them for a period of time we become accustomed to their walls and accept the false premise that we are incarcerated for life. As soon as that belief takes hold of us we abandon hope of ever doing more with our lives and of ever giving our dreams a chance to be fulfilled. We become puppets and begin to suffer living deaths. It may be praiseworthy and noble to sacrifice your life to a cause or a business or the happiness of others, but if you are miserable and unfulfilled in that lifestyle, and know it, then to remain in it is a hypocrisy, a lie, and a rejection of the faith placed in you by your creator.

Did subsequent generations ineluctably start where previous ones had given up, absorbing all of their disappointments and unfulfilled dreams? Was the present moment a mere continuation of the past, every word an afterword to what had already been said or left unsaid?

unfulfilled dreams only become unnecessary regrets!

Then you are not pursuing your goal in life, when you are unfulfilled and just cruising along unconsciously, I believe that you are literally committing spiritual suicide.

A Dream unfulfilled is a Nightmare.

Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April.

Secure your dreams for they are the wings of your soul, and, when vulnerable, flight is inconceivable.

A "real woman" is a graveyard of desires, of dreams unfulfilled, of delusions,' the Chimères collective wrote.

The world is full of books, movies and stories about how the loss of a loved one, or a change in fortune, or a severe illness or another tragedy of such magnitude catapulted someone to reset their lives and chase long-forgotten dreams. I’m thinking of Cheryl Strayed, who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail solo after the unexpected and heartbreaking death of her mother, and Elizabeth Gilbert, who embarked on a year-long journey around the world after a painful divorce and depression. I admire their grit to pick themselves up and do something extraordinary in the face of tragedy. But what about the tragedy of a mundane, average, unfulfilling life?

Our brain is a circuit board with neurons and terminals ready to be wired. We are born free, then programmed to obey our parents, to tell the truth, pass exams, pursue and achieve, love and propagate, age and fade unfulfilled and uncertain what it has all been for. We swallow the operating system with our mother's milk and sleepwalk into the forest of consumer illusion craving shoes, houses, cars, magazines, experiences that endorse our preconceived dreams and opinions. We grow into our parents. We becomes clones, robots, matchstick men thinking and saying the same, feeling the same, behaving the same, appreciating in books and films and art shows those things we already recognize and understand.

The world was simpler in those days, Jaime thought, and men as well as swords were made of finer steel. Or was it only that he had been fifteen? They were all in their graves now, the Sword of the Morning and the Smiling Knight, the White Bull and Prince Lewyn, Ser Oswell Whent with his black humor, earnest Jon Darry, Simon Toyne and his Kingswood Brotherhood, bluff old Sumner Crakehall. And me, that boy I was … when did he die, I wonder? When I donned the white cloak? When I opened Aerys’s throat? That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Knight instead.

If you can see through my eyes, you may see the real beauty I see in poor people, in old age homes, unprivileged children, abandoned houses, empty streets, broken dreams unfulfilled expectations. You can see the new life struggling beneath our comfortable lives.

You see, I am fate,” it shouted, “and stronger than your puny plans; and I am how-things-turn-out and I am different from your little dreams, and I am the flight of time and the end of beauty and unfulfilled desire; all the accidents and imperceptions and the little minutes that shape the crucial hours are mine. I am the exception that proves no rules, the limits of your control, the condiment in the dish of life.

The cemetery is the “richest or wealthiest prison of undiscovered, untapped, undeveloped and unfulfilled dreams of presidents that never presided, great orators that never made a speech, astronauts that never went to the moon, doctors that never touched the sick or great preachers that never preached a Sermon

Unsettled by the sudden appearance of Captain Quire within her court, Gloriana resolved to forego all frivolous entertainments and shun the more unnecessary pleasures. Yet, the queen reasoned, this surely did not apply to healthful exercise, such as riding in the royal park. Nor could she refuse to spend the remainder of the afternoon in quiet seclusion, lying face down upon a cushioned bench in her private dressing room while gentle Lady Mary rubbed all the soreness from her muscles. Such occupations were safe, and harmless. It was only afterwards, when she was sleeping deeply, that Captain Quire came to her in a dream.

