Foley Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Foley. Here they are! All 100 of them:

In my experience, those who have the greatest respect for the rules also take the most enjoyment in breaking them.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
But that’s nostalgia for you, the tyranny of those memories of childhood that feel so golden, so perfect.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
Just because the rest of us don’t wear our hearts on our sleeves, just because we have found a way of managing our feelings – it doesn’t mean they’re not there.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
And I'm not worried about it being haunted. I have my own ghosts. I carry them with me wherever I go.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.
Elisabeth Foley
If others think I am nuts, naive, gullible, and not living in the real world, that's all right, too... I'll gladly stay in what some have called my fictitious world, my happy and peaceful world, a world full of signs of hope.
Ward Foley (Thank My Lucky Scars)
The talent for self-justification is surely the finest flower of human evolution, the greatest achievement of the human brain. When it comes to justifying actions, every human being acquires the intelligence of an Einstein, the imagination of a Shakespeare, and the subtlety of a Jesuit.
Michael Foley (The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy)
But no matter what happens, life is only a series of days. You can’t control more than a single day.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
In many ways my life has been rather like a record of the lost and found. Perhaps all lives are like that.
Lucy Foley (The Book of Lost and Found)
You saved me again," she told him with a starstruck gaze. He cupped her cheek and gave her a tender smile in the dark. "Because you are my princess and I am your knight.
Gaelen Foley (Princess (Ascension Trilogy #2))
A big book is like a serious relationship; it requires a commitment. Not only that, but there's no guarantee that you will enjoy it, or that it will have a happy ending. Kind of like going out with a girl, having to spend time every day with her - with absolutely no guarantee of nailing her in the end. No thanks.
Mick Foley
It’s not about where you came from. What kind of shit might have happened to you in the past. It’s about who you are. What you do with the opportunities life presents to you.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
When he broke up with me, he told me that he would love me forever. But that’s total crap. If you love someone, really, you don’t do anything to hurt them.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
Marriage is about finding that person you know best in the world. Not how they take their coffee or what their favourite film is or the name of their first cat. It's knowing on a deeper level. It's knowing their soul.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
The rage is growing inside me, overtaking the shock and grief. I can feel it blossoming up behind my ribs. It’s almost a relief, how it obliterates every other feeling in its path.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
If I could cry it might all be better, but I can’t. It’s like an ability I’ve lost, like a language I’ve forgotten.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
If God built me a ladder to heaven, I would climb it and elbow drop the world
Mick Foley
That's what living people do. They shatter and rebuild, shatter and rebuild, shatter and rebuild until they are old and worn and stooped from the work of it.
Jessie Ann Foley (The Carnival at Bray)
It's always better to get it out in the open - even if it seems shameful, even if you feel like people won't understand.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
A big book is like a serious relationship; it requires a commitment. Not only that, but there's no guarantee that you will enjoy it, or that it will have a happy ending.
Mick Foley
Nowhere on earth could possibly live up to those halcyon days. But that’s nostalgia for you, the tyranny of those memories of childhood that feel so golden, so perfect.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
Graves: Are you skipping? Off to a good start. Dru Anderson: I don’t want to deal with it today. Graves: Okay. I know a place to go. You shoot pool? I’m Graves. Dru Anderson: I know. Dru. Graves: Dru. You’re new. Couple of weeks, right? Welcome to Foley.
Lilith Saintcrow (Strange Angels (Strange Angels, #1))
Max - "...Do me a favor, if the constable comes knocking, tell him I was here all morning, will you?" Dodsley - "Killed someone again, did we?" Max- "Never before luncheon, Dodsley. It's still early yet.
Gaelen Foley (My Wicked Marquess (Inferno Club, #1))
Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself.
