Held Quotes (page 3)
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...there is no resistance to the idea that what is foreign can be known. Can be understood. Can be held in the embrace of love that holds the Universe. Given this Earth on which we live and grow, given its beauty and generosity, its majesty and comfort, how can one doubt that one is loved? That in fact there is an abundance, not a scarcity of love? It is all anyone ever wants, really, I believe, and it is all around us as we starve.
Alice Walker
And what is boredom? Perhaps the inability to find meaning, to complete a perception, to arrive at an understanding: partly grasped, but forever just out of reach. It is not lack of interest, but interest frustrated, cut off, imperfectly held. So says the Chronicle today. But for me it is the fear of emptiness.
Kate Millett
Pray , Mr Tomlinson, be seated. He took his chair over against her. I stood behind hers, that I might give him agreed-upon signals should there be occasions for them. A thus-A wink of the left eye was to signify, Push that point, captain. A wink of the right, and a nod was to indicate approbation of what he said. My forefinger held up, and biting my lip, Get off of that as fast as possible. A right forward nod, and a frown-Swear to it Captain. My whole spread hand, To take care not to say too...
Samuel Richardson
An anxiety with no object or purpose in the present, and in the future nothing but endless sacrifice, by means of which he would attain nothing - that was what his days on earth held in store for him... What good was life to him? What prospects did he have? What did he have to strive for? Was he to live merely in order to exist? But a thousand times before he had been ready to give up his existence for an idea, for a hope, even for an imagining. Existence on its own had never been enough for...
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Frodo raised his head, and then stood up. Despair had not left him, but the weakness had passed. He even smiled grimly, feeling now as clearly as a moment before he had felt the opposite, that what he had to do, he had to do, if he could, and that whether Faramir or Aragorn or Elrond or Galadriel or Gandalf or anyone else knew about it was beside the purpose. He took his staff in one hand and the phial in his other. When he saw that the clear light was already welling through his fingers, he...
J. R. R. Tolkien
Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling. And took their wages and are dead. Their shoulders held the sky suspended; They stood, and earth's foundations stay; What God abandoned, these defended, And saved the sum of things for pay.
A. E. Housman
The more he saw, the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath the surface, courage was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice; generosity, a clever piece of calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy, pusillanimity; honesty, a modus vivendi; and by some strange dispensation of fate, he must see that those who at heart were really honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent or brave were held cheaply by their fellow-men.
‘What a cold-blooded jest!’ said he to himself. ‘It...
Honore de Balzac
If I were to live a hundred years, and write three novels in each, I should never be so proud of any of them, as I am of Pickwick, feeling as I do, that it has made its own way, and hoping, as I must own I do hope, that long after my hand is withered as the pens it held, Pickwick will be found on many a dusty shelf with many a better work.
Charles Dickens
In the forest, in the forest, silence had cast a spell over all things. She plucked a great bouquet of daffodils and snowdrops, and tenderly held them to her, and tenderly kissed their fresh spring faces. She did not sing at all, but sat silent, expectant, and wondering, till her flowers faded and withered in her hands.
Katherine Mansfield