Here lies a man with unfulfilled potential,” said the Wealthy Gardener, “who chose safety and ease over discomfort, who opted for excuses over sacrifices, who waited until it was too late, and in turn denied the world the gift of his beautiful dream. Learn from a fool who chose comfort, and vow to never ignore your own inner wisdom.

I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me--This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

Her lack of confidence in life, in realization, in the fulfillment of her desires, in the outcome of a dream, in the possibility of reality corresponding to her fantasy, speeded her bicycle with the incredible speed of anxiety, a speed beyond the human body, beyond human endurance. She arrived before him. Her fear was justified! She could not measure what the anxiety had done to her speed, the acceleration which had broken the equality of rhythm. She arrived as she had feared, at a desolate spot on the road, and the boy had become this invisible image which taunts the dreamer, a mirage that could not be made real. It had become reality eluding the dreamer, the wish unfulfilled. The boy may have arrived later. He may have fallen asleep and not come at all. He may have had a tire puncture. Nothing mattered. Nothing could prevent her from feeling that she was not Juliet waiting on the balcony, but Romeo who had to leap across space to join her. She had leaped, she had acted Romeo, and when woman leaped she leaped into a void.

Come in," he said gently. And inwardly raged at this portion of his being that rendered him helpless; that he could not control; that lay coiled within him like a length of rope, always ready to fling itself unbidden at the cry of someone else's need. It gave him -no peace. Not even in sleep. At the edge of his dreams, there was often a sound like a faint, brief cry of someone in distress. It was almost inaudible in the distance. Always the same. And for minutes after waking, he would feel the anxiety of some duty unfulfilled.

A visionary looks at the immensity of the world without fear. He looks at the billions of dreams in the millions of people's minds, the hundreds of thousand unfulfilled aspirations, the thousands steps never taken, the hundreds of goals waiting to happen, and understands that in order to change it all, he needs to change the most important part: himself.

If only there were not these vain ghostly hopes, these sudden inane shadows of possibilities, these unfulfilled conditionals of hopeless desire.

Patience often surrenders to time, and dreams go unfulfilled - act as if time is fleeting, as it is.

The trees on the shore,” he said at their urging, “Wish they were sailing vessels “But care not to die “To achieve their dreams. “Thus do they die unfulfilled “As do many men.

If children are fated to live out the unfulfilled dreams of their parents

Hoping, dreaming on I stray to her smile, a world away. Love unfulfilled, I rise and a world away, she cries.

An unfulfilled dream is like spilled milk on dry earth. It sinks instantly and leaves a useless patch to re- mind you that you can never taste it.

Everybody at some level believes in it. It's a deeply seductive image. The image that we all want, as oppressed people, is an image of our masters finally loving us and recognizing our humanity. It is this image that keeps prostitutes with their pimps, the colonized with their colonizers and battered women with their batterers. Everybody dreams of one day being safe.

The problem of brute sanity was identified by George Bernard Shaw when he observed that ‘reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity’ … Brute sanity is the tendency to overlook the complexity and detailed processes and procedures required, in favour of the more obvious matters of stressing goals, the importance of the problem and the grand plan. Brute sanity overpromises, overrationalises and consequently results in unfulfilled dreams and frustrations which discourage people from sustaining their efforts and from taking on future change projects.

The faster you achieve your success, the faster you realize this. When you are in a certain state of insufficiency, you keep thinking that everything will be okay once your dreams are realized. But if all the things you dreamt of happen very quickly, you suddenly realize that, although everything is happening as you thought it should, life still remains unfulfilled and your longings persist.

Beginnings are fragile things. They're made of gossamer threads of hope and shimmer with the faint light of potential grace. It's in the human heart that we begin weaving our designs and dreams of experience yet to come. We live our entire lives within chrysalises. As soon as we emerge from one, life sculpts another around us. Within manifest reality, everything is in a constant state of becoming, even God.

As he left Yata’s home that morning, he knew that a part of his life was complete and that whatever path he chose, he would experience the ache of unfulfilled dreams. For a moment he allowed himself to feel regret at the thought of never building a cottage by the river with Trevanion. Or living the life of a simple farmer connected to the earth. Or traveling his kingdom, satisfying the nomad he had become. To be Finnikin of the Rock and the Monts and the River and the Flatlands and the Forest. To be none of those at all. Yet he also knew that to lose her to another man would be a slow torture every day for the rest of his life.