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
I’ll never leave you. I’ll never mistreat you. I think you know that by now. Try with me. Let us find what we may find.” “What do you expect to find, Robert?” “How should I know? I’ve never experienced anything like this before in my life.” Tears shone briefly under her graceful long lashes before she blinked them away and glanced at him again with a reluctant twist of a smile. Sitting up, she wrapped her arms around her bent knees and sighed. “You are asking us both to set ourselves up for great hurt when it comes time for me to leave.” “Leave? Don’t speak of leaving, angel. You must stay forever.” “As your mistress.” “As my love,” he countered insistently.
Gaelen Foley (The Duke (Knight Miscellany, #1))
We’re all a little mad, my friend. Keeps life interesting.
Gaelen Foley (Lord of Fire (Knight Miscellany, #2))
people are here to do reckless things, stupid things they might later regret, though the point of it all is in not regretting. For the idea of the party is youth.
Lucy Foley
When you find the one, my lad, grab her up in your arms and never let her go. You may never get another chance.
Gaelen Foley (Lord of Fire (Knight Miscellany, #2))
But that’s what being poor does to you; it shortens your childhood. It hardens your ambition.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
Everything that ever happens to you only happens once, so you better never stop paying attention.
Jessie Ann Foley (The Carnival at Bray)
I could not explain that I simply wanted someone to love. Wholehearted, unreserved, requited.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
It’s always better to get it out in the open - even if it feels shameful, even if you feel like people will judge you for it.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
You are tired of being alone. You told me.” “You don’t know,” he said in a low, almost hostile voice. He shook his head. “I don’t even know what I’m doing with you. You’re not like anyone else who’s in my life—” He stopped abruptly. “Did you ever drink too much wine, Alice ?” He held up the glass in his hand and waggled it idly, making the ruby contents swirl. “I’m not one to overindulge.” “No, you wouldn’t be. Allow me to explain, then, that the more you drink, the more thirsty you become. Not all the wine in the world can assuage the thirst for water. Water. Wine makes you merry, but a man needs water to keep him alive. Pure, clean, sweet water. I am parched, Alice, scorched like a wasteland, burning like a damned soul in hell. I thirst.
Gaelen Foley (Lord of Fire (Knight Miscellany, #2))
But it is a lot easier to face the day when you know you won't have to face other people and their happiness.
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
There are people who hold out for love, capital letters LOVE, and don’t stop until they’ve found it. There are those who give up because they don’t find it.
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
I always feel sorry for people who think more about a rainy day ahead than sunshine today.
Rae Foley
Do youmind?” she clipped out suddenly with a fine, cultured accent like frosted glass. His gaze flicked up from her chest to her blazing eyes. “So, you can talk.” “Obviously.” “Too bad,” he drawled. “I thought I just found the perfect woman.
Gaelen Foley (Lady of Desire (Knight Miscellany, #4))
You could be a gambler. A thief, for all I know. Besides—” He captured her hand and stopped her from walking on, holding her in place. “Besides what, you insufferable prude?” “Prude, eh? Do you need another kiss to remind you what a prude I am?” “Don’t you dare.” “Then don’t call me names.” “You started it.
Gaelen Foley (The Duke (Knight Miscellany, #1))
Sometimes,’ I say, ‘I think it’s too difficult to tell the people closest to you. The ones you love.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
However, the serious seeker of detachment will have to embrace the Holy Trinity of Ss - Solitude, Stillness and Silence - and reject the new religion of Commotionism, which believes that the meaning of life is constant company, movement and noise.
Michael Foley
You’re not terrified of me. You’re terrified of letting yourself care for me, and I can’t say I blame you. People who love me usually end up dead. But you see, I’m not going to give you any choice. You belong to me now whether you like it or not.” “I don’t like it, not one bit!” “Try to escape,” he suggested coolly. “Go ahead. See what happens. Give me one excuse to take what I want from you, even if it is against your will. I want you that much. Too damned much.” He turned without warning and kissed her, flattening her back against the pine mast.
