Circumstance Quotes (page 17)
Well! what is there remarkable in all this? Why have I recorded it? Because, reader, it was important enough to give me a cheerful evening, a night of pleasing dreams, and a morning of felicitous hopes. Shallow-brained cheerfulness, foolish dreams, unfounded hopes, you would say; and I will not venture to deny it: suspicions to that effect arose too frequently in my own mind. But our wishes are like tinder: the flint and steel of circumstances are continually striking out sparks, which...
Anne Bronte
When I read a novel that I really like, I feel as if I am in direct, personal communication with the author. I feel as if the author and I are on the same wavelength mentally, that we have a lot in common with each other, and that we could have an interesting conversation, or even a friendship, if the circumstances permitted it. When the novel comes to an end, I feel a certain letdown, a loss of contact. It is natural to want to recapture that feeling by reading other works by the same...
Neal Stephenson
He thirsted for this resurrection and renewal. The vile bog he had gotten stuck in of his own free will burdened him too much, and, like a great many men in such cases, he believed most of all in a change of place: if only it weren't for these people, if only it weren't for these circumstances, if only one could fly away from the curses place--then everything would be reborn! That was what he believed in and what he longed for.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Miss Trent regarded her thoughtfully. "Well, it's an odd circumstance, but I've frequently observed that whenever you boast of your beauty you seem to lose some of it. I expect it must be the change in your expression."Startled, Tiffany flew to gaze anxiously into the ornate looking-glass which hung above the fireplace. "Do I?" she asked naively. "Really do I, Ancilla?"Yes, decidedly," replied Miss Trent, perjuring her soul without the least hesitation.
Georgette Heyer
In the Queen's prayerbook, along with theblood-stain, was also a lock of hair and a crumb of pastry; Orlando nowadded to these keepsakes a flake of tobacco, and so, reading and smoking, was moved by the humane jumble of them all--the hair, the pastry, theblood-stain, the tobacco--to such a mood of contemplation as gave her areverent air suitable in the circumstances, though she had, it is said, no traffic with the usual God.
Virginia Woolf
Not called!' did you say?
'Not heard the call,' I think you should say.
Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you...
William Booth