Jinnah's "Pakistan" did not entail the partition of India; rather it meant its regeneration into an union where Pakistan and Hindustan would join to stand together proudly against the hostile world without. This was no clarion call for pan-Islam; this was not pitting Muslim India against Hindustan; rather it was a secular vision of a polity where there was real political choice & safeguards, the India of Jinnah's dreams, a vision unfulfilled but noble nonetheless.

Some of the streets are, however, genuinely narrow. These same streets may not be filled with machine-gun fire and the dramatic screech of violins, but they overflow with the invisible and innumerable longings of the human heart. Love continues to minister here, but betrayal still wears its perfidious face, hatred hollows out the weak man’s breast, revenge pursues its self-defeating course; and the unfulfilled dreams of the multitude haunt the island like so many hungry ghosts.

When the revolution aborted the project, the rulers of the United Arab Emirates realized the need for such a city and created in their kingdom the unfulfilled dream of the Shah. Today’s Dubai is the child of yesterday’s aborted Kish project.

When men do not know their assignment on earth they kill themselves psychologically and emotionally, wallowing in different careers and meddling in dreams of others. They become restless and engage in unhealthy competition - living unfulfilled lives

Codependents confuse caretaking and sacrifice with loyalty and love. Although they are proud of their unwavering dedication to the person they love, they end up feeling unappreciated and used. Codependents yearn to be loved, but because of their choice of dance partner, find their dreams unrealized. With the heartbreak of unfulfilled dreams, codependents silently and bitterly swallow their unhappiness. Codependents are essentially stuck in a pattern of giving and sacrificing, without the possibility of ever receiving the same from their partner. They pretend to enjoy the dance, but secretly harbor feelings of anger, bitterness, and sadness for not taking a more active role in their dance experience. They are convinced they will never find a dance partner who will love them for who they are, as opposed to what they can do for them. Their low self-esteem and pessimism manifests as a form of learned helplessness that ultimately keeps them on the dance floor with their narcissistic partner.

As long as you think there is a pretty good chance that you will achieve some of your dreams, as long as you think you have a shot at success, you experience your inner emptiness as “drive” and your anxiety as “hope.” And so you can remain almost completely oblivious to how deep your thirst actually is. Most of us tell ourselves that the reason we remain unfulfilled is because we simply haven’t been able to achieve our goals. And so we can live almost our entire lives without admitting to ourselves the depth of our spiritual thirst. And that is why the few people in life who actually do reach or exceed their dreams are shocked to discover that these longed-for circumstances do not satisfy. Indeed they can enhance the inner emptiness by their presence.

The sidewalks they passed were crowded. Most of the onlookers were black, and many were children whose eyes reflected unfulfillable dreams. The city's heart was dying before its carcass, and these were the poor, trapped in outworn clothes and rat-ridden tenements.

Their lips met with a tenderness Kate had not dreamed possible. The weeks of heart-break and uncertainty, the pain of wasted days, and the despair of unfulfilled dreams released her like winter surrenders its ruthless grip on the frozen earth in early spring. Did every kiss hold such promise?

But as the web matured during the late 1990s, the dreams of a digital awakening went unfulfilled. The net turned out to be more about commerce than consciousness, more mall than commune. And when the new millennium arrived, it brought not a new age but a dispiritingly commonplace popping of a bubble of earthly greed.

I don’t know anyone who has been handed only roses. We all encounter hardships. Some we see coming; others take us by surprise. It can be as tragic as the sudden death of a child, as heartbreaking as a relationship that unravels, or as disappointing as a dream that goes unfulfilled. The question is: When these things happen, what do we do next? I

The self we eventually weave is not just the sum total of what we have done, but also of a long series of absences: all that we’ve longed for but never got, the love that was not reciprocated, the unkept promises, the missed opportunities, the unfulfilled desires, all that we have only imagined or fantasized about, or have not even dared to dream.

The self we eventually weave is not just the sum total of what we have done, but also of a long series of absences: all that we’ve longed for but never got, the love that was not reciprocated, the unkept promises, the missed opportunities, the unfulfilled desires, all that we have only imagined or fantasized about, or have not even dared to dream.