Gaelen Foley (The Pirate Prince (Ascension Trilogy #1))
But it’s possible to hate your body when you’re thin, too. To feel like it’s kept secrets from you. To feel like it’s let you down.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
You don't get this. This isn't your moment. You didn't create it. I created it in spite of you.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
There's another self that I sometimes feel I lost along the way. The girl who always stayed for one more drink, who loved a dance. I miss her, sometimes.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
I only hope she knows what she's doing. Climbing so high, so quickly: it only makes for further to fall.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
If I didn't pay attention, one of those currents could grow into a huge riptide, destroying all my careful planning. And here's another thing I've learned - sometimes the smallest currents are the strongest.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
Mind you, after your silly debutantes have finished their proper posture and walking lessons, tell them it never killed any young lady to remove the book from off the top of her head and open it for a change. Just like I taught you.
Gaelen Foley (The Duke (Knight Miscellany, #1))
When I married Jacques I understood it as an exchange. My youth and beauty for his wealth. Over the years, as is the way with this particular kind of contract, my worth only diminished as his increased.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
Being constantly the hub of a network of potential interruptions provides the excitement and importance of crisis management. As well as the false sense of efficiency in multitasking, there is the false sense of urgency in multi-interrupt processing.
Michael Foley (The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy)
Life is messy. We all know this. Terrible things happen, I learned that while I was still a child. But no matter what happens, life is only a series of days. You can’t control more than a single day. But you can control one of them.
Lucy Foley
To learn to die is to learn to live. Death is the giver of life.
Michael Foley (The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy)
I suppose we all carry around different versions of ourselves
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
That spring was the start of everything, for me. Before then, I might have been half-asleep, drifting through life.
Lucy Foley (The Invitation)
Here is a person held together by tape and glue and prescription-strength sleeping pills – the only thing I can be persuaded to make a foray into civilisation for, these days.
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
For so many years my insignificance and invisibility have been a mask I can hide behind. And in the process I have avoided raking up the past. Raking up the shame.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
You’re safe now .. . and I love you.” She lifted her face and turned to him, her eyes wide at his words, her lips soft and trembling. “I love you, too, Robert,” she said very quietly. “I shouldn’t, but I do.
Gaelen Foley (The Duke (Knight Miscellany, #1))
But dreams are funny things. Sometimes even the most impractical and irresponsible dreams just won't be ignored. And sometimes when you don't follow your dreams, your dreams come looking for you.
Lizzie K. Foley (Remarkable)
You wrong yourself and me by assuming my interest in you is purely physical,” he went on. “I told you I am eager to further our acquaintance. I want to know what you think about things. What you want out of life. What you dream. -Lucien to Alice
Gaelen Foley (Lord of Fire (Knight Miscellany, #2))
After a lifetime of engaging in long, passionate discussions I have come to the conclusion that it is a waste of time trying to convince anyone of anything.
Michael Foley (Embracing the Ordinary: Lessons From the Champions of Everyday Life)
Remove all of the distractions, and here, in the silence and the solitude, the demons they have kept at bay catch up with them.
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
It is a dark place form which you can never quite return. It does something to you, the first time. An essential change somewhere deep in the soul, the amputation of something important. The first time is the worst, but with each death the soul is wounded further. After a while there is nothing left but scar tissue.
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
I pat the brand new twenty-seven inch Macintosh computers Mr. Foley brought us. 'These boxes alone should make both of us scream like it's Christmas morning! Snap out of it. Santa came! Now we get to play with all of our toys!
Anne Eliot
Alice?” She spun toward the door, her skirts whirling softly. “Yes?” she forced out. “Do you know what I am holding in my hand?” “No.” “Care to guess?” “A pitchfork?” she asked in a stilted attempt at levity, hoping to invoke his earlier, playful mood. “No, my dear,” he answered drily. “A key to your room.” “What?”she breathed, aghast. “I should hate to have to use it.” “You have a key to this room?” “Mm-hmm.” She took a step toward the door, panic rising up in her throat. “You’re bluffing!” “Do you wish me to prove it?
