More Quotes (page 513)
It is grim reading’, he said. ‘I fear their end was cruel. Listen! We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They have taken the Bridge and second hall.... Then there are four lines smeared so that I can only read went 5 days ago. The last lines run: the pool is up to the wall at Westgate. The Watcher in the Water took in. We cannot get out. The end comes, and then drums, drums in the deep. I wonder what that means. The last thing written is in a trailing scrawl of elf-letters: they are coming....
J. R. R. Tolkien
Warm are the still and lucky miles, White shores of longing stretch away, A light of recognition fills. The whole great day, and bright. The tiny world of lovers' arms. Silence invades the breathing wood. Where drowsy limbs a treasure keep, Now greenly falls the learned shade. Across the sleeping brows. And stirs their secret to a smile. Restored! Returned! The lost are borne. On seas of shipwreck home at last: See! In a fire of praising burns. The dry dumb past, and we. Our life-day long...
W. H. Auden
A man named Hero washed the press cloths; Meany Hyde told Homer that the man had been a kind of hero, once. ‘That’s all I heard. He’s been comin’ here for years, but he was a hero. Just once,’ Meany added, as if there might be more shame attached to the rarity of the man’s heroism than there was glory to be sung for his moment in the sun.
John Irving
Resentment always hurts you more than it does the person you resent. While your offender has probably forgotten the offense and gone on with life, you continue to stew in your pain, perpetuating the past. Listen: those who hurt you in the past cannot continue to hurt you now unless you hold on to the pain through resentment. Your past is past! Nothing will change it. You are only hurting yourself with your bitterness. For your own sake, learn from it, and then let it go.
Rick Warren
And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope. For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
Barack Obama
We can't stand it, to be alone. We cannot bear it, any more than the monks of old could bear it, men who though they had renounced all else for Christ's sake, nevertheless came together in congregations to be with one another, even as they enforced upon themselves the harsh rules of single solitary cells and unbroken silence. They couldn't bear to be alone. We are too much men and women; we are yet formed in the image of the Creater, and what can we say of Him with any certainty except that...
Anne Rice