Perhaps there will be more children; perhaps the parents are not done yet, and the family will grow, filling the house, bursting it from the seams like the large clan from Ethan’s unfulfilled dream. The parents will grow old atop this mountain of a family they’ve built, and even if parts of it crumble, from time to time, there will be enough left to support them.

Our generation has lost the concept of finding joy in unfulfilled desire. We no longer know what it means to hope. We want what we want now… . Impatient Westerners prefer quick sanctification. Take your car into the shop and drive it again the next day. Bring your soul to a counselor or pastor and get fixed right away. But wisdom understands that souls are not broken machines that experts fix. Wisdom knows the deep workings of the hungry, hurting, sin-inclined soul and patiently follows as the Spirit moves quietly in those depths, gently nudging people toward God. There is no Concorde that flies us from immaturity to maturity in a few hours. There is only a narrow, bumpy road where a few people walk together as they journey to God.

People in this world, on this planet, all of these people are lonely. To varying degrees, human beings are lonely. Many are not; but too many are. And they are too frequently lonely, too. They fill their minds with things called dreams, plans, conclusions, outlooks, new stuff, self-imagery, self-esteem, illusions, fabrications; all of these things are noisy. They fill their minds up with all the things that are noisy enough to drown out the silence of their loneliness. And they think they're going somewhere because they gauge direction and success based upon the measurements of the distance covered over the platforms of the things they fill their minds with. The noise they fill their minds with. In reality, they're not going anywhere. They are sitting right there alone in that empty room of their minds where their hearts ache (or are numb), yet the walls are covered in noisy things, the corners filled with noisy things! It's a horror story, really. The people of this world are living inside a horror story and it is taking place within their minds. And you wonder why this world is unkind? You wonder why this world is violent, is unfulfilled, is half-baked? THIS is the reason why.

I couldn’t help but think of the innocent Black men and women who’d hung from the branches above me, their cries cut short by the pull of a noose, their feet swaying back and forth, the blood draining from their faces along with their unfulfilled dreams. When I remember the thousands who died, many whose stories were never recorded in history, I bow my head. And when my wailing is done, I get up and I carry on, not in my own name, but in theirs.

Being a woman, I have found the road rougher than had I been born a man. Different defenses, different codes of ethics, different approaches to problems and personalities are a woman's lot. I have preferred to shun what is known as feminine wiles, the subterfuge of subtlety, reliance on tears and coquetry to shape my way. I am forthright, often blunt. I have learned to be a realist despite my romantic, emotional nature. I have no illusions that age, the rigors of my profession, disappointments, and unfulfilled dreams have not left their mark. I am proud that I have carved my path on earth almost entirely by my own efforts, proud that I have compromised in my career only when I had no other recourse, when financial or contractual commitments dictated. Proud that I have never been involved in a physical liaison unless I was deeply attracted or in love. Proud that, whatever my worldly goods may be, they have been achieved by my own labors.

I'm not one of those people who think life is beautiful. I imagine it could be, if you had loads of money and a clear conscience. Experience tells me that's rare. Life is a coincidental journey from womb to tomb, riddled with meaningless work and unfulfilled desire, ending in death. There have been times when I've lapsed into a less jaundiced frame of mind, but something always happens to restore my faith in man's inhumanity to man. Greed, stupidity, ignorance and lust rule the planet while mankind dreams of heaven, its mind in the gutter, its eyes on the stars.

There are people who know where they want to be, and also have a roadmap in their mind, about how to get there. But something stops them! They either keep waiting for better circumstances, or simply lack the courage to give up the comfort of a secure life. For them, the pursuit of their purpose is a risky proposition. Often, those are the same people that die with the weight of regrets. Those are the people who feel unfulfilled or unworthy at the end of their journey. They bury their dreams for the sake of a safe life, without ever venturing into the world of possibilities. But the truth is that if you risk nothing for the pursuit of your passion, you risk more. An even deeper reality is that there’s never a perfect time; the most ideal and opportune time is the time when YOU choose to begin your journey. Find courage to take the first step today. Your age, your pace, or your handicap doesn’t matter. Nothing is insurmountable if you have passion and persistence – your heart knows this. You simply have to convince your mind to play along. Find your moments of courage – the times when you feel strong, able, and energized. Tap those moments to launch yourself; the world beckons!