Gaelen Foley (Lord of Fire (Knight Miscellany, #2))
Day offers two equally necessary sacraments - the benediction of morning and the absolution of dusk. In the morning coffee blesses and in the evening wine absolves.
Michael Foley (Embracing the Ordinary: Lessons From the Champions of Everyday Life)
It’s a beautiful building, but there’s something rotten at its heart. Now he’s discovered it he can smell the stench of it everywhere.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
There’s this expression in French. Être bien dans sa peau. To feel good in your own skin.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
There are some people that we know all our lives and yet never really feel we know them at all. But there are other people—” Unable to resist the temptation, he ran a feather-light caress down the curve of her cheek with one leather-sheathed knuckle. The cobalt depths of her eyes flickered with response, but she said nothing, heeding his every word. “—people we meet in a day, and instantly, it feels as though we’ve known them all our lives.
Gaelen Foley (Lord of Fire (Knight Miscellany, #2))
See, mine is a profession in which you orchestrate happiness....You can't control more than a single day. But you can control one of them. Twenty four hours can be curated. A wedding day is a neat little parcel of time in which I can create something whole and perfect to be cherished for a lifetime, a pearl from a broken necklace.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
It may well be that an analysis of figures would reveal a law - the duration of a marriage is inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding. Or, to put it another way, any union celebrated with personalized toasting flutes is doomed.
Michael Foley (The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy)
Employees hate meetings because they reveal that self-promotion, sycophancy, dissimulation and constantly talking nonsense in a loud confident voice are more impressive than merely being good at the job - and it is depressing to lack these skills but even more depressing to discover one's self using them.
Michael Foley (Embracing the Ordinary: Lessons From the Champions of Everyday Life)
You know, I read somewhere that sixty percent of us can’t go more than ten minutes without lying. Little slippages: to make ourselves sound better, more attractive, to others. White lies to avoid causing offence. So it’s not like I’ve done anything out of the ordinary. It’s only human.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
Snobbery management is as difficult and necessary as anger management.
Michael Foley (Embracing the Ordinary: Lessons From the Champions of Everyday Life)
No man that good-looking could be a bachelor. Life wasn't that kind.
Gaelen Foley (The Duke (Knight Miscellany, #1))
It signified nothing that the raw, male magnetism that emanated from him probably made compasses malfunction in his presence.
Gaelen Foley (My Wicked Marquess (Inferno Club, #1))
Sometimes solitude is the only way to regain your sanity.
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
But it’s all about the moment, a wedding. All about the day. It’s not really about the marriage at all, in spite of what everyone says.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
nature, who knows nothing of convention, has the audacity of a genius.
Lucy Foley (The Invitation)
The 1970s was the decade of liberation, of anger at injustice and demands for recognition and rights. But over time, the demand for specific rights degraded into a generalized sense of entitlement, the demand for specific recognition into a generalized demand for attention and the anger at specific injustice into a generalized feeling of grievance and resentment. The result is a culture of entitlement, attention-seeking and complaint.
Michael Foley (The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy)
didn’t realise at the time how cheaply I had been bought. I didn’t free myself when I married my husband, as I’d thought. I didn’t elevate myself. I did the exact opposite. I married my pimp: I chained myself to him for life. Perhaps my daughter did the very thing I hadn’t had the courage to do.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
Will: What do I wanna way outta here for? I'm gonna live here the rest of my fuckin' life. We'll be neighbors, have little kids, take 'em to Little League up at Foley Field. Chuckie: Look, you're my best friend, so don't take this the wrong way but, in 20 years if you're still livin' here, comin' over to my house, watchin' the Patriots games, workin' construction, I'll fuckin' kill ya. That's not a threat, that's a fact, I'll fuckin' kill ya. Will: What the fuck you talkin' about? Chuckie: You got somethin' none of us have... Will: Oh, come on! What? Why is it always this? I mean, I fuckin' owe it to myself to do this or that. What if I don't want to? Chuckie: No. No, no no no. Fuck you, you don't owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cuz tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this shit. And that's all right. That's fine. I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do fuckin' anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a fuckin' waste of your time.
