Mute Quotes (page 4)
-
-
-
But when Odysseus rose, that man of many devices, fixing his down-cast eyes on the ground he stood: nor his scepter swayed, either this way or that like a practiced speaker, but held it motionless, even as a man unskilled in the arts of persuasion. One would declare him mute with passion or wanting in judgment. But when he spoke, when his powerful voice went forth from his bosom, issuing words which fell like flakes of snow in winter, surely no mortal man might hope to compete with Odysseus....
Homer
Mr Beach was too well bred to be inquisitive, but his eyebrows here not.
'Ah!' he said.
'?', cried the eyebrows. '? ? ?'
Ashe ignored the eyebrows.
...
Mr Beach's eyebrows were still mutely urging him to reveal all, but Ashe directed his gaze at that portion of the room which Mr Beach did not fill. He was hanged if he was going to let himself be hypnotized by a pair of eyebrows into incriminating himself.
P. G. Wodehouse
Forget the suffering
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.
The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.
Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
A childlike sun grows warm.
A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
You are led by the hand once again.
The names of the rivers remain with you.
How endless those rivers seem!
Your fields lie fallow,
The city towers are not as they...
Czeslaw Milosz
The stones here speak to me, and I know their mute language. Also, they seem deeply to feel what I think. So a broken column of the old Roman times, an old tower of Lombardy, a weather- beaten Gothic piece of a pillar understands me well. But I am a ruin myself, wandering among ruins.
Heinrich Heine
Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divinings, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.
Rainer Maria Rilke
On the morning appointed for her departure Tess awoke before dawn? at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute save for one prophetic bird, who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence, as if equally convinced that he is mistaken.
Thomas Hardy
The room was much as he had left it, festeringly untidy, though the effect was muted a little by a thick layer of dust. Half-read books and magazines nestled among piles of half-used towels. Half-pairs of socks reclined in half-drunk cups of coffee. What once had been a half-eaten sandwich had now half-turned into something that Arthur didn’t entirely want to know about. Bung a fork of lightning through this lot, he thought to himself, and you’d start the evolution of life off all over again.
Douglas Adams
I want you bound. And not on the outside. I’m working my way in.”
“Gideon—“
“I won’t ever take it further than you can handle,” he promised, his eyes glittering hotly in the muted lighting. “But I’ll take you to the edge.”
I squirmed, both aroused and disturbed by the thought of giving up that much control. “Why?”
“Because you want to be mine and I want to possess you. We’ll get there.” His hand slid under my shirt and cupped my breast, his fingers rolling and tugging my nipple, igniting my...
Sylvia Day
A poem should be palpable and mute. As a globed fruit. Dumb. As old medallions to the thumb. Silent as the sleeve-worn stone. Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -A poem should be wordless. As the flight of birds. A poem should be motionless in time. As the moon climbs. Leaving, as the moon releases. Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind -A poem should be motionless in time. As the moon climbs. A poem should be...
Archibald MacLeish
My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering. Against my tremulous hands which loose the string. And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said, -- he wished to have me in his sight. Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring. To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing, Yet I wept for it! -- this, ... the paper's light ... Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed. As if God's future thundered on my past. This said, I am thine -- and so...
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Those who turn the day into night, the young, the drug addict, the profligate, the drunken and that most miserable, the lover who watches all night long in fear and anguish. These can never again live the life of the day. When one meets them at high noon they give off, as if it were a protective emanation, something dark and muted. The light does not become them any longer. They begin to have an unrecorded look. It is as if they were being tried by the continual blows of an unseen adversary.
Djuna Barnes