What kind of regrets? For me, very few books cause tears, much less require a handkerchief, but Bronnie Ware’s 2012 book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying did both. Ware spent many years caring for those facing their own mortality. When she questioned the dying about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, Bronnie found that common themes surfaced again and again. The five most common were these: I wish that I’d let myself be happier—too late they realized happiness is a choice; I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends—too often they failed to give them the time and effort they deserved; I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings—too frequently shut mouths and shuttered feelings weighed too heavy to handle; I wish I hadn’t worked so hard—too much time spent making a living over building a life caused too much remorse. As tough as these were, one stood out above them all. The most common regret was this: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me. Half-filled dreams and unfulfilled hopes: this was the number-one regret expressed by the dying. As Ware put it, “Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.” Bronnie Ware’s observations aren’t hers alone. At the conclusion of their exhaustive research, Gilovich and Medvec in 1994 wrote, “When people look back on their lives, it is the things they have not done that generate the greatest regret.... People’s actions may be troublesome initially; it is their inactions that plague them most with long-term feelings of regret.” Honoring our hopes and pursuing productive lives through faith in our purpose and priorities is the message from our elders. From the wisest position they’ll ever have comes their clearest message. No regrets. So make sure every day you do what matters most. When you know what matters most, everything makes sense. When you don’t know what matters most, anything makes sense. The best lives aren’t led this way.

Then there is the butterfly-or is it a moth? Humbert's inability to differentiate between the two,his indifference, implies a moral carelessness. This blind indifference echoes his callous attitude towards Lolita's nightly sobs. Those who tell us Lolita is a little vixen who deserved what she got should remember her nightly sobs in the arms of her rapist and jailer, because you see, as Humbert reminds us with a mixture of relish and pathos, "she had absolutely nowhere else to go." This came to mind when we were discussing in our class Humbert's confiscation of Lolita's life. The first thing that struck us in reading Lolita-in fact it was on the very first page-was how Lolita was given to us as Humbert's creature. We only see her in passing glimpses. "What I had madly possessed," he informs us, "was not she, but my own creation, another fanciful Lolita-perhaps, more real than Lolita . . . having no will, no consciousness-indeed no real life of her own." Humbert pins Lolita by first naming her, a name that becomes the echo of his desires. To reinvent her, Humbert must take from Lolita her own real history and replace it with his own, turning Lolita into a reincarnation of his lost, unfulfilled young love. Humbert's solipsization of Lolita. Yet she does have a past. Despite Humbert's attempts to orphan Lolita by robbing her of her history. Lolita has a tragic past, with a dead father and a dead two-year-old brother. And now also a dead mother. Like my students, Lolita's past comes to her not so much as a loss but as a lack, and like my students, she becomes a figment in someone else's dream. When I think of Lolita, I think of that half-alive butterfly pinned to the wall. The butterfly is not an obvious symbol, but it does suggest that Humbert fixes Lolita in the same manner that the butterfly is fixed; he wants her, a living breathing human being, to become stationary, to give up her life for the still life he offers her in return. Lolita's image is forever associated in the minds of her readers with that of her jailer. Lolita on her own has no meaning; she can only come to life through her prison bars. This is how I read Lolita. Again and again as we discussed Lolita in that class. And more and more I thought of that butterfly; what linked us so closely was this perverse intimacy of victim and jailer.

He sought to awaken an underlying desire in all people: in the perpetrator and in the wronged, in whites and in blacks, the ones on this side of an issue and those on the other. King’s vision spoke to that which is fundamental to any human being, the theme that unites and uplifts the people on the street, the privileged in the suburbs, and the politicians in office. He demonstrated with body and soul that dreaming can make a difference. We are simply seeking to bring into full realization the American dream—a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men no longer argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character, the dream of a land where every man will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. —DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., July 19, 1962

And then one day everything changed; the world shifted on its axis, our consciousness evolved. Instead of making their purchase deci- sions based solely on price, people became willing to pay more for sustainable or organic products. They no longer wanted their meat mass-produced; they wanted grass-fed beef from a local farmer. Rather than just a good sweat from their exercise, they also wanted mindfulness, so they took up SoulCycle, yoga, or meditation. And rather than settling down to buy their dream home and build their 401k, they spent their resources searching out experiences they could share and cherish more than they would another purse or car. Above all else, they wouldn’t accept the status quo. Instead of working in secure yet unfulfilling jobs, they wanted to create an existence that reflected their innermost desires and beliefs. And they did, in record numbers.

