Quotes about Endings

Have you ever loved somebody, loved her completely, but had to end the relationship for life reasons?

Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it.

The happiest memories are of moments that ended when they should have.

Life is a book that never ends. Chapters close, but not the book itself. The end of one physical incarnation is like the end of a chapter, on some level setting up the beginning of another.

Have you ever loved somebody, loved her completely, but had to end the relationship for life reasons?

No, he thought, when everything you do, you do too long, and do too late, you can't expect to find the people still there. The people all are gone. The party's over and you are with your hostess now. I'm getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he thought.

Stay open. God's ways are not our ways. Sometimes the brook will dry up, sometimes the manna will cease, sometimes someone will walk away. Those aren't random. They are necessary endings. It's the hand of God closing one door to open another door.

We never do anything consciously for the last time without sadness of heart.

History: a collection of epitaphs.

Jesus knew what we numb ones must always learn again: (a) that weeping must be real because endings are real; and (b) that weeping permits newness. His weeping permits the kingdom to come. Such weeping is a radical criticism, a fearful dismantling because it means the end of all machismo; weeping is something kings rarely do without losing their thrones. Yet the loss of thrones is precisely what is called for in radical criticism.

The task of prophetic imagination is to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord. Notice that I suggest for the prophet in a really numbed situation a quite elemental and modest task.

The making of miracles to edification was as ardently admired by pious Victorians as it was sternly discouraged by Jesus of Nazareth. Not that the Victorians were unique in this respect. Modern writers also indulge in edifying miracles though they generally prefer to use them to procure unhappy endings, by which piece of thaumaturgy they win the title of realists.