Ben Affleck (Good Will Hunting)
She likes me. The shock of it sent a jolt of wild joy through him that stole his breath and robbed him momentarily of his common sense. He, Blade, who stared down cutthroat thugs in the meanest streets of the city, who laughed at death and snapped his fingers in the hangman’s face, found himself nervous and jumpy in the presence of a pretty girl. How utterly stupid. He felt like an ass. He didn’t care.
Gaelen Foley (Lady of Desire (Knight Miscellany, #4))
We can do our family members down as much as we like. But the second an outsider insults them our blood seethes. At the end of the day I don’t like him – but I love him. And I see my own failures in him.
Lucy Foley (The Paris Apartment)
Miranda!” “What?” She batted him with her pillow. “Hoyden! Are you drunk?” “I don’t think so. I’m not sure. They never gave us wine at Yardley. I feel happy.” “Happy?” He grabbed a corner of the pillow as she whacked him again with it. “Stop it!” “You’re too serious, Winterley!” She reached for another pillow. “I will beat you until you smile!” He ducked out of his chair with a rakish grin as she swung at him, then tackled her flat on the soft bed, both of them laughing. “You are . . . impossible,” he chided with a gentle sigh as he braced his elbows on either side of her head. He traced her cheekbones with the pads of his thumbs. “Difficult, but not impossible.” She wrapped her arms around him, relishing the weight of him atop her, the smoothness of his bare chest against her bodice. “It all depends on who’s trying.” “That sounded distinctly like an invitation,” he murmured.
Gaelen Foley (Lord of Ice (Knight Miscellany, #3))
It is not possible to be original by trying to be original - those who attempt this in the arts will be merely avant-garde. Originality is the product of an impulse to intense and overwhelming that it bursts the conventions and produces something new - again more by accident than design.
Michael Foley (The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy)
The war had been a daily thought, a continual consciousness in her life for two years, but never a real presence. Battles were things that were fought somewhere else, won somehow, by someone, and lost by someone else. Now as she stood by her own door and listened to the cannons, it was with a chilling, dreadfully full and clear realization that men were out on the field beneath that gray cloud taking each other’s lives.
Elisabeth Grace Foley (War Memorial)
It seemed a fair gauge: the crazier the hair, the smarter the head beneath it.
E.G. Foley (Jake & The Giant (The Gryphon Chronicles, #2))
Our souls need music, Robert, as our bodies need touch.
Gaelen Foley (The Duke (Knight Miscellany, #1))
And a sensible work strategy might be: surrender to the task but not to the taskmaster, become absorbed in the work itself but never absorb the work ethos.
Michael Foley (The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy)
The Bright Young People. The press love and hate them - they celebrate them, they vilify them, and they know full well that they would not shift nearly so many papers without them.
Lucy Foley
Perhaps it's simply growing older. A sense that she doesn't have to prove herself any longer, that she knows exactly who she is. I envy that.
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
Sometimes these impulses overtake me -- the urge to push things a bit further... even the urge to wound. I can't stop myself, it's like a compulsion.
Lucy Foley (The Hunting Party)
Only to be HIT by the minivan!!
Foley
I see. So you playacted the role of a rake who was only pretending to be in earnest, knowing you would come across as though you had the lowest of motives, when in fact, you were sincere?” “Precisely.” She gave a short, wry laugh and shook her head at him. “Convoluted sir! You are a maze.” He shot her a sulky glance. “I thought you were going to say I was amazing.” “That, too,” she admitted with a rueful smile, capturing his square chin between her fingertips.
