Ifonly Quotes

If only…the saddest words in the English language.

They should make earplugs for people who are grieving, so we don't have to hear the stupid things people say, but I'd look like a dork in them." -Corinna

It is so easy to get sucked into the if-only game, and playing it is a short and slippery slide into despair.

And this is the moment where I went wrong. This is the gut-churning, if-only instant. If I could go back in time, that's the moment I would march up to myself and say severely, "Poppy, priorities." But you don't realize, do you? The moment happens, and you make your crucial mistake, and then it's gone and the chance to do anything about it is blown away.

We could have been the greatest love story ever told. If only you'd stayed in character.

We are past the end of things now, but I don't want to leave.

Helping a person in need is good in itself. But the degree of goodness is hugely affected by the attitude with which it is done. If you show resentment because you are helping the person out of a reluctant sense of duty, then the person may recieve your help but may feel awkward and embarrassed. This is because he will feel beholden to you. If,on the other hand, you help the person in a spirit of joy, then the help will be received joyfully. The person will feel neither demeaned nor humiliated by your help, but rather will feel glad to have caused you pleasure by receiving your help. And joy is the appropriate attitude with which to help others because acts of generosity are a source of blessing to the giver as well as the receiver.

Sinking into fiction: the if-only of if-onlys.

She lived in fear of ifonic endings. (91)

There were so many places in my time with Rogerson that I wished I could go back to, hitting the stop button at just one moment to stop everything that came after. I had so many If Onlys, but each place I thought to stop meant missing something that came later. I needed it all, in the end, to make my own story find its finish.

When we are ready to let go of our old controls, we admit that we were powerless over the incest or abuse...We have often thought, 'If only I could have stopped it,' but we could not have stopped it. We let go of the 'if only' now and sit still with our stark powerlessness…In our surrender to powerlessness, we touch ourselves with the gift of truth.

Whatever sits on the other side of your “if-only” is where you are looking for life, peace, joy, hope, and lasting contentment of heart.

He sighed and knew that life was full of ‘if only’ for everyone

But he was a connoisseur of the if-only, and so they did travel. They travelled in the past-conditional.

The Bible tells you that real peace is found in resting in the wisdom of the One who holds all of your “what-ifs” and “if-onlys” in his loving hands.

I know girls aren't supposed to tell, but I've got to tell—just in case you should fail to love me because you never knew how much I loved you. I want not to have to say later—I wish I'd told him.

And I thought, rolling my head to and fro between my hands in anguish, oh if only it could have worked somehow for us two.

The past is full of if-onlys and they're all bullshit.

Death is number one on the list of things that we wish were possible to leave behind when we escaped barbarism.

Ludens experienced, as an extra pain, an intimation of the happiness he might have felt in such a place.

Once you are no longer afraid, once you are no longer prisoner to the what-ifs and the if-onlys, there's a pocket of calm in the middle of the craziness. As if you can see things as they really are instead of just how you wish them to be, or how they could be, if this place - this life - wasn't so messed up, so contrary.

It felt like nighttime. It felt like those early-morning hours when inhibitions hide and the surreal gossamer of if-onlys and possibility--so clumsy and fragile by daylight--transform into action. We do things at night we would never dream of doing when the sun is watching.

Yours till submarines have screen doors.

They always tell you to do what you love. But they forget to add that writing doesn't pay by the hour.

If only is a bottomless well where wishes don’t come true

Don't waste your life on if-onlys. - Mr. Morrison, Humane Society volunteer

I’ve suppressed my aspirations to forget all rationality and let the moment explain everything, for nothing to be said and everything understood. If only I knew how to let these feelings out.

If at that moment Clement had caught sight of the dog and had managed to capture him, the fates of a number of people in this story would have been entirely different. Such is the vast play of chance in human lives.

Ludens felt again that special curious anguish caused by glimpses of a happiness he would have felt if only things were different — which could be different, perhaps could easily be different — but somehow maddeningly were not.

Witnessing a sorry state of affairs when one is not in power is by no means a monotone, monochromatic activity. It involves what Foucault once called a "relentless erudition," scouring alternative sources, exhuming buried documents, reviving forgotten (or abandoned) histories.

Louise was a jewel locked away; and after the first 'if only' period had passed and Clement had got used to 'Mrs Anderson', he felt that his love for her had not faded, but had suffered a sea change into something special and unique, causing a special and unique and much valued, pain.