Unconscious of my destructive patterns, desperate to be loved, no matter what, and not standing up for myself when he had hurt me the first and second time, I had finally got a painful wake-up call. Shame it had taken me so long to realise I deserved more in life and I deserved to find true love, rather than keeping an unfulfilled and immature relationship, just because I was afraid to be alone. I had finally said ‘It’s over’ for which I had paid a high price with his vengeance, but I was proud to have faced my fears and moved on with life, no matter how painful it would be, fully respecting myself and trusting that one day I would find the right man to feel complete. Finding my other half and be happy. Yes, I was afraid that it could never happen, but I was now ready to face my fears of abandonment and go forward, single and alone, but independent and in charge of my destiny. – from ‘Polish Girl In Pursuit of the English Dream

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick. Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived. Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness. Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

Dunia was a consummate whisperer, but she possessed, additionally, a rarer skill: the gift of listening, of approaching a sleeping man and placing her ear very gently against his chest and, by deciphering the secret language that the self speaks only to itself, discovering his heart’s desire. As she listened to Geronimo Manezes, she heard first his most predictable wishes, please let me sink down towards the earth so that my feet touch solid ground again, and beneath that the sadder unfulfillable wishes of old age, let me be young again, give me back the strength of youth and the confidence that life is long, and beneath that the dreams of the displaced, let me belong again to that faraway place I left so long ago, from which I am alienated, and which has forgotten me, in which I am an alien now even though it was the place where I began, let me belong again, walk those streets knowing they are mine, knowing that my story is a part of the story of those streets, even though it isn’t, it hasn’t been for most of a lifetime, let it be so, let it be so, let me see French cricket being played and listen to music at the bandstand and hear once more the children’s back-street rhymes. Still she listened and then she heard it, below everything else, the deepest note of his heart’s music, and she knew what she must do. —

It is natural for a man to desire what he reckons better than that which he has already, and be satisfied with nothing which lacks that special quality which he misses. Thus, if it is for her beauty that he loves his wife, he will cast longing eyes after a fairer woman. If he is clad in a rich garment, he will covet a costlier one; and no matter how rich he may be he will envy a man richer than himself. Do we not see people every day, endowed with vast estates, who keep on joining field to field, dreaming of wider boundaries for their lands? Those who dwell in palaces are ever adding house to house, continually building up and tearing down, remodeling and changing. Men in high places are driven by insatiable ambition to clutch at still greater prizes. And nowhere is there any final satisfaction, because nothing there can be defined as absolutely the best or highest. But it is natural that nothing should content a man's desires but the very best, as he reckons it. Is it not, then, mad folly always to be craving for things which can never quiet our longings, much less satisfy them? No matter how many such things one has, he is always lusting after what he has not; never at peace, he sighs for new possessions. Discontented, he spends himself in fruitless toil, and finds only weariness in the evanescent and unreal pleasures of the world. In his greediness, he counts all that he has clutched as nothing in comparison with what is beyond his grasp, and loses all pleasure in his actual possessions by longing after what he has not, yet covets. No man can ever hope to own all things. Even the little one does possess is got only with toil and is held in fear; since each is certain to lose what he hath when God's day, appointed though unrevealed. shall come. But the perverted will struggles towards the ultimate good by devious ways, yearning after satisfaction, yet led astray by vanity and deceived by wickedness. Ah, if you wish to attain to the consummation of all desire, so that nothing unfulfilled will be left, why weary yourself with fruitless efforts, running hither and thither, only to die long before the goal is reached? It is so that these impious ones wander in a circle, longing after something to gratify their yearnings, yet madly rejecting that which alone can bring them to their desired end, not by exhaustion but by attainment. They wear themselves out in vain travail, without reaching their blessed consummation, because they delight in creatures, not in the Creator. They want to traverse creation, trying all things one by one, rather than think of coming to him who is Lord of all. And if their utmost longing were realized, so that they should have all the world for their own, yet without possessing him who is the Author of all being, then the same law of their desires would make them contemn what they had and restlessly seek him whom they still lacked, that is, God himself.