Gentleness Quotes (page 8)
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Their conversation is like a gently wicked dance: sound meets sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires. Another sound enters but is upstaged by still another: the two circle each other and stop. Sometimes their words move in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter—like the throb of a heart made of jelly. The edge, the curl, the thrust of their emotions is always clear to Frieda and me. We do not, cannot, know the meanings of all...
Toni Morrison
Do you need someone to talk to?" she said gently. "Oh. Thank you. No, no, I'm fine." He touched his face? he'd been crying harder than he'd realized. "You sure? You don't look fine." "No, really. I've just . . . I've just had a very intense emotional experience." He held out one of his iPod headphones, as if that would explain it. "On here." "You're crying about music?" The woman looked at him as if he were some kind of pervert. "Well," said Duncan. "I'm not crying about it. I'm not sure...
Nick Hornby
He saw that the Prisoner had listened carefully all the time, looking gently in his face--But evidently he did not want to reply. The old man longed for Him to say something, however bitter and terrible. But he suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on the forehead.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
If we're ever going to get the world back on a natural footing, back in tune with natural rhythyms, if we're going to nurture the Earth and protect it and have fun with it and learn from it - which is what mothers do with their children - then we've got to put technology (an aggressive masculine system) in its proper place, which is that of a tool to be used sparingly, joyfully, gently and only in the fullest cooperation with nature. Nature must govern technology, not the other way around.
Tom Robbins
This was his acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and irritate Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between men's opinions and their lives, and between...
Leo Tolstoy
I nudged myself closer to the ledge and closed my eyes and thought 'Oh what a life this is, why do we have to be born in the first place, and only so we can have our poor gentle flesh laid out to such impossible horrors as huge mountains and rock and empty space,' and with horror I remembered the famous Zen saying, 'When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing.' The saying made my hair stand on end; it had been such cute poetry sitting on Alvah's straw mats.
Jack Kerouac
She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose. Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They...
Robertson Davies
While carefully synchronizing our wings-they almost touched-Fang leaned in, gently put one hand behind my neck and kissed me. It was just about close to heaven i'll ever get, I guess. I closed my eyes, lost in the feeling of flying and kissing and being with the one person in the world I completely , utterly trusted.
James Patterson
Remember!--It is Christianity to do good always--even to those who do evil to us. It is Christianity to love our neighbours as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them do to us. It is Christianity to be gentle, merciful and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them or of our prayers or of our love of God, but always to show that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything. If we do this, and remember the life and...
Charles Dickens
Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.
Anne Lamott
Father sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. "Corrie," he began gently, "when you and I go to Amsterdam-when do I give you your ticket?" I sniffed a few times, considering this. "Why, just before we get on the train." "Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we're going to need things, too. Don't run out ahead of Him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need-just in time.
Corrie Ten Boom
If he lies pressed against me, he gently twines his legs about mine and our legs are merged by the very soft cloth of our pajamas; he then takes great pains to find the right spot to cuddle his cheek. So long as he is not sleeping, I feel the quivering of his eyelids and upturned lashes against the very sensitive skin of my neck. If he feels a tickling in his nostrils, his laziness and drowsiness keep him from lifting his hand, so that in order to scratch himself he rubs his nose against my...
Jean Genet
Who will marry me? No one wants a girl who is not a virgin."I will. I'll marry you."Ma non posso sposarti." "And why can't you marry me?"Perche sei pazzo!"And why am I crazy?"Perche vuoi sposarmi."Because I want to marry you. Carina, ti amo," he explained, and he drew her gently back down to the pillow. "Te amo molto."Tu sei pazzo," she murmured in reply, flattered. "Perche?"Because you say you love me. How can you love a girl who is not a virgin?"Because I can't marry you."She bolted right...
Joseph Heller