If only there was a way to escape this reality, if only there was a way to erase all this formality, if only there was a way to figure out your mentality, if only there was a way to rid all the theatricality,if only...however sadly all we think of is practicality, so we will never reach any finality.

If this was a romance novel, we'd kiss. That's what always happens--- the gumptious heroine meets her match in the first chapter. A meet-cute. Something memorable. Remarkable. In old Harlequins, we'd be intimate by page one hundred, and a part of me intimately wanted to know what it felt like to unbutton this stranger's shirt. To let go of this plot and just fall headfirst into someone else's.

Here was another 'if only' — if only he had acted quickly, spontaneously, throwing 'tact' and 'good form' to the winds. Just then she had needed him, and he had failed. This bitter reflection positively, for a time, hindered his strange friendship with Louise, he avoided her almost to the point of boorishness, almost deliberately seeming to have lost his interest and his affection. The pain of his 'might have been' led him instinctively to devalue his loss, make it not a loss but something inconceivable and nil.

A drunk [once] said to me, "Drugs and alcohol are not our problem, reality is our problem; drugs and alcohol are our solution to that problem." [...] Aren't we all, in one way or another, trying to find a solution to the problem of reality? If I get this job, this girl, this guy, these shoes. If I pass this exam, eat this pizza, drink this booze, go on this holiday. [...] Isn't there always some kind of condition to contentment? Isn't it always placed in the future, wrapped up in some object, either physical or ideological?

From the beginning, I have been working between the seams. Where you have ripped, I have mended. When you have torn, I have sewn you. Stitching death to resurrection, failure to dreams, hurt to healing. I never throw out a fabric because it needs repairing. You've spent your life on the other side of the seams, thinking all the if-only's. But there will always be another section to piece. Another hole that needs mending. So long as you live, you will have loose stitches---don't avoid them. Come and exchange them for strong seams. Keep the fabric of your dreams.

Beyond her declaration of love she could not see. But as she rehearsed the intensity of her passion she thought that he must, when the time came, respond. The desire to, at the right time, tell him became, as the years moved forward toward that time, increasingly painful, like a poisoned wound that must heal itself by breaking open. She now thought in anguish of the times, the recent times, when she could have told him, and had been afraid to, and had clumsily withdrawn, when she could have attracted him and drawn his attention to her. When she had watched over him when he was sleeping in the sedan-chair and could have wakened him with a kiss. If only she had let him know, then she could more easily have borne his not preferring her. He was ready to fall in love — and if he had known — he must have loved her — if he had known how much she loved him. The pain of this loss burnt her in every waking moment, that awful 'if only'. She had lost him, and lost him through her own fault. There were no more pleasures now in life.

pig's read poeple read cat's and fish too. ifone or two people don't read don't put them in jail very one was a way of life

IF ONLY After days and days Of the same fate By now, there should be a million ways To fix everything, but I can only wait. They only see the outside of me, And that’s the only way they decide to judge. If only I could show them what’s on the inside, but we, As a group, only decide to hold a grudge.

Dalitbahujan structures, though they encompass a far larger number of people, indeed the whole working mass of India, is treated by brahminical literary, political and legal texts as nonexistent. As a result, even historians and social scientists from other parts of the world constructed Indian culture and history either in conformity with brahminical theocracy or critiqued it in its own terms without comparing it with the secular and democratic social systems of the Dalitbahujans. If only that had been done, every observer (if not from India, at least from abroad) could have realized that India has always been divided into two cultures and two civilizations: the Dalitbahujan and the brahminical. But this fact has been systematically glossed over.

A myriad if-onlys spin in the air, glittering with a thousand different possible outcomes.... But we all made the choices we made, and every lie that slips out of our mouths brings us that much closer to this moment in time.

If only I knew... If only baby... If only...

If only there was a way to escape this reality, if only there was a way to erase all this formality, if only there was a way to figure out your mentality, if only there was a way to rid all the theatricality, if only...however sadly all we think of is practicality, so we will never reach any finality.

The Bible tells you that real peace is found in resting in the wisdom of the One who holds all of your “what-ifs” and “if-onlys” in his loving hands. Isaiah captures this well with these comforting words: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (Isa. 26:3). Real, sturdy, lasting peace, peace that doesn’t rise and fall with circumstances, isn’t to be found in picking apart your life until you have understood all of the components. You will never understand it all because God, for your good and his glory, keeps some of it shrouded in mystery. So peace is found only in trust, trust of the One who is in careful control of all the things that tend to rob you of your peace.

Whatever sits on the other side of your “if-only” is where you are looking for life, peace, joy, hope,

If… if back then in the past, Dia didn’t summon him during that stormy night, and attended the following year’s ball…— —what kind of future would they have? When she wondered about such things, it was as if her chest would burst. In the last 13 years she had lived along with despair, Dia acknowledged that she had indeed ruined her future with her own hands. However, the sharp pain that ran through her chest—she didn’t feel it for the first time. …It’s been a long time since that ball. It felt awkward to walk around while clutching her painful chest everywhere she went. She wondered if her footsteps of today were still steeped in the blood of that night. That stormy night…

And the moment is gone, falling down into the great abyss to join all the other lost moments; the should-haves and could-haves and if-onlys that comprises the big black hole at the heart of my life.

If only that were true, how good would it be.

Owns Up to Mistakes “The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.” —Thomas Carlyle If there is one hallmark of maturity that is universally agreed upon, it is personal responsibility — the ability to recognize when one has made a mistake and to own up to it. And to do so quickly, forthrightly, and without excuse. The reason it’s hard to admit to messing up is that it depreciates your self-concept — your vision of yourself as really being a great guy. So to protect the ego, you come up with justifications — which feel like rational explanations rather than lies — for why you had to do what you did. You blame your mood or the unique circumstances. You say someone “made” you do it — that you were provoked. You engage in “if-only” reasoning: “If only you didn’t push my buttons, I wouldn’t lose my temper”; “If only this job paid better, I wouldn’t have to skim extra money off the top.” It’s easier to fess up to mistakes when the gap between these lapses and our self-concept has been shrunken — by humility. We still think well of ourselves, but also realize we’re a little flawed, a little broken, and imperfectly human. We use this recognition not to justify our misbehavior but as a way to more readily recognize our shortcomings, apologize for them, and get to work on their improvement. In the mode of mature personal responsibility there are no apologies with caveats, no “Sorry, but’s . . .” Just the frank ownership of error. Yet there is no room for excess self-flagellation, either. The mature individual recognizes the mistake, confesses it, and offers restitution if possible/necessary. Then, he moves on and tries to be better in the future. He neither ignores his mistakes, nor allows them to push him into a place of demoralizing regret and rumination. He sees them as important learning experiences. As put by the authors of Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), mature individuals “see mistakes not as terrible personal failings to be denied or justified, but as inevitable aspects of life that help us grow, and grow up.

The facts do not explain themselves or only partly explain themselves. They can only be explained fully ifone takes witchcraft into consideration.

ANT Types 1. All-or-Nothing ANTs: Thinking that things are either all good or all bad 2. Less-Than ANTs: Where you compare and see yourself as less than others 3. Just-the-Bad ANTs: Seeing only the bad in a situation 4. Guilt-Beating ANTs: Thinking in words like should, must, ought, or have to 5. Labeling ANTs: Attaching a negative label to yourself or someone else 6. Fortune-Telling ANTs: Predicting the worst possible outcome for a situation with little or no evidence for it 7. Mind-Reading ANTs: Believing you know what other people are thinking even though they haven’t told you 8. If-Only and I’ll-Be-Happy-When ANTs: Where you argue with the past and long for the future 9.

But I don’t. And the moment is gone, falling down the great abyss to join all the other lost moments; the should-haves and could-haves and if-onlys that comprise the big black hole at the heart of my life.

If one found ways to explain her husband’s infidelity or disrespect for her, all the others would give her a pass, knowing full well they were either in similar circumstances or anticipating that they would soon be.

My daydreams are so vivid that I really do find it hard to believe that he won't get another chance sometime, and my re-emergence back into my underground journey, or the book I am reading, is ludicrously slow, only achievable once I have forced myself to recognise, sometimes by saying the words under my breath, that the game is over, finished, and will never be played again. But you see, if Winterburn had scored (and why did... ), we would have won 3-1, no question, and retained the Cup we had won the year before;

grief wasn’t a single feeling but one made of many layers, mortared together with if-onlys.