Gaelen Foley (Lord of Fire (Knight Miscellany, #2))
Drop a pebble in the water: just a splash, and it is gone; But there's half-a-hundred ripples circling on and on and on, Spreading, spreading from the center, flowing on out to the sea. And there is no way of telling where the end is going to be. Drop a pebble in the water: in a minute you forget, But there's little waves a-flowing, and there's ripples circling yet, And those little waves a-flowing to a great big wave have grown; You've disturbed a mighty river just by dropping in a stone. Drop an unkind word, or careless: in a minute it is gone; But there's half-a-hundred ripples circling on and on and on. They keep spreading, spreading, spreading from the center as they go, And there is no way to stop them, once you've started them to flow. Drop an unkind word, or careless: in a minute you forget, But there's little waves a-flowing, and there's ripples circling yet, And perhaps in some sad heart a mighty wave of tears you've stirred, And disturbed a life was happy ere you dropped that unkind word. Drop a word of cheer and kindness: just a flash and it is gone; But there's half-a-hundred ripples circling on and on and on, Bearing hope and joy and comfort on each splashing, dashing wave Till you wouldn't believe the volume of the one kind word you gave. Drop a word of cheer and kindness: in a minute you forget; But there's gladness still a-swelling, and there's joy a-circling yet, And you've rolled a wave of comfort whose sweet music can be heard Over miles and miles of water just by dropping one kind word.
James W. Foley
None of us had realized quite how fragile Alice was. She had always seemed so capable, so in control: getting all those amazing grades, playing on the sports teams, getting her place at university, never missing a trick. But underneath that, fuelling all this success, was a tangled mass of anxiety that none of us saw until it was too late.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
When you've got your heart set on someone Brad Pitt could walk in and he wouldn't be enough--" "Brad Pitt is really fucking old," I say. "Um--Harry Styles?" That almost makes me smile. "Yeah. Maybe. or Timothee Chalamet.
Lucy Foley (The Guest List)
Blade,” she murmured with a sweet, ingenuous gaze, sliding her arms around his neck in sensual welcome, “do you promise not to think too badly of me even if I like it?” A smile curved his lips. “My lady,” he replied huskily, “I have every intention of making sure you like it exceedingly.
Gaelen Foley (Lady of Desire (Knight Miscellany, #4))
Reverence for potential is a form of greed that believes there is always something better just ahead. But the spell of potential enchants the future at the expense of disenchanting the present. Whatever is actually happening today is already so yesterday, and the only true excitement is the Next Big Thing - the next lover, job, project, holiday, destination or meal. As a consequence, the most attractive solution to problems is flight. If there are difficulties in a relationship or at work, the temptation is to move on. This, in turn, rules out the satisfactions of confronting and surmounting problems and destroys the crucial ability to make use of tribulations, to turn to advantage whatever happens.
Michael Foley (The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy)
Well, does it make sense to you?" He said, "It doesn't have to, it's something that happens. It's like seeing a person you never saw before - you could be passing on the street - and you look at each other..." Karen was nodding. "You make eye contact without meaning to." "And for a few moments," Foley said, "there's a kind of recognition. You look at each other and you know something." "That no one else knows," Karen said. "You see it in their eyes." "And the next moment the person's gone," Foley said, "and it's too late to do anything about it, but you remember it because it was right there and you let it go, and you think, What if I had stopped and said something? It might happen only a few times in your life." "Or once," Karen said.
Elmore Leonard (Out of Sight (Jack Foley #1))
At the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University, McAdams studies the stories that people tell about themselves. We all write our life stories as if we were novelists, McAdams believes, with beginnings, conflicts, turning points, and endings. And the way we characterize our past setbacks profoundly influences how satisfied we are with our current lives. Unhappy people tend to see setbacks as contaminants that ruined an otherwise good thing (“I was never the same again after my wife left me”), while generative adults see them as blessings in disguise (“The divorce was the most painful thing that ever happened to me, but I’m so much happier with my new wife”). Those who live the most fully realized lives—giving back to their families, societies, and ultimately themselves—tend to find meaning in their obstacles. In a sense, McAdams has breathed new life into one of the great insights of Western mythology: that where we stumble is where our treasure lies.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)