Herring Quotes (page 24)
-
-
-
I. At Tea. THE kettle descants in a cosy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband's face, And then in her guest's, and shows in her own. Her sense that she fills an envied place; And the visiting lady is all abloom, And says there was never so sweet a room. And the happy young housewife does not know. That the woman beside her was his first choice, Till the fates ordained it could not be so.... Betraying nothing in look or voice. The guest sits smiling and sips her tea, And he throws...
Thomas Hardy
But when she saw Evie at the entrance of the restaurant, staring fiercely at nothing after the fashion of athletic women, her heart failed her anew. Miss Wilcox had changed perceptibly since her engagement. Her voice was gruffer, her manner more downright, and she was inclined to patronize the more foolish virgin. Margaret was silly enough to be pained at this. Depressed at her isolation, she saw not only houses and furniture, but the vessel of life slipping past her, with people like...
E. M. Forster
He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her full on the mouth. His skin was wet with rain. When she didn't pull away, he took her face between his hands and kissed her again, on her forehead, on her nose, on her mouth once more. "You will come, won't you? Promisse!" he whispered.
Cornelia Funke
The poor little thing, she'd saved this student's letter as a treasure and had run to fetch this precious treasure of hers, not wanting me to leave without knowing that she too was the object of sincere, honest love, and that someone exists who had spoken to her respectfully. Probably that letter was fated to lie in her box without results. But that didn't matter; I'm sure that she'll guard it as a treasure her whole life, as her pride and vindication; and now, at a moment like this, she...
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I thought there was something weird with all of you, I just couldn't figure out what it was. But now I know. It all makes sense." Her dark, tear-filled eyes sparkled as her accusatory gaze traveled from one of us to the other. "I can tell you battle on the side of good, and I want to join you." She turned to Frank, brushed her curly hair away from her throat, and closed her eyes. "Go ahead. Do it."There was a long silence as everyone stared at Kayla's shapely neck. Then Frank looked...
Meg Cabot
She carried a scabbedover wound on her hip where her mate had bitten her two weeks before somewhere in the mountains of Sonora. He’d bitten her because she would not leave him. Standing with one forefoot in the jaws of a steeltrap and snarling at her to drive her off where she lay just beyond the reach of the chain. She’d flattened her ears and whined and she would not leave. In the morning they came on horses. She watched from a slope a hundred yards away as he stood up to meet them.
Cormac McCarthy
..he said, he didn't know what to do. He couldn't move forward. He thought, they should move on. He started crying. Not for himdelf, for her. He'd rescued her from her lousy life, and now he was throwing her back. He felt like a shit for doing it, for things having to be that way, for not being able to give her what she wanted. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her. The only part that wasn't in the manual, was her response: She started to laugh. "Oh, give me a break," she said.
Candace Bushnell
How thin she is in her coffin, how sharp her nose has grown! Her eyelashes lie straight as arrows. And, you know, when she fell, nothing was crushed, nothing was broken! Nothing but that "handful of blood." A dessertspoonful, that is. From internal injury. A strange thought: if only it were possible not to bury her? For if they take her away, then... oh, no, it is almost incredible that they take her away! I am not mad and I am not raving - on the contrary, my mind was never so lucid - but...
Fyodor Dostoevsky
She kept to herself. Most afternoons I caught a glimpse of her in the shadows of B deck, in a deck chair. She always had in her possession a copy of The Magic Mountain, but no one ever saw her reading it. Miss Lasqueti consumed mostly crime thrillers, which constantly seemed to disappoint her. I suspect that for her the world was more accidental than any book's plot. Twice I saw her so irritated by a mystery that she half rose from the shadow of her chair and flung the paperback over the...
Michael Ondaatje
But you shouldn't have let her. That's the only way with these fanciful women that chaw high--innocent or guilty. She'd have come round in time. We all do! Custom does it! It's all the same in the end! However, I think she's fond of her man still--whatever he med be of her. You were too quick about her. I shouldn't have let her go! I should have kept her chained on-- her spirit for kicking would have been broke soon enough! There's nothing like bondage and a stone-deaf taskmaster for taming...
Thomas Hardy
Scarlet O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted...
Margaret Mitchell
Elinor, this eldest daughter, whose advice was so effectual, possessed a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment, which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all, that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence. She had an excellent heart;—her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them: it was a...
Jane Austen
Mrs. Turner was a milky sort of a woman that belonged to child-bed. Her shoulders rounded a little, and she must have been conscious of her pelvis because she kept it stuck out in front of her so she could always see it. Tea Cake made a lot of fun about Mrs. Turners shape behind her back. He claimed that she had been shaped up by a cow kicking her from behind. She was an ironing board with things throwed at it. Then that same cow took and stepped in her mouth when she was a baby and left it...
Zora Neale Hurston
Everything he'd done with regard to her in the last three years had been calculated to foreclose the intensely personal sort of talks they'd had when he was younger: to get her to shut up, to train her to contain herself, to make her stop pestering him with her overfull heart and her uncensored self. And now that the training was complete and she was obediently trivial with him, he felt bereft of her and wanted to undo it.
Jonathan Franzen