Completion Quotes

“We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you truly who you are—that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: it's got to be the right wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have.”

I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.”
― Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe

“You're like a song that I heard when I was a little kid but forgot I knew until I heard it again.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room

“It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself. The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before. It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question 'who am I' except the voice inside herself.”
― Betty Friedan

“What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“One's not half of two; two are halves of one.”
― E.E. Cummings

“Don't mistake activity with achievement.”
― John Wooden

“A: The soul wanders in the dark, until it finds love. And so, wherever our love goes, there we find our soul.
Q: It always happens?
A: If we're lucky. And if we let ourselves be blind.
Q: Instead of watching out?
A: Instead of always watching out.”
― Mary Zimmerman, Metamorphoses

“Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion,
you ruin what was almost ripe.

Therefore the Master takes action
by letting things take their course.
He remains as calm at the end
as at the beginning.
He has nothing,
thus has nothing to lose.
What he desires is non-desire;
what he learns is to unlearn.
He simply reminds people
of who they have always been.
He cares about nothing but the Tao.
Thus he can care for all things.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“He was raw and sharp and rich and throbbing with life. He was sweet blood after a long hunt. How could she have mistaken Aiden's kisses for this? They had been delicious and smooth like the brief comfort of chocolate, but they had never been enough.”
― Annette Curtis Klause, Blood and Chocolate

“The conclusion I have reached is that, above all, dogs are witnesses. They are allowed access to our most private moments. They are there when we think we are alone. Think of what they could tell us. They sit on the laps of presidents. They see acts of love and violence, quarrels and feuds, and the secret play of children. If they could tell us everything they have seen, all of the gaps of our lives would stitch themselves together.”
― Carolyn Parkhurst, The Dogs of Babel

“New York is more than a state of mind. It is the completion of a dream. ( "New York at arm's length of desire" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“When we walk out of our boundaries, we find out that knowledge is not a completion or a windfall, but a long process of revisions or adjustments. Likewise, we recognize that wisdom results from the painful filtering of experiences we collect on the bumpy path of life. ‘("Loss of benchmarks")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale

“Dimidium facti qui coepit habet: sapere aude" ("He who has begun is half done: dare to know!").”
― Horace

“Isn't everyone a part of everyone else?”
― Budd Schulberg

“No one has a problem with the first mile of a journey. Even an infant could do fine for a while. But it isn't the start that matters. It's the finish line.”
― Julien Smith, The Flinch

“When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then [the painting] is finished.”
― Pierre-Auguste Renoir

“Every time I create something, whether an idea or a work of art, initially, its supposed completion seems absolutely perfect to me. However the more I think about it, stare it down, the more it marinates in my soul over the hours, days, and weeks, the more flaws I start to find in it; and finally, the more I'm pressed to continue enhancing it. It essentially turns out that whatever thing a flawed and imperfect, human eye once thought was amazing begins to appear quite wretched. This is why, eternally, God cannot be impressed by mere talents or by mortal achievements. To perfect eyes, I imagine that great is not really that great; rather, humility is ultimately a human being's true greatness.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“If ever you do go back, what is it you want of Evesham?"

"Do I know? [...] The silence, it might be ... or the stillness. To have no more running to do ... to have arrived, and have no more need to run. The appetite changes. Now I think it would be a beautiful thing to be still.”
― Ellis Peters, A Rare Benedictine

“Nature never rushes, yet everything gets done.”
― Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness

“For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, the Whale

“You have done well," Grandfather said. "We thank you."
"We were afraid sometimes," Jetsam replied.
"Good." Grandfather's eyes smiled. "That means you had the courage to keep trying.”
― Sheila Moon, Knee-Deep in Thunder

“Hoax needed to complete the premises of truth.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc’s auk’s egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“A transformational lifestyle is when a person can change the pain in their life into power, messiness into meaningfulness, complacency into completion, victimization into victory and tragedy into triumph.”
― Lisa J. Morris

“My mother
despises what can never truly
be done so she does not care for cooking
or cleaning.”
― Faith Shearin

“The neurological beauty of segmentation is that once the segment is completed, you get a mini-squirt of dopamine (pleasure juice) that resets the coping clock. Use this principle to your advantage by exploiting how your brain reacts to completion and accomplishment.”
― Simon Marshall, The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion

“As much as we learn the art of starting, we should also focus and learn the art of completing what we have started.”
― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua

“To actively create works is your inner genius reason six days a week...to find completion and rest in your creations on the seventh day is divine.”
― Dr. Tracey Bond