Passing Out Quotes (page 8)
I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great housefull of rooms: there is a hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits . . . and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.
Edith Wharton
Consider the word “time.” We use so many phrases with it. Pass time. Waste time. Kill time. Lose time. In good time. About time. Take your time. Save time. A long time. Right on time. Out of time. Mind the time. Be on time. Spare time. Keep time. Stall for time. There are as many expressions with “time” as there are minutes in a day. But once, there was no word for it at all. Because no one was counting. Then Dor began. And everything changed.
Mitch Albom
What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifle's rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers, nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells,
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes,
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of...
Wilfred Owen
And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Regardless of how liberal Massachusetts may seem, the Celtics were totally GOP. Like Thomas Jefferson, K. C. Jones did not believe in a strong central government: The Celtic players mostly coached themselves. They practiced when they felt like practicing and pulled themselves out of games when they deemed it appropriate, and they wanted to avoid anything taxing. They wanted to avoid taxes. And they excelled by attacking the world in the same way they had been raised to understand it: You...
Chuck Klosterman
Now, at Suiattle Pass, Brower was still talking about butterflies. He said he had raised them from time to time and had often watched them emerge from the chrysalis--first a crack in the case, then a feeler, and in an hour a butterfly. He said he had felt that he wanted to help, to speed them through the long and awkward procedure; and he had once tried. The butterflies came out with extended abdomens, and their wings were balled together like miniature clenched fists. Nothing happened. ...
John McPhee
She poured out Swann's tea, inquired "Lemon or cream?" and, on his answering "Cream, please," said to him with a laugh: "A cloud!" And as he pronounced it excellent, "You see, I know just how you like it." This tea had indeed seemed to Swann, just as it seemed to her; something precious, and love has such a need to find some justification for itself, some guarantee of duration, in pleasures which without it would have no existence and must cease with its passing.
Marcel Proust
We stood under a roadlamp, thumbing, when suddenly cars full of young kids roared by with streamers flying. 'Yaah! Yaah! we won! we won!' they all shouted. Then they yoohooed us and got great glee out of seeing a guy and a girl on the road. Dozens of such cars passed, full of young faces and 'throaty young voices,' as the saying goes. I hated every one of them. Who did they think they were, yaahing at somebody on the road just because they were little high-school punks and their parents...
Jack Kerouac
To travel is to be born and to die at every instant; perhaps, in the vaguest region of his mind, he did make comparisons between the shifting horizon and our human existence: all the things of life are perpetually fleeing before us; the dark and bright intervals are intermingled; after a dazzling moment, an eclipse; we look, we hasten, we stretch out our hands to grasp what is passing; each event is a turn in the road, and, all at once, we are old; we feel a shock; all is black; we...
